I had an online meeting yesterday with other ALT’s at the company I work for. I only recently started working here and it amazed me how out of touch the (non-Japanese) management of these companies are. While I make no claim to be an expert on the matters of teaching in Japan, I have a good understanding of company structure and how to deal with people and questions posed.
It seems like these people only want to hear their own voices and pay no attention to valid questions or comments. There were almost 200 people in this meeting and some great questions were asked in a chat but it seems like the presenters were just checking boxes on a list of points they were mandated to talk about, talking about new policies as if everyone knew about it, making sweeping claims about how things are with no evidence to probably keep us in line, while I’m sure everyone was sitting with their device like “Huh?” .
I’m not going to even begin to talk about corporate structure, it seems like a five year old with crayons decided there needed to be more levels of bureaucracy. It baffles me how ALT’s put up with this level of incompetence.
I personally have my own struggles to deal with and I cannot see myself working here for more than 3 months without having a total meltdown. I don’t have that strength some of my fellow ALT’s have.
I already have another job lined up suited to my field of expertise and will never recommend working at this company to anyone, period.
I’m will not name and shame the company but I’m “Happy” that I will no longer be part of that environment soon.
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Dispatch companies were never designed to be a long-term career path. IMO, it’s to check a box for international culture exposure in schools (whatever interpretation that is up for debate).
I think it will get to a point where joining a dispatch will actually cost money (whether it be financially, emotionally, or mentally). I just can’t phantom living on 2.4-2.7mil a year, every year, without advancement opportunities. Yes, people can “live” off of it, but is that really what people want to do?
But, supposedly there’s a backlog of ALTs waiting to get in, so this cycle will most likely continue to the foreseeable future.
Sounds familiar. Why do people put up with it? One year contracts and the threat of getting fired. The non Japanese management probably has zero power to change anything too, so just checking the boxes sounds spot on.
Sounds familiar. Good luck bud. Get out while you can.
Those who can, do.
Those who can’t, teach.
Those who can’t teach, work as admin for an ALT dispatch company.
The reason these meetings and management suck is because these companies don’t actually try to hire proper skilled managers to deal with their ALTs because that’d be way too expensive. So they just take the ALTs who really hate teaching and give them low tier office jobs for slightly less of a pittance. Rest assured as much as it sucks for you being an ALT those head office gaijin are having an even worse time.
Yes, they are not going to encourage questions or really even let you ask questions because they would not be able to answer them, or justify their answers. If you question them a bit too hard, you’d find your contract in the “discard” pile. 🙂
They want sheep, not thinkers. Thinkers upset the apple cart.
>It baffles me how ALT’s put up with this level of incompetence.
Because most ALTs have either no professional experience or are completely incompetent themselves. (Hence why they became an ALT in Japan in the first place.)
I felt similar to you, and I am still baffled at other ALTs who let themselves be walked all over. To be honest the ones that do, don’t seem to have a lot prior working experience or know that they deserve better. Once you know, you do something. That may be to leave the current company, or the country, but you don’t just sit back because you enjoy living in Japan, it’s just not sustainable.
>I’m will not name and shame the company
Lol there’d be no difference even if you did, because all dispatch companies are like this.
In any case, I worked for dispatch for 2 years, partly because of covid and the fact that moving during a pandemic isn’t wise, partly because I got a good school that allowed me to actually teach and gave me significantly more freedom than I was expecting. I can also read Japanese pretty well, so my school ended up just giving me the schedules and notices that they give to normal staff since there was no need to translate stuff for me.
The dispatch company literally doesn’t matter if your school is good. I barely ever contacted my company in the 2 years I ‘worked’ for them, and even when I did, it was largely for admin purposes (returning books, sending in my new visa etc.). For myself and quite a few other AETs I became friends with, our schools were effectively our employers, not dispatch.
Also, after about 1 month of teaching, you pretty much don’t have to pay attention to the meetings (I loved online meetings for this specific reason), and they almost always send an email summarizing the main points afterwards so you won’t even miss anything crucial.
The reason dispatch companies are Like That ™, is that their entry requirements are so low that they need to baby the new grads who’ve never lived alone or had a full time job before, or the people who were born without common sense glands. If you’ve had life experience, especially something like living in another country or speaking another language, almost nothing your company says will be of any use to you because you’d have picked things up from, you know, basic observation skills.
I was pissed off at my company too until I quickly realized I could just ignore them 99% of the time. That being said, I knew I wasn’t staying for more than 3 years max, so I always knew I wasn’t gonna be working for the company for longer than that.
>It seems like these people only want to hear their own voices and pay no attention to valid questions or comments. There were almost 200 people in this meeting and some great questions were asked in a chat but it seems like the presenters were just checking boxes on a list of points they were mandated to talk about, talking about new policies as if everyone knew about it, making sweeping claims about how things are with no evidence to probably keep us in line, while I’m sure everyone was sitting with their device like “Huh?”
Tbh the last three places I worked before coming to Japan were like this. I just think there’s a lot of bullshit in offices in general and you have to deal with similar.
日本へようこそ！
Welcome to Japan.
Because there are a lot of dumb ass people with dumbass questions that you can’t filter from the good questions
Z※++
№ Z」1*¥¥〒++Z
Run while you still can. The Japanese English education racket must end
It is no suprise. If the ALTs are the dancing monkeys then the management are the monkeys from 2001 who managed to find the stick
My advice… enjoy it for a year or so as a ‘gap year’.
The moment people fall off the cliff is when they stay too long and spend all their living hours criticising the established schooling systems/policies (which will suck no matter what country you’re in if you wanna focus on the negatives).
FWIW as a qualified teacher I actually quite liked the activities my eikaiwa used as they were play-based, student-centred and encouraged exploration. One of the key lessons during my (separate) TESOL was that when you’re abroad, you have to teach inline with local expectations so that what you’re doing is relevant. I’ve changed careers multiple times in life and would say this advice is pretty consistent… there’s always a flawed framework you’ve gotta fit-in with and it’s your employer (or their boss… or government policy) that you’re bound by. My employers have always been receptive to feedback, but it’s gotta be relevant. Saying ‘I disagree with your framework and think you should replace it’ (when you’re just a grunt) is never gonna work.