So I:ve been a NOVA slave for almost 2 years. Honestly, Ive have no real issues, other than no weekends and no holidays. But Im looking to change
My Buddy has been telling me to join Interact or JET, but I dont know. I dont feel like I could even do those kinds of jobs. I heard you need to actually be a teacher for it. NOVA just hires any loser like me off the street to look at their book.
Would JET and the like be good for me or should I just stay in the Eikaiwa dumps?
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I tried looking up about it on the sub, but some of the posts are old and outdated like “NOVA doesnt give you pension”
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I would ask you, why are you considering working as a teacher, when you don’t want to be a teacher?
If the only reason you’re teaching is to be in Japan, maybe consider whether you’re wasting your time in jobs you dislike and don’t want.
How will these jobs help you get a job once you leave? Or, if you don’t plan to leave, ask yourself whether you want to be doing a job you don’t want to do for the rest of your life.
If you want out of Nova, make some better decisions.
If you don’t think you’re an actual teacher, consider how you can go about improving your sense of your own value. It’ll be good for your imposter syndrome and good for your students. You don’t even need to take a course to do this. Scrivener’s Learning Teaching is a set text in a lot of courses and if you can absorb and apply what’s in that you’ll probably be significantly better than most of your colleagues. You can’t exactly put “I read a book” on your CV though, so if you can take some sort of course, that will help.
By the way, ALT work doesn’t assume much more teaching ability than chain eikaiwa, but it’s another context and will increase your skill set. Might be worth a change in general. If you stay too long at x chain eikaiwa it looks pretty bad on your CV. I’ve seen recruiters just straight up bin applications from people who have been at an eikaiwa for 5+ years and have made zero progress in that period. It just makes you look lazy.
JET is a government program and has a very lengthy and specific application process. Part of that being required to interview and fly out of your home country prior to orientation. Since you are already in Japan that pretty much rules it out.
Dispatch companies will hire you, but their pay is much worse.
Bro. I just changed from nova to alt.
And honestly? It’s easier than Nova. I worked pretty hard at nova, I had to lead classes. But as an alt that is not the case.
I am an assistant, not the lead teacher.
I get paid more than Nova, novas pay is god awful. And I’m treated a lot nicer by my fellow staff members.
You are selling yourself short if you’re thinking you’re not a real teacher.
Doing any of these jobs, any loser can do it. ALT or Eikaiwa
It’s just how much you put into it, and how you improve and learn. You can be a shitty alt and do the minimum effort and skate by, but you won’t build a good relationship with students and teachers, and you won’t learn anything about how to teach.
However I will say, I speak Japanese and I got a lot of experience working with kids through nova. So… Unless you enjoy working with kids, I wouldn’t recommend ALT work.
However so far it’s been really easy and I’m basically a tape recorder. Is it boring? No, not yet. And besides, nova was just as repetitive. So having a change of pace has been amazing.
I think you need to ultimately decide yourself. I never wanted to work in an eikaiwa, it was my only choice.
Heck, you could even do part time ALT work, and still work at eikaiwa part time if that suits you.
If you want to stay with English teaching, I’d do what I’m doing. Go for a direct hire ALT position directly from eikaiwa, then work on getting some sort of certificate so you can move out of ALT work and on to be a head teacher. This could be at a public school, private school, or university. The worst thing you could do is not add new skills and move up, and staying at an eikaiwa won’t add new skills at this point and offers virtually no upward mobility.
How about changing by not thinking of yourself and your colleagues as losers?
You should apply for JET – it’s great. Sometimes you are just an assistant, sometimes you have a lot of classes each day, sometimes you have a few classes each day (3 max for me), sometimes you might have to lead the class.
In my opinion JET in a rural area not too far from a city is the way to go!
So here’s the deal: NOVA (and GABA) are HORRENDOUS, especially in terms of pay. That said, you do get a wide variety of students.
Now, being an ALT has a lot of perks: you get some down time, usually have weekends and holidays free, and it is overall easier. HOWEVER, a lot has changed from when I was an ALT, mostly due to the pandemic. The old joke used to “just have a pulse and speak English, plus Bachelor’s Degree for immigration”; now any dispatch company (this is important to note) has a HUGE backlog of applicants, so the next several years are unfortunately going to see a drastic reduction in amount of people hired as ALTs. And this isn’t even taking into account the dwindling birthrate or other factors affecting children’s education.
