Anecdote time! What is your “I can’t believe this person is teaching” story?

Anecdote time! What is your “I can’t believe this person is teaching” story?

24 comments
  1. “Male Alt hits on high school girls”

    “Male Alt invites high school girls to see him perform in some muscle competition thing”

    “Male ALT takes up skirt videos of jhs girls”

    And these aren’t even the same person.

  2. Holy shit, I have waaaaay too many of these stories, LOL.

    1. I once overheard a lesson where the teacher had set up a role play in which one male student was supposed to pretend to be hitting on the other male student in a gay bar. Not even joking
    2. One teacher I worked with (I have told this story before) used to give his students math problems to do verbally, because in his mind, this was a communicative language teaching.

    This guy also would hand out a sheet of 50 individual grammar problems and have them work out the corrections in pairs Again, he thought “they are talking” meant he was following CLT principles.

    3) Another teacher I worked with would talk for the entire period, lecturing the students (this was a business college) about aspects of Japanese business culture that he actually knew *nothing* about, as this was outside his area of expertise; he was supposed to be teaching ESL. The students mainly sat staring at him, which he took for rapt attention when in reality they were just bored and thinking “this guy is full of shit”.

    Ugh. There are way too many “teachers” in Japan who actually don’t know the first thing about teaching.

  3. I had a coworker, where most of my 6th grade students could speak better English than with better pronounciation.

    Also had an ALT who came in suit shorts his first day.

    Anyways, now I hire for an ALT company. I’m pretty strict, for the kids sake.

    Saw all the Seccuhara comments.

    Odd thing is, 1 male JTE and one female JTE sexually harrassed me. (I’m a body builder, so they keep touching me when im busy etc, in inapropiate ways)

  4. It’s pretty notable that the question referred to anyone teaching in Japan but most of these anecdotes feature foreign ALTs…

  5. Oh there’s so many I could tell but I can’t be too specific.

    A fav was a male teacher who liked to play “the rain game”. He used paper play money to make it rain… on 4-8 year old kids.

    Had a large number of teachers call kids monkeys, gorillas, jerks, little shits, etc to their faces during lessons. And then were confused when they got disciplined for a lack of professionalism.

    Had a female teacher who repeatedly referred to JHS boys she found attractive as “dangerous boys” and would joke about which ones were worth risking prison for.

  6. When I was teaching at a college in Tokyo many moons ago, I had a coworker who was more than a little socially awkward. Late 30s, horrible combover, always mumbled and avoided eye contact- just to paint the picture.

    Just as some back story he was an owner of a strip club somewhere in SE Asia where he’d been living for quite some time (I don’t think this came to light until after he started working at the college).

    In his first semester he flew over his teenage stripper girlfriend and brought her into class as a kind of show and tell. Turned out the girlfriend was even younger than some of the students in the class.

    Halfway through the term he was absent because he had to go back to Britain as his dad had a heart attack. Because of the system at our college, we all had to cover his classes while he was gone. Well, it turned out that he hadn’t flown back to his country- he flew over to SE Asia because his girlfriend had threatened to dump him.

    Somehow he’d gotten caught in the lie and had to admit that he had even changed the dates on his entry/exit stamps on his passport to avoid being found out! Somehow he kept his job after having to stand up and apologize in front of the whole department.

    I moved on at the end of the year, but I often wonder what happened and if he’s still teaching in Tokyo, bringing strippers into his classes.

  7. Had a guy come to training wearing a massive cowboy hat. He was obese too. Grabbed the female trainee he was training with on the ass too. Don’t know if they let him in front of the students. This was for a big chain Eikawa

  8. Not just teaching, but the owner of a school and teacher for years.
    His advice to dealing with kids who didn’t do their homework or messed up on pronunciation was to “put them in their place in front of their peers.” Aka bully and tease them during class. Not in good spirits either but a mocking “oooo look at me. My name is X. I like to get things wrong! Hey everyone look!”
    His thought process was that the more embarrassed they were, the more likely they’d be to remember.

  9. -A Guy who would show up drunk and manage to make it through the lessons without anyone questioning him.

    -A lgbtq activist who would try to connect every lesson to lgbtq issues

    -Guy who got divorced and gave up on life. He would teach senmon gakkou classes by telling students they could do whatever they wanted and then he would sit behind the podium and use his phone for an hour and twenty minutes. Went on for 4 months before he got booted.

    -a JTE who loved talking about how much money he lost every days at the slots or horse races.

    -a JTE at a boys school who decided the best way to get the boys motivated in English class was to incorporate boobs into his lessons. To be honest, it was effective and everyone participated, but not a good look for the school.

  10. Ok, English teacher, but Japanese national. I actually met him on Tinder. Good looking guy but effed up to the extreme. Levels of psychosis I ran away from.

    Talked (not joked) about how he and his co-workers would give good grades to hot girls who were “dumb as f@#$” because “how else will she actually pass?” Like the score they got was in direct relation to their hotness. He was mid- to late- 20s teaching junior high or high school, if I remember correctly.

  11. There was nothing special about Tuesday this week. Nine o’clock wake up, Ten o’clock work. I took my temperature like any other morning. 36.9, well within the safe range.

    I would no doubt get to work ten or twenty minutes before my… co-worker. A good-enough natured Filipino girl with very little educational background who the students called boring just the other week. Thankfully, she didn’t understand them. I did, but I never told her. If I did, I’d be the bad guy. Maybe I still am for not saying it; for not provoking her to evolve her teaching.

