Discuss the state of the teaching industry in Japan with your fellow teachers! Use this thread to discuss salary trends, companies, minor questions that don’t warrant a whole post, and build a rapport with other members of the community.
Please keep discussions civilized. Mods will remove any offending posts.
10 comments
Normalize shorts as an option for uniforms; install (more) showers for faculty and staff.
Why is it common now for 1 months arrival dates?
Any other Alt’s dreading the start of school again after summer holidays? I feel like I’ve forgotten literally everything I spent four months learning and my JTE is going to be pissed at me. I’m 6 months in since I got here, so I’ve technically reached my halfway point which is pretty cool. Any tips on how not to let a job you don’t particularly like ruin your life? Trying to enjoy as much as I can before my time here is up, but also, it’s felt like forever and also no time at all. :’)
Why are there so many schools requiring skirts and implementing rooms with floor seating. Kids should not need to change for an English class or be forced to sit lady like for an hour because some idiot sucks at classroom design. Either drop skirt requirements or buy some chairs and tables.
How is the university job market looking this year? I had a real grind last year due to not that many jobs going so I was wondering if it’s any different.
If one of my JTEs doesn’t stop “correcting” my pronunciation I worry I may lose it. She already talks to me as though I am a child despite having 7 years teaching experience and her English pronunciation skills being roughly equivalent to that of a bad variety show sketch.
5 months into the school/fiscal year and we are getting the annual first wave of people hitting a wall here and wanting to bail out after realizing their dispatch/eikaiwa “i just want to get a foot in the door” contracts really are that shitty. As regular as the tides….
Where can I go to get actual advice about the current teaching/job situation in Japan? I’ve already spent five years in Korea and was considering broadening my scope, but it seems like rent is a bit higher there while I was already making good money in Korea.
Sorry mods, feel free to redirect this if needed as I know this is a sub for teachers in Japan only.
after working since April had first nomikai, it was a weird experience, Japanese teachers have very limited English, and the English JT really don’t like speaking English. was okay, used google translate to talk, and they asked do you have a girlfriend, said no but i am going on a date tomorrow, they asked is she was Japanese and seemed to be surprised that she is like Japanese people are somehow magical.
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Went to karaoke afterwards I don’t think they wanted me to as it’s a little awkward, but i wanted to try, people were acting super drunk even if they didn’t have much to drink. Loads of people left the room halfway into it. Later saw that the main English teacher was crying and was being comforted by other people. It was such a strange experience. Also, she gave me her number on Monday if I get lost while it is a 5 min walk from the station and she told me she is married at the meal, so found that really strange
School Owner here
I get junk mail all the time but the one that annoys me are the coding curriculum programs.
There’s one from Wonder code that uses the Dash robot. There’s another one that uses Minecraft.
Coding uses English to a certain degree but for children there isn’t much they can do without it becoming tedious and boring if the curriculum programs are trying to teach them computing language for a future programming careers.
For school owners, they have to fork out ¥100,000s in equipment just so the children can push a button on the screen and make the character move around. It’s dumb, I dislike these attempts of making programming part of the many toys that were released that acted like science learning toys.
You’re creating an experience for the students but it has nothing to do with English. Just another shiny thing for the children to enjoy.