Currently Teaching in South Korea, looking to transition to Japan

5 comments

1. >New York State teaching certificate for ESOL K-12

   What do you mean by ‘certificate’. Like a teaching _degree_, or a teaching _licence_?

   Without a teaching _licence_, or _fluent_ Japanese, unfortunately the only ‘teaching’ jobs you qualify for are those “250k yen a month Eikaiwa jobs”. It’s not a matter of being hired from overseas. If you’re qualified, international schools can bring you in now no problem.

2. If you have an MA in TESOL, you may be able to get a university teaching job. Unfortunately for you, most of those jobs don’t hire from abroad and the ones that do usually require a PhD.

   However…if you bit the bullet and came over on an ALT or eikaiwa gig you could start applying as soon as you land. Just a thought. As the other posters mentioned, international school work is also good.

3. Dan?

4. Westgate is a dispatch company that places teachers in universities. You don’t need any uni experience to apply. Working dispatch has definite disadvantages, but it is a way to get a visa AND get uni teaching experience, and might be the only path for someone who doesn’t already have a visa to get into direct-hire uni teaching.

   Alternatively, some of the eikaiwa, like ECC and Berlitz, also hire teachers for university teaching, but I don’t know much about their recruitment or whether you have to additionally teach in their eikaiwa. It might be worth calling/emailing them to find out.

   Another option is an international school. From my understanding, they want teachers who are licensed and have prior experience, as well as qualifciations in education, TESOL, or other areas.

   And just by the by, I doubt any eikaiwa would hire you. They generally don’t hire people who have qualifications because they are not professional educational institutions and their entire system is based on hiring untrained people and then training them JUST enough to follow a set lesson plan. You would upset their apple cart by bringing professional-level knoweldge to your job. And for you, it would be similar to a trained chef applying work at a McDonald’s. I don’t think you’d want to do that – it would be extremely frustrating, and a move backwards career-wise.

5. With a US state teaching certificate, you could look at international private schools close to where you live. Some of those schools will hire you as a foreigner from abroad (meaning your home or record is outside of Japan) even though you may be in Japan already. And some of them may say “you’re already here, so you’re a local hire” (which is a way for them to save money). To counter that, you say “but I can only stay in the country on a work visa” if that’s true. Hired as a foreigner (also “expat” or “overseas direct hire”) generally comes with a larger housing budget and a summer flight home every other year. All other benefits are nearly the same for local vs expat hire.

   Speaking from the hiring side for international schools, a candidate with a specific country-issued or US state-issued certification in the area he/she teaches and with experience teaching in that area is generally a standard requirement for a teaching position in an international school.

   I’ve worked in international schools in Cairo, Nagoya, Busan, Seoul and now Tokyo. We will move back to Seoul in July for a new job. If the international school path sounds interesting, send me a message if you have specific questions about the quality of international schools in the Tokyo area. Or send me the train station you will live closest to and I can recommend the nearest solid international school (an hour-long commute door-to-door is considered normal based on talking with many of my colleagues).

   One more- the bulk of the job postings for international schools is usually October to March….but movement happens and some jobs come open in the spring, which is considered “late” in the international schools’ hiring season.