Advice from foreign Teachers who have found a career outside of ESL

For those of you who have found success teaching in a field outside of English, what has your journey looked like? And what experiences or certifications have been the biggest help in landing you the position you’re currently in?

6 comments
  1. Watching some unrelated teaching channels on youtube, they seem to move to japan as teachers running away from a bad life, start a business and have a girlfriend scam them out of it, and then they build some entrepreneur stuff or just invested in bitcoin while it was in its early stages. For the average person, I highly doubt there will be good success rates for going down those routes.

  2. All the K-12 international school teachers I know, about a dozen, came over with licenses, teachable subjects, and some with MA Ed. or their subjects.

    The two private high school subject teachers I know have MA TESOL plus MA in the subjects they teach.

  3. I don’t even work in education anymore. I’m working in a warehouse to increase my japanese skill.

    I absolutely hate office jobs so ill probably continue working physical jobs . Pays not bad and I get a good workout!

  4. I came to Japan as an Eikaiwa teacher 22 years ago (with GEOS, anyone remember them?) just after graduating from university. Now I’m an associate professor at a major national university teaching in a field unrelated to English language.

    Basically my journey between these two jobs involved almost a decade of post-graduate education after leaving Eikaiwa in the early 2000s. I have four degrees now, including a PHD. I’m not sure if it was worth it as just the first two degrees would have set me up for a decent and potentially lucrative career back home, but I can’t complain really.

    Anyway, further education is probably the best bet. Kind of obvious really.

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