    After a lazy shave with a cheap electric razor, I check my face. Bags under the eyes that are almost purple. The first sign of wrinkles from all the fake smiling, even with the masks. I can’t see it, but I know there’s a bald spot forming on the top of my head.

    Years teaching and I make no more than 250k a month. If I wanted to convert that to USD, it used to be good enough to just take off two zeroes. But with the fall of the yen, I’d bet I make less than a 7-11 cashier these days. And, damn, do I wish I could bet. A chance to change my life. But gambling is illegal in Japan.

    I take the comb I once took from that hotel and somehow manage to pull it through what’s left of my hair. And as I do so, I think: “I can’t believe this person is teaching.”

  12. A Japanese co worker faked a heart attack in class. He later claimed he was ‘testing’ the class. I firmly believe he zoned out for a moment due to a hangover and then impulsively faked a heart attack to cover his confusion. He smelled pretty special

  13. We had a teacher who just always gave no fucks about everyone else. He covered all the school furniture in reform sheets from Daiso (meaning that they were covered in sticky residue after he left), he rushed kids through lessons, he screamed at kids for doing shit like talking in the hallways, and during a school event where we were supposed to take a leisurely, but long 20km walk, he decided to make everyone run so he could go home earlier. That was one of my favorite events because we usually had lots of time to talk and bond with students, but that year just sucked because we were panting and tired. And we only saved 30 minutes by running.

    But the worst part is that he’d have private time with a JHS girl constantly. The principal even told him off, but he continued. He got transferred after just one year, and we all knew why.

  14. Had a coworker stand on chairs during lessons, he thought it would help the students remember better. I always wanted to say you’re not Robin Williams and this isn’t Dead Poets Society.

  15. Had a guy that would lift chairs. Like lift them for a mid-day workout. Just lifting and banging chairs around like it’s a gym.

    I’m all for a workout but that was just plain weird.

  16. A guy I worked with, “Gavin,” had to leave Japan suddenly to attend his father’s funeral in the Philippines (his father had emigrated there from the UK and married a local girl).

    We felt really sorry for his dad’s wife and young family, so we took up a collection and asked Gavin to pass it on to them.

    He never returned to Japan, and we never heard from him again. Apparently he got as far as the fleshpots of Manila and disappeared.

    Needless to say, he didn’t attend his father’s funeral, and he certainly didn’t hand over any money.

  17. I don’t know, but a good number of these responses sound like an HR issue instead of an actual employee issue. HR knew what they were getting, and they still put that person in the classroom. Japan has a number of schools, and they aren’t all the same. Is it fair to compare a conversation school to an actual school? Their aims are different, as are the qualifications.

    Conversation schools have their own curriculum and methods, and they hire a particular look over knowledge anyway, right? If that’s the person they wanted, why be shocked by that? The company wasn’t tricked or anything, they got what they wanted. I’m not saying it’s right, but that I wouldn’t be shocked because the standards for employment are different =

  18. Super sketch eikaiwa dude I met

    One of my friends brought to me a BBQ a town over to meet some of the foreign community there. It was a lot of fun but I met this one very strange British guy in his 30’s. Just from the get-go I had a very strange feeling about him. He apparently owned and ran his own English school with his Japanese wife out of their home. After that BBQ he said he wanted to hang again so whatever, we exchanged LINE.

    He invited me once to go with his family on a hike where he invited some other people, including a single mother and her son who I think was a student of his. He spent the entire time we got lunch together all up on this mother while his wife and two children were there. Immediate red flags. He tried inviting me out to things again but my schedule was so busy I always told him no and then he’d get pissy and ask him why I don’t like him. He even called me a few times in the middle of the day and he was fucking wasted drunk. He went on a weird homophobic rant and started talking about how COVID is fake and how he doesnt wear a mask ever. I ignored him from then on and he still continued to call so I blocked him. Always wondered what happened to him until…

    One day a friend shot me a picture of the newspaper. This scumfuck was arrested for violently raping a 13-year-old girl (probably a student of his) of his in his own home and went to jail. He only got 5 years for it too…

  19. Young guy who was here on a working holiday visa. I mentioned that Japanese learners often mix up pronouns. He started to go on a rant about wokeness. He was working as an English teacher and didn’t even know pronouns are a part of speech…

    As a bonus he always randomly said racist, sexist and homophobic things. Was very glad that he had to go home early.

  20. Two Japanese “veteran” – as in supposedly “experienced” – teachers working for the municpal board of education: one an English teacher (M) and the other a math teacher (F). Actually, neither of them taught anymore. Instead their jobs were to travel around to the junior high schools in the city and act as mentors/advisors/trainers to beginner English and math teachers. The irony was they had apparently both been relieved of their classroom teaching duties due to unsatisfactory teaching ability and poor class management skills.

  21. New teacher I was training, spoke barely above a whisper (absolutely not exaggerating). I told her several times to raise the volume, finally I asked her to literally shout. Lol, it was still quieter than normal speech. How the hell did she get hired? Anyway she lasted about 10 days then quit

  22. Back in the ‘XXs, there was a guy who was applying to my small uni. To cut to the chase, turned out his supposed girlfriend was a student there, and he was, effectively, pursuing her. It came out that he had been harassing her (trashed her genkan once), more or less just wouldn’t give up on her. Talked to the dean, he didn’t get hired.

    Not too long after that, I heard he got a job at a 女子短大. His name was like Christ, but without the ‘t’.

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