Discuss the state of the teaching industry in Japan with your fellow teachers! Use this thread to discuss salary trends, companies, minor questions that don’t warrant a whole post, and build a rapport with other members of the community.
Please keep discussions civilized. Mods will remove any offending posts.
13 comments
Happy March 1st. After we all say Happy New Year and enter January, the thought of the end of the teaching contract starts to pop in the back of our minds. Then, February/March has most teachers full of anxiety, wondering about if they will be employed come April. What are some methods you use to cope?
Since the omnicron closures in January abs February my Eikawa elementary kids have really started to get out of control. Is that just me, or others here seeing that?
Could anyone who’s worked on the admin or management side of ALT dispatch companies confirm something for me? Do the companies bill the BOE per day that the ALT works? So if the ALT is absent for a day, that’s however much less income for the company?
If that’s how it works, it would explain a lot. I worked for a company that seemed to have that structure, but I don’t know for sure. They didn’t seem to like the idea of ALTs knowing how the business worked.
Is it a good time to change jobs?
The eikaiwa I’m working at is getting on my last nerve and I know that a lot of eikaiwas are hard up for teachers (because we’re pretty understaffed), but I don’t want to quit this job and then end up at a place that’s even worse.
Honestly, I don’t think I want to be an eikaiwa instructor anymore, but I don’t have any teaching certifications or anything.
I’ve noticed a lot of people are having difficulty finding new employment, especially this year. You would think this would be the opposite, considering there’s been very few overseas hires coming over since the pandemic.
A small company offered to sponsor me for a work visa but they said that I’ll have to pay my own processing fee (about $1500). From what I can tell, it’s a nice little school, has decent worker reviews (for once!), and I actually would like to work there, I just want to see if it’s normal or not or if this is a red flag.
Got my schedule for the year and got hit with a 21:55 finish twice a week, one being Friday night when I have a 10am start on saturday….
Ibaraki prefecture, at least I think it was the whole prefecture, decided to have 1st through 5th stay home this last full week of school. 6th graders can still come in, though. The 5th graders at my one school were livid when they found out last friday. They really enjoy English with me. Shame I won’t be there next year.
Any other incoming teachers from the USA having a hell of a time getting their Certificate of Eligibility? Mine was sent out by my employer in February, priority express shipping and everything, and I still haven’t gotten it. Package tracking said it didn’t even leave Japan until last week, and has been stuck in customs since then.
Employers looked into it and were told that international mail into the US has been experiencing a lot of delays, and that the situation in Ukraine has exacerbated that further, but it still seems ridiculous that it’s taken nearly 3 weeks and counting with priority express shipping to deliver me a god damn piece of paper lmao. Probably not gonna arrive in time for training and the start of my contract at this rate
Is this also like a support sub for teaching/wanting to teach in Japan? I read the rules about no bad behaviour/act professionally yet I’ve been scrolling through posts for awhile and have seen some concerning comments of people just being flat out rude to posters. I vividly remember a post from last month about insomia and some commenters were tactless and one commenter was just evil. They literally called the poster a “brain dead f***”. And another commenter on another post said that OP is “incredibly r***** for asking”
I’m just curious is all when I’m seeing a fair bit of rude comments towards people looking for help.I just find this behaviour discouraging to anyone interested in discovering this world of teaching
Does anyone know if there are any of those study examples of blacking out a percent of words to show how comprehension falls in Japanese? I want to get my kids into extensive reading but want them to understand 98% comprehension threshold.
CELTA qualified English teacher from the UK here – looking to start applying now as it seems Japan has now loosened up for teachers from the UK butmy government page and other websites are being very clear. Can anyone help enlighten me? i have a BA degree and a few months English teaching experience if you need that info. Thanks in advance!
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