Hello, I finished my undergrad this year , and I have my 120 hour TEFL Certification. I am trying to get a teaching job in Japan. I am very aware of JET and Altia in terms of how they operate and how to apply etc. However I have also been trying to research other ALT companies extensively and one I keep seeing is called Amity. On paper they look good and on glassdoor they have mostly positive reviews. However I have also found some contradictory stuff on other sites. Does anyone have experience working for them? I have a little bit of experience tutoring English online and currently I can speak a basic semblance of Japanese.(I am actively studying to get better as well) I met people at my University who were in JET and ALTIA so my knowledge for the other companies is limited to what I find online.
7 comments
Just to clarify, as you seem to be putting JET and Altia in the same category, they are not. JET is a government programme and is paid well, Altia is a private dispatch company where you are paid much less.
Amity is an eikaiwa for kids operated by AEON. As far as I know, they don’t do ALT placement but I might be wrong about that. You’ll have to google ALT vs eikaiwa to see for yourself, but they are very different jobs with different pros and cons.
Amity is famous for pushing on of their Japanese teachers too hard and caused her to commit suicide.
I worked for Amity for 3 years about 4 years ago. Things may have changed since then.
The long and the short of it is that you will teach small classes of kids (I think 6 or 7 max) that range in age from 6 months old to adults. But, mostly, you will be teaching kindergarten and elementary kids.
You will also have a schedule of about 20-30 classes a week with mostly premade electronic materials. I say mostly here because the baby lessons will require you to make things sometimes but all other lessons (except adult) are on a screen basically. The other exception here is during seminar season where you will have to make extra materials.
From what I remember, starting pay is 275k a month that goes up 20k a year up to a max of 355k. After that they give you 1 additional day of personal time off a year on top of the 5 (extremely hard to take) holidays you get at the beginning. In terms of rent and accommodation, all accommodation is 40k a month but the quality varies. I have seen some places which are clearly being subsidised by the school by a fair amount with multiple rooms and then there was my place which was basically a box with a toilet and a shower.
In terms of bonuses, they don’t give out bonuses on a biannual basis but you get them on a monthly basis depending on how many lessons you teach a week averaged over a month. Max bonus you can get is an extra 50k if you teach 40 lessons a week over the month.
There are technically opportunities to move upward by becoming a trainer or doing emergency NET work where they basically throw you around the country teaching at schools where a teacher is sick or whatever. Both of these are based at their headquarters in Okayama. On the whole, the trainers were friendly decent people.
Is it a good place to work at? Depends on the local manager. The place I was at in Shizuoka was great. Whereas, a teacher I knew in Kanazawa fell into an alcoholic depression due to how badly the manager there treated all of their staff. One Japanese staff member committed suicide in 2011 or something due to that same manager.
If you have any questions then feel free to PM me.
Welcome to adulting 101…
Amity is an ultra conservative company. Your experience will widely vary depending on your location, but as others have posted, there are some dark stories to tell (the suicide story is quite close to me personally).
I liked working with kids, but my branch manager and area manager Power harassed the staff regularly. The thing that made me the most upset is their illegal wage theft. The manager would clock us out before anyone left and we wouldn’t get paid for any of that time. Typically one extra hour each day.
It’s a good way to get a visa, and then, if you really like kids, find a smaller school and leave with as little notice as legally required.
Good luck
Had a friend who worked for amity before. She told me their area manager was an awful old lady which led to my friend quitting after sticking it out for a year or so. I guess it depends which branch you get put in.
And yeah not to mention a staff committed suicide bc of the area manager in Kanazawa. Good luck.
I worked for a very short time with Amity. My branch was a wreck at the time, but thankfully the manager changed courtesy of me breaking contract (oh I was at the infamous Kanazawa branch mentioned in another comment). With that, I will say your experience is determined by your manager. They call the shots. They can do things like send you “posting” (putting all the fliers into neighborhood mail boxes) just cause they are mad and wanna screw you over. If you get a manager like mine, she will ask you over and over why you are so stupid.
A friend worked for a year split half and half between two schools (they transferred her cause the apartment she was in was infested with mold and it made her sick). She said school one was amazing, school two was just ok, not to mention she had a kind of creepy coworker I do hope is gone. This was in the same city, different side of town. I suggest you research and find out the best/worst schools. Avoid the latter like the plague. They earned their terrible reputations.
Kids are great. I loved the baby class especially. Kids and parents didn’t want me to leave. Manager told them I got sick and went back to America. Still very much in Japan.