Hi Everyone!
From title, you can probably already tell: I am deaf and interested in teaching in Japan. I became deaf in late childhood and wear bilateral cochlear implants, I am completely oral (unless I told you or we are in a very crowded space, you would never guess). Additionally I hold a doctorate degree from a prestigious institution in the U.S and have passed national board exams.
Out of curosity, how would my application be view by schools and interviewers in Japan? Would my application be rejected out of hand if I disclosed my deafness? Would I risk being fired/deported if I chose not to disclose until accepting an offer and actually moved there? (Like I said, for the most part, you would never know).
I ask because I applied to ESL jobs in S. Korea after finishing my undergraduate degree, only to be told during final interviews that it would be a bad look and that parents would withdrawn their children from school. Not going to lie, it left a bad taste in my mouth about S. Korea as I had never experianced that level of discrimination before. But that was almost 10 years ago and a different country.
So reddit, any advice?
18 comments
Hi there…unfortunately I suspect you’ll have a similar experience in Japan as South Korea. I don’t think Japan is any more progressive than South Korea in regards to disabilities (although even for East Asia those comments are pretty ridiculous). So if it doesn’t affect you I wouldn’t let them know, and you wouldn’t get fired or deported lol.
Over qualified if your trying to get in to an ALT position. If you can find a college teaching job maybe but they are super competitive. Either way only one thing you really can do and that’s apply and find out for yourself. No use asking a bunch of us on the internet. 🤣 Just give it a go and let us know how it goes.
Japan wouldn’t be any different from S.Korea
Disability aside, you are way too overqualified for teaching ESL. Focus on your career and just visit Japan.
I know of someone who was partially deaf working at Shane and another who was fully deaf in one ear working at NOVA. I also knew someone who was registered blind and got hired by Shane. I imagine if it were for jobs outside eikaiwa it could be difficult, but not necessarily impossible to find work.
If you have a doctorate, you’d be qualified for a temporary (*ca.* five-year) contract teaching at a university in Japan. The season for hiring for the coming academic year, however, finished a few months ago, so you should aim for the 2024-2025 academic year. (If you are already fluent in Japanese, you can shoot for regular (effectively tenured) full-time positions at university.
Deafness *per se* would not be a reason for rejecting you, but the people hiring would be concerned about your ability to learn and function in Japanese: for the most part, even as a contracted instructor, most of the interactions you’ll have will be in Japanese, and you’ll be expected to function orally in Japanese. (Most or all of the paperwork you’ll be expected to handle similarly will be in Japanese.)
You will also likely have to undergo a complete physical examination—the university pays for this—which sometimes includes hearing tests before officially starting and have to undergo the same examination annually in many cases, so there won’t really be any way to simply not mention your situation and skate by.
It would probably depend on your ability to:
1. pronounce things clearly & correctly (correctly being defined as the pronunciation for words defined by a standard English dictionary)
2. determine if other people are pronouncing things clearly & correctly
… as these two skills are determined to be “necessary to perform the job.”
I don’t know what the phrase “I am completely oral” means.
If you can perform the above two skills, I don’t see why your deafness would be an issue. If you *can’t* perform the above two skills at the same level as a non-deaf person, yes, I can see how it would be an issue.
If you can’t, it’s sort of like the situation with a person in a wheelchair: employers try to do everything that can to provide reasonable accommodations, but there are some jobs that they can’t fulfill the job requirements (ex. working in a warehouse lifting heavy objects up high in narrow spaces, mountain climbing guide, etc.)
What’s your degree? I work in a university and just based on my work environment and experience I feel like my school would be fine with it, although I couldn’t say for sure— depending on your degree and experience though. Do you have English teaching experience?
Also, do masks affect your ability to understand people? Because most places, including schools, still require masks indoors and there is honestly no end in sight. I personally have a hard time understanding people without seeing their mouths.
You know you’re overqualified, so I guess you just have an interest in teaching here. Do it. You’re going to be fine, and you have an itch to scratch. You can improve your job situation, if you choose to, after you get here. Or, teach here for a bit, then go home and get the job you’re qualified for.
I’ve known both deaf and legally blind ALTs. It didn’t stop them from being hired and they seemed to do fine at work.
What if you simply omitted it from your resume / not mention it during the interview? Like you said, people wouldn’t know, unless you told them you are deaf. May be crude, but what if you just grew your hair a bit (depending on the length) so it could cover up the hearing aids. OR simply have them covered till you pass the interview, and start working? At that point they won’t fire you, and then you will have a year to prove you can do the job just fine regardless of your hearing impairments.
10 years is a long time, long enough for the industry to mature a bit. Once you are in the country with a valid work visa, I don’t see any problem. You said you can pronounce English normally and I assume would be able to follow an interview conversation easily, so I don’t see it being an issue. I’ve been on interview committees where I could easily imagine most of the interviewers not noticing or not thinking to even ask about your hearing if you don’t show any signs of having trouble. The problem is getting into the country and getting your first visa.
And the real problem there is your doctorate, not your deafness. Unfortunately, 10 years is also enough time for the bottom to fall out of the industry. Most of the jobs that hire from outside Japan are very bottom-rung of the career ladder, and you obviously have the qualifications to not need to stick with them for long. You would be harder to exploit. So I could see a lot of eikaiwas and dispatch companies turning up their noses at you for that. Maybe they might even be classless enough to use your deafness as an excuse to avoid saying you’re overqualified. “We’re worried about you having trouble in Japan,” would be easier to say than, “We offer shit pay and we know you could go elsewhere the moment you get any better offer.”
There’s no reason for you not to try if it’s what you want to do. Just be aware that the first step is a challenge.
There are a lot of places that would hire you, especially if you can also speak Japanese. Some places are actually encouraged and can receive some government funds for hiring people with disabilities. Also, if you do eventually live in Japan, make sure you get a 障害者手帳 (しょうがいしゃてちょう). It will get you discounts at a ton of places and you can get into most zoos and museums with a friend for free.
One of my co-workers is deaf and wears a cochlear implant! You definitely have a chance.
You would be taking a big hit to your career. You have a PhD and experience and you are asking about near minimum wage jobs that won’t help your future.
My recommendation is to find a university job in your field. Teaching English in university is usually linguistics degrees, but you can get a researcher or assistant professor job in your field.
JREC-IN is where academia jobs are posted. This link is to the English side https://jrecin.jst.go.jp/seek/SeekTop?ln=1
If you are fluent in Japanese, the available jobs are 10x as many.
Depending on how many publications you have, you have a shot teaching something and doing research in stuff you are actually interested in. I teach computer science in a Japanese university in English.
If you hold a doctorate degree and want to go teach English for peanuts, I would say you do have a disability that isn’t being deaf.
Watch the movie Rising Sun (Sean Connery, Wesley Snipes) where the half-Japanese girl explains about the hidden discrimination she suffers from having a birth defect with her arm. So, in that respect, Japan can be just as bad as Korea. Having said that, the Japanese govt does make efforts to place people with disabilities and offers companies some sort of tax break if they hire. In 2 companies I worked in, there was a deaf person employed in the office which is 2 more than I ever saw back home. I was told it was purely to exploit this benefit.
What age are you wanting to teach? For university, it shouldnt be a problem. However, sometimes early education/middle school/hs, eikaiwas wont hire people with degrees higher than a bachelors because the pay isn’t adequate to your educational level