Are there options outside of ALT and eikawa for someone with a masters and teaching experience?

25 comments

1. I would try to look for international schools.

2. There are international school routes and also options once you do get here. When I was an ALT I worked with a lot of people with similar backgrounds. Many moved into university teaching once they built up contacts and what not. There are also special license direct hire but that is an intense process you normally need to be in Japan to do.

3. My two recommendations would be either teaching through a university or teaching corporate classes. ALT, eikaiwa and international school salaries would be too low for someone with your qualifications.

   Unfortunately, uni and corp. are hard positions to land from outside the country, and they often don’t post listings in easily accessible places. I definitely recommend you try the more Japanese language focused job searching apps.

   I would also recommend getting your N2 before you start applying, as the image of having your N2 vs N3 are completely different.

   If you want anymore info about any of this let me know and I’ll respond with more information in another comment.

4. International schools, private secondary schools, university (more accomplishable if you have some publications).

   Look at websites like ohaiyo sensei, JALT jobs, JRECIN. I’m not sure exactly the best place to find jobs for international schools or private secondary schools is though.

5. The reason you’re only finding ALT and Eikaiwa positions is because those industries hire en masse, while the sort of positions you seem interested in are both much rarer and tend to be hired on an individual job by job basis.
   You’ll need to either regularly go through an aggregator site to see the opportunities as they appear, painstakingly check the sites of possible employers yourself, or work with a Japan-based recruiter as a middleman.

6. Camps are a short term option.

7. Are you qualified to teach any other subject other than ESL? If not international school probably isn’t a option for you.

   Edit: International school are generally schools for children of expats, so the students should be fluent in the language the school uses. The medium of instruction will be in the language of the affiliated country. So it’s unlikely they’ll have many English ESL class.

   >Maybe direct hire or an actual English teaching position at a public school instead of an ALT

   This is a thing, however with N2-3 level Japanese you don’t really have a chance at public school. Private schools on the other hand will hire you for solo teaching with your experience and qualification. They will need to apply a temporary (or special) teaching license on your behalf but it shouldn’t be a problem.

   >A site said that if you’ve had years of experience with your own classroom, you may find being an ALT frustrating.

   ESID, some ALTs are made to T1, but usually ALTs are T2 so you generally have no say in the lesson plan, curriculum, etc. You also usually have zero responsibility, and sometimes you won’t get treated as a teacher but as some weird in between.

8. You can teach part time at universities or full time at an international school. Depends how involved you want to be and how many different places you want to commute to.

   The websites to check for jobs are jrec and Jalt job board. Good luck!

   Edit: I should add that if you are currently not living in Japan the visa situation can be hard to navigate. You could go through an agency like Westgate or perhaps British Council in order to get a visa, work for a year and then find jobs on your own through networking/ applying.

9. I’m going to be the voice of reason here for you: Japan isn’t a really good option these days for qualified teachers.

   Unfortunately, it’s very very easy for someone with no qualifications who just wants a year abroad to find a job; but it’s very very difficult for someone with a solid teaching background, license, and qualifications to find a job.

   ALT positions in schools and positions at language schools pay shite and treat teachers like shite because there is no expectation the teacher have any understanding of SLA, methodology, curriculum design, etc. The job is closer to tutoring than teaching, and these are not suitable for qualified and experienced teachers.

   University teaching is difficult to get into. Since there already are a good number of qualified and experienced teachers living in Japan, unis can be picky about who they hire. Generally, they hire people from inside the country who already know the system and can speak Japanese. They also expect publications, and some jobs also require research.

   International schools are an option, but it’s likewise hard to find open positions at good schools. Others here can explain further, but basically a lot of these schools are international in name only.

   Teaching as a classroom teacher in the school system requires a Japanese teaching license, which you aren’t likely to be able to get. There is a special license given to foreign teachers, but from my understanding, you need experience teaching in-country before they will grant you one. Usually ALTs who have completed their MA get this license after having taught for several years in Japanese schools. I’ve never heard of a public or private school that hires from abroad.

   All that said, once in a blue moon you’ll find jobs that are exceptions to these generalizations. I would advise keeping my eye out for such, but … it may take quite a while.

   You also need to be very wary of schools that make all kinds of high-sounding promises and then do a bait-and-switch once you are here. There is a lot of that in this industry.

   I don’t know what your reasons are for wanting to come teach in Japan, but honestly? I’ll tell you what I told someone else yesterday: without a good solid reason to come here, such as Japanese family members, you should probably not try. The time Japan was a good place to teach has passed.

10. University, private school, business school, corporate direct hire as a cooperate English teacher / correspondent, licensed international schools to name a few.

11. Universities, private schools

12. If you can teach English literature or another subject, then international schools. Otherwise I suppose university. There’s also direct-hire for local schools but you’ll probably need N2 minimum, if not N1.

13. With your qualifications, this is the kind of job you should be looking for:

    https://www.jacet.org/wp-content/uploads/Tokyo_International_University_E_230307.pdf

    Also, try this website as well: https://jrecin.jst.go.jp/seek/SeekTop?ln=1

14. As someone who knows people working at and other people sending their kids to “bad” intl schools/bilingual schools (tier 2/3), they are not all bad and can be stepping stones onto the country and into other schools. Just do research about who is leading the school/their qualifications as well as the school’s reputation. (There are certainly places that are awful to work at also.) I find a lot of the discourse around here to be not only inaccurate but snobby to be honest. From my social circle, a lot of normal English speaking people who married normal Japanese people can’t afford to send their kids to big name intl schools and are finding that there are some other schools that are actually OK.

