TL;DR With an Illinois sec.-ed. teaching license, N2+ Japanese, and the potential of 5 years in JET, what advice can you give for transitioning into a 正社員 job at a public high school?
EDIT: A nice commenter told me that public school requires a regular license after graduating from a Japanese university. They instead told me that the special license can be used in a private school. So, please change “public school” in my post to “private school,” since that seems to be the more logical route I should take.
Hello everyone! Since high school, I have wanted to become a teacher in Japan and have worked all throughout college towards that dream. I studied abroad in high school in a rural area of Japan and used that time to network with high school teachers there. Then, I studied abroad in college and networked with Japanese professors, even interning at the university, teaching a weekly lecture and doing translation work.
Next month, I will be graduating from university with degrees in secondary education, history, and international studies and obtaining an Illinois teaching license in high school social studies (I did my student teaching in an inner-city school).
I have an N2+ in Japanese.
I found out I was accepted to the JET program. It feels like everything I have worked hard for is falling into place. The hope is that I can stay contracted for the maximum of five years. But, after that, it seems like I will be staring at a deep abyss.
I have done some research on receiving a special teaching license (特別免許状), but it seems like it requires a certification to teach a subject (which I will have) and a recommendation from a BOE (which seems to be the difficult part). I hope I can do such a good job to persuade my BOE to keep me around as a direct-hire or become a 正社員 for another actual school
My question to this subreddit is 1) are there any post-JETs that would be willing to share their experience becoming a 正社員 for an actual public high school? And, 2) what advice would you give me to increase my chances of finding and securing such a job?
Thank you very much for your help!
8 comments
You will need to have a teaching license from an accredited Japanese university in order to be a tenured teacher in the public sector and that goes for elementary, junior and senior high school.
You can get tenured in private schools and get the special teaching license without much difficulty as you’ll have a degree, a teaching license and decent Japanese ability which is necessary for being a homeroom teacher, performing administrative duties, etc.
I’ve known a few foreign teachers here who’ve graduated from Japanese universities and got their elementary or junior and senior high school licenses. Most ended up in private schools because the salary is so much higher.
Good luck!
What private schools do you know of that employ foreigners as regular teachers? Some schools employ foreigners to teach subjects such as math or science (in English) and have special licenses from the prefecture. I should know because I am one of them.
There are now several prefectures that offer special teaching licenses to JETs who wish to stay on as permanent teachers at public schools after their 3-5 years. Hiroshima is one, and I know there are several others. In Hiroshima it’s called the Global Initiative Program, but in other prefectures I don’t think there’s an actual specific name for it. I personally know a few former ALTs who are now tenured in the public school system.
Private school would be easier, though. It’s a case by case, school by school basis, so you’ll need to do your research and see if the private school you’re looking at even offers special licenses to teachers. Or maybe they don’t even know about them. I was the first foreign teacher to get one at my school, and now two of the other foreign teachers at my school have them.
My prefecture offers special licenses for both public and private school. I chose private school for several reasons. The pay is better (at my particular school, but this can vary from school to school), there are no transfers, it allowed me to buy a condo near my school without fear of being transferred across the prefecture, etc. The benefits of choosing a public school would essentially be job security. If my school goes under because of the declining population, I’m fucked. If a public school closes for the same reason, teachers from that school will be transferred to another school.
As far as what you need, the most important things are Japanese ability (which you have) and a recommendation from your school if you’re going through the private school route. If your school backs you, then you’re golden. If you go the public school route, the procedure is a bit more involved and generally more years of experience are required (3 years working for the BoE in any capacity in the case of Hiroshima). I actually did both processes, and the private school one was much simpler. For public school, I had to do mountains of paperwork, then go to an all-day interview with all of the other Japanese people who were taking their exams. I did interviews in both English and Japanese, I had to write an essay on my teaching philosophy (in English), I had to write a detailed lesson plan using materials they gave me (the materials were in Japanese, but you can write the plan in English), and finally a demo lesson based on the lesson plan you just wrote, with BoE members pretending to be students. For private school, I just got the recommendation from my school, did a super easy interview down at the BoE, and that was it. The reason I did both is a bit complicated and not really relevant here, but I did end up going with private school in the end.
“I studied abroad in high school in a rural area of Japan and used that time to network with high school teachers there.”
So you… have a network of people to talk to about what opportunities are available in that area. As long as it’s not completely devoid of private schools, it seems like that would be your best bet.
If you have a stateside teaching license you should probably be looking at international school positions.
Why not International Schools?
Mostly contacts and getting your Japanese up to n1 and beyond, so basically business level.your test is going to be like “How do you talk to an angry parent on the phone wanting X…” or “how do you feel about X” so there isn’t a lot of room for error. I would suggest trying to get yourself placed in a prefecture that hires because. Teaching wise you should be pretty good, maybe a CELTA if you want something language focused.
Sgt1799; You’d have to not be a total piece of shit which you obviously are after reading your recent comments