JET is rather different. The job is arguably the same- you’re teaching at elementary, junior high or senior high school, so you’d better like kids, and your placement is going to be randomly in Japan- but it’s actually government-sponsored. So you get much higher pay AND a plane ticket over, though I understand that anything beyond that completely depends on what kind of situation you get placed into. However, you cannot apply to JET from within Japan. And the competition for it has always been cutthroat- it’s the best job of its kind, so there’s tons of applicants, and it takes some people multiple attempts to be hired.
I would first advise you to find a way out of NOVA- ECC or even Aeon are similar jobs but better (if just barely- still no weekends or holidays, but better pay). If you like kids, then maybe being an ALT is possible.
Take the 1 month to get a CELTA, go freelance, and start building up a client base with all the spare time being an ALT gives you.
No such company as Interact. I see people asking about Interact on the thread a lot – hoping it’s a typo. Interac. Interac.
JET – you needed to do that from outside Japan. No, you don’t need to have been a teacher prior. Better you weren’t. It is ALT work, not Eikaiwa work.
Interac – ALT work. no, you don’t need to have been a teacher before. Often their inside-Japan posts says “taught in Japan at least 2 years” but as an Eikaiwa worker, they count that as teaching.
If you like Eikaiwa work, and don’t want to be in a standard elementary or junior/senior high school, look at AEON or ECC. If you want ALT work, plenty to register with: Sagan Speaks is one. Or just go to Gaijinpot Jobs and scroll through.
> Would JET and the like be good for me or should I just stay in the Eikaiwa dumps?
IMO…
– Nova > Interac… it pays better, you’re not an assistant driving around between random schools and your gaijin network will be bigger.
– JET pays the best and has the best conditions. The only problem I see is that towards the end people who wanna stay long-term get all emotional because after being the big fish, their future within the industry will end (unless they wanna take a significant pay/conditions cut to go to Interac).
– At some time you’ll probably want/have to leave the industry. There’s very little wage growth (even when people do a TESOL or get qualified as a teacher). I don’t think the industry necessarily exploits people, it just offers people a ‘gap year’. IMO so long as you treat it this way and plan for a post-ALT/eikaiwa career you’re all sweet.
– What bothers people who are happy to stay for 20+ years is that they wanna get awesome healthcare plans and retirement contributions as they view what is really a ‘gap year’ job as being a job for life. If it provides some reassurance… I changed careers after 5 years in eikaiwa. Over the ~15 year period since I’ve been able to put together far better retirement savings than I ever coulda dreamed of in eikaiwa. I’m not here to shit on the industry but IMO it’s important to plan your next step rather than expecting JET/Nova/Interac to care.
Another one beginning to notice the trap. Oddly, right at the time most people notice it and leave Japan.
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JET is a government program that has a set limit of 5 years max. You also have to A: be outside Japan and B: Have a quality Japan can use to barter. The program is a 1:1 visa swap. Every Jet coming in has a Japanese person going to their nation for research or a business opportunity. To get these visas Japan demands a “quality” candidate. What does that mean? Generally its means a candidate from a famous university willing to hire a Japanese citizen for a research position or a business wants to do something in the area you came from. **No visa for a Japanese person, no visa for the JET.**
Most other ALT jobs are a temp worker scam where the dispatch company keeps 35% to 65% of your salary.
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>NOVA just hires any loser like me off the street to look at their book.
You just described every company involved in Education here. If your direct employer isn’t either a public school, Embassy endorsed international school or an internationally recognized university, you are being scammed. The trap is real and nobody manages to escape it without either a spouse visa or a Harvard degree.
NOVA pays shit compared to any other eikaiwa company. I really wish more people that were looking to work in Japan would do even a small modicum of research online to see that fact and then pick a different option.
Can’t do JET from Japan. The thought of not having weekends or evenings free is just impossible for me. Go for an ALT gig. If you don’t like it, you can always go back to NOVA.