Just as the title says. As someone that’s primarily worked as a teacher/tutor in Japan, I’m curious as to how your working conditions, classrooms, students, etc have differed compared to other countries such as Korea, China, or elsewhere. How would you rate your experiences? Would you say there’s any cultural differences that make it particularly harder in any given area? What about the general English proficiency for the country?
I’m curious and would like to hear the thoughts of those that have taught elsewhere and Japan and seeing how well Japan measures up to other areas (or doesn’t).
I’m considering things like the general level of English proficiency of your coworkers, attitude towards learning English of your students, how much help you received in the classroom, among other things.
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I was an assistant professor/adjunct at my college in America for a year and a half before moving to Japan, I taught in our college of ESL exclusively to foreign students whose English level was not high enough to enter normal classes in their major yet.
I teach high school and private professional/corporate here in Japan. For the private clients, the standards, goals, and expectations are quite similar. They have practical reasons for becoming functional at a specific level of English. Standard institutions of education though? They are exceedingly different. Standards and practices are years/decades behind, ethics are so different that there are things teachers do in Japan that would get your license pulled in a lot of Western countries. There’s also the really strange ALT/eikaiwa market and schools/teachers generally having the image of foreign teachers being unqualified and unprofessional from frequent bad experiences.
It took a long time and some proving myself to to get into a situation that takes both me and English education seriously. Even now every new context I enter I have to re-lay a lot of groundwork, it still floors me how often teachers and staff are surprised I speak the language despite them likely having worked with a dozen foreign teachers before me. In the end I just take it as my responsibility to be a good example of a teacher, not foreign, not “native”. I would imagine this difference is similar in most of Asia, but my colleagues doing ESL/EFL in European and South American countries don’t seems to have this particular issue.
Since you mention English proficiency multiple times, are you aiming this towards English teachers specifically? Or teachers in general?
Taught in Korea before this basic entry level juku stuff. Many things similar but also a lot different. Corruption was more blatant in Korea and things were a lot more wild west but that seems to be changing fast. To put the level in perspective the school I worked for hired an American principle to lead the opening of an international school (real one) like he had done in a few other countries. Getting teachers, getting certs etc. He left within two months because the corruption and family politics were so bad he considered it impossible.
Kids were on average higher level but this was give and take. Teachers were similar though this also had a large variance. Its a lot rougher for Korean kids and they are just pushed B-line for the test. Japan at least tries to have a rounded education with clubs and music. Those exist in Korea but not anywhere to the level you see in Japan. Corporal punishment was a thing when I was there. Luckily it has gone away because it is utterly useless and makes things more difficult for other teachers.
Things were also like I picture bubble Japan to be like with money being thrown around a lot more willy nilly. Lead to a lot of cool stuff but the majority of it wasn’t particularly economically viable.
I taught a year in Korea. At 2 seperate school one in Seoul proper and one in the suburbs.
My first school in Korea w
Had very little training and super high turnover. I was thrown into teaching fulltime without a Korean teacher to help me after 1 week of orientation. It was a nightmare. I had 10 kids and no breaks from 9-5. My lunch I ate with the kids since it was a kindergarten.
My second school I got transfered to was a kindergarten who just had a teacher quit midyear. The director had zero experience teaching or in education and the class was easy because there was half the amount of students but the director made it hell by micromanaging and mandating an app where we post our daily activities and the moms can comment and complain in apublic way about things they disagreed with which caused nonstop drama and misunderstanding. The kids where amazing though.
My school here in Japan is so cool so far. Most teachers have been here 3+ years and some over 10 years and still satisfied. The class load is a lot of variety and Im given plenty of time to lesson plan. The pay was better in Korea but the quality of my worklife is much less stressful and I have a Japanese boss and a forienger boss who share somewhat equal power over us and we are given quite a bit of autonomy.
I think its less about the country more about employer, my employer in Japan is accustom to mature teacher with experience and can easily trust the job will be taken care of. But the korean school had high turnover since it was just used to young new immature teachers lured in by a above average salary.