    Keep this in mind and take a look at Schrole and Search Associates. Top tier schools post on those sites too.

15. [TES](http://TES.com) is good for international schools. It’s a British website, so will only show British international schools in japan. Make sure you choose japan as the country in the search bar. These schools have to follow British holidays and curriculum or the IB, which is a dream to teach if you haven’t done it before

16. If you don’t have experience teaching in a Japanese university, unless it’s through a swap program with your grad school and a sister Japanese school, the chances of getting a direct hire uni job are zero. However, and mind you, this takes a bit of time, but you can sort yourself by getting dispatch uni jobs with no experience at first. The schools may be low-ranked, and the company will take a third (or more) of your pay, but it’s a foot in the door. After a year or so, you can start applying to direct-hire jobs. If you have some connections, or interview well, you can start replacing them with dh. From there, you can start writing and applying to full-time jobs, or just try to sort a good schedule of part-time jobs. I did this, and it took a few years, and while my original plan had been to get a full-time uni position, now I’ve sorted an amazing schedule at 3 good universities and would never trade it for full-time, especially since I can ride my current jobs into the sunset—-no term limits.

    Takes some time though, and willingness to run around for a few years. Can be done.

17. I have a Masters in Applied Linguistics and a quite a bit of experience teaching college level ESL in the US. I was able to score a really amazing EFL uni job (full time) here in Japan, and no I didn’t know anyone, no I didn’t have publications… I barely even speak Japanese 😆 I do have a decent amount of both teaching and student affairs experience which possibly helped. I found the listing on JALT, so definitely check the listings there regularly! It sounds like my experience is maybe not typical, but don’t let that stop you from trying!

18. The JREC-IN portal used to have a lot of positions on it for those with other qualifications. But over the years as universities were switching out their teachers to ‘bolt on eikaiwas’ some companies started to invade the listings. I don’t keep up so much with my friends who work in Unis these days (pandemic) so I’m not sure how grim that world is these days. But that portal might be worth a look.

    Good luck. Stay away from the easy hanging fruit jobs.

19. There’s a person who posts here about direct hiring for public schools in Saitama…

    I think you’re the type of person they would hire. Sorry I forgot the name the person posts when the position is open for application.

    It seems like a good deal tbh.

20. Yes you do.

21. Publish some papers and teach university?

22. You meet the basic requirements that actual teachers need but everything being ESL puts you in an overflowing talent pool.

    I work for a large national university. Requirements for the English department are, frankly, insane. Now that all the English Entertainers are paying for online MA degrees the schools started demanding doctorates.

    For k – 12 teaching the options are VERY limited. There are only about 15 to 20 reputable international schools and they tend to be very small (under 100 students). Competition is serious and EFL experience is useless because the kids are usually native English speakers with rich parents from abroad. You are going to see a bunch of classroom assistants saying I am wrong but they can’t see past their own BS. Lots of people here live in a fantasy and can’t understand why they don’t get the same treatment as experienced, qualified teachers.

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    With your experience level do not take any position that pays less than 6 million yen. If you can’t find anything, it wasn’t meant to be.

23. I see a lot of people mentioned international schools, eikaiwa, and becoming an ALT, and as someone in a… similar (but not similar) position, I thought I’d share my experience thus far.

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    For the sake of anonymity, I won’t mention what prefecture I am currently in, aside from being on the eastern coast of Japan that is not a big city.

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    I worked as an ES ALT for a few years, and asked my BoE about if there’s any position that’s *not* an ALT available. They – as well as the connections I’ve made through other principals, direct BoE staff, etc. – have graciously been assisting me with going through the process to teach at the junior high school level as a regular teacher. I’ll still need to go and obtain a proper teaching license down the line, but it was possible (albeit with the assistance of a lot of higher powers).

    I have another expat acquaintance in Japan whom has worked at the high school level, changed to work in a public junior high school, and then got hired by a private high school.

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    I would consider looking for application forms that may likely be found on the prefectural Board of Education website; I don’t speak for all prefectures, but Japan as a whole is currently lacking in teachers so you may have luck in finding a short-term position that serves as the stepping stool into private schools or otherwise.

    I would consider looking for application forms that may likely be found on the prefectural Board of Education website (IE Ibaraki Board of Education, Hyogo Board of Education). Search must be done in Japanese. I don’t speak for all prefectures, but Japan as a whole is currently lacking in teachers so you may have luck in finding a short-term position that serves as the stepping stool into private schools or otherwise.

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    Something to keep in mind are club activities. I’ve never step foot into a Japanese high school but in junior high school, we are required to coach some sort of club activity – I imagine high school may be the same, so be prepared for that.

    In a public Japanese elementary school, the odds of being hired as strictly an English teacher seem to be quite low, which consequently means you would have to teach other subjects (math, science, Japanese, social studies, etc) in Japanese.

24. Cant you work at a university with a masters?

25. You’re a licensed math teacher? You should be applying to international schools – math is always an in demand subject.

    You’ve missed the hiring cycle for the next school year, but it always pays to keep an eye on the school websites – sometimes there are last minute postings.