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.
19 comments
Looking for jobs. Any tips on locations or jobsites would be appreciated. Id like to teach in an english speaking school.
How do I stop feeling like an asshole at work? I mean, I know I’m not effectively teaching these kids anything but policy is policy and that’s what pays the bills. I can’t change anything either due to the nature of the work. I just feel like I’m stealing the parents’ money.
When I convince myself the kids are there to have fun for an hour playing English games I feel slightly better. But then I feel like I’m lying to myself.
Is it culturally acceptable to email a school your resume if they don’t have a job listing? Or even walk in and hand it to someone? I’ve seen it a few times at a previous place I worked and they actually read the resumes, but I’m not sure if that’s widely practiced or if the schools would just think I’m weird and throw my resume out.
Seriously, don’t try
“The Genbaku Dome is more interesting than X”
When translated directly into Japanese by students or the teacher it is rather embarrassing as an American.
It is not very 面白い
Anyone else have suggestions I should stay away from?
My general opinion of education is that’s its mostly just a bunch of kid locked in a room against their will forced to learn something they did not choose. But hell I can’t think of anything better to to do with them might as well make the best of it. Working turned out insanely exploitative and they aren’t particularly primed to make the best choices so here we are.
Actually got told NOT to spend my own money on extra classroom material this week. That’s a first for me. The sad thing is they aren’t going to help me buy it they just don’t want to budge from what the corporate guideline says.
Wouldn’t mind but the school is a fucking mess and badly needs some things if they want to effectively teach kids.
My school asks students to call teachers Surname-sensei for gender neutrality. Anyway given the amount of “sensei” / “senpai” memes overseas I thought it would feel weird being called that but surprisingly I don’t even notice it half the time.
BUT once a week I guest lecture(?) at a university and I just realized that the students there have been saying “teacher~” softly when they come to ask a question. I didn’t hear it the first few times but once I did I thought it was super cute hahaha. These are Japanese students taking an English course so when they shyly say greetings and stuff I find it kinda endearing lmao.
You constantly see the posts and threads about ALTs and eikaiwas being a terrible job (well, more specifically, dispatch ALTs). But, tonight I was reminded of another reason why someone might actually like these kinds of jobs.
We got a new guy who was transferred to this particular branch of the company. I learned he has quite strong Japanese ability (N1), and so I had to immediately ask “Then WTF are you doing teaching English, potential visa issues aside?” Unless I’m completely mistaken, having strong language skills opens a TON more doors for careers outside of teaching English.
Well, he did have a decent response, but I’ll just put the part that stuck out to me the most: “It’s an easy job.”
As i put in another thread elsewhere… yeah, the pay isn’t super-high, but I DEFINITELY prefer a job that is also (generally) low-stress. While 300,000k (or more) a month sounds nice, the extra work y’all gotta put in ain’t worth it to me. Let’s not forget that karoshii is a Thing in Japan.
I was so disappointed in my students the other day, and it had nothing to do with their English skills.
I teach some high-level English classes at a junior high school, and one 3rd year class is about taking a topic, saying whether you’re for or against it, and providing reasons why. This particular topic was about “Electronics these days are complex and and difficult to repair on your own, so you have to take them to a store. Is this good or bad?”
I was hoping they’d choose “This is BAD”… but apparently they’re not old enough to remember the days of being able to take apart electronics on your own, skipping the store. They all answered “This is good thing, because the companies can make a profit”.
I of course keep my personal opinions to myself… but I couldn’t help but think, “Dammit, these 9th graders have already been indoctrinated into r/HailCorporate” Though I will say that once I gave them an example of “So you’re saying you’d rather take an iPhone to the Apple store and shell out 一万円 to get a battery replace vs. paying just 二千五百円 for a battery and replacing it yourself?”, they seemed to reconsider.
I really recommend Common Ground by Florencia Henshaw. Especially for ALTs who want to improve their communicative teaching game. Its a very good accessible book on how to apply SLA research to the classroom. I feel a lot of ALTs who want to improve themselves either A copy Japanese teachers, or B try and wing it with communicative teaching. The problem with A is a lot of communicative teaching practices in Japan are very paper thin and mostly just thrown over grammar translation methods. B while well intentioned also tends to fall into a lot of pitfalls. If you are gonna go route B this is a good read to keep you on the right path.
That recent [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/teachinginjapan/comments/xxjgqj/questions_about_teaching_english_in_japan_as_a) about Polish speakers teaching in Japan is a good example of why this sub is going downhill, at least in terms of ALT discourse.
The top comment is all about how ALT work isn’t a real job, being an ALT won’t give the OP the skills needed to be a real teacher, and OP should just stay in their own country.
Meanwhile, the OP comes out as a Japanophile who just wants to spend a few years in Japan and is from a country where English teaching jobs pay dirt.
And that’s the problem. Almost any post which mentions ALT works attract comments about how much ALT work sucks, stay home, all that gatekeeping bullshit. It’s an answer to a question no one asked in the first place and for some reason that type of bullshit shoots to the top.
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Looking to move either to Aomori or back to Tokyo from Okinawa at the end of this school year! Anyone got any recommendations for good places to look for jobs, specifically teaching Preschool/kindergarten aged students?
I’m looking for a basic introduction to English linguistics coursebook for Japanese university students for a possible English linguistics course.
Anyone have any experiences with such books? or recommendations?
I’ve never had a good job that asked me to do a demo lesson in the interview stage, and I think demo lessons are essentially pointless. You cannot get a good feel for a teacher’s skill by asking them to do a 5 minute, 10 minute lesson. It would be infinitely better, in my opinion, to ask for a sample *written* lesson plan.
I firmly believe all these 5 minute demo lessons are just to check your smile and genkiness, not your teaching. Definitely a red flag.
Are there any particular websites on which you can find (reasonably) well-paying jobs in private high schools and similar? I fancy a poke around on one.
So a direct hire private jr/sr high school job in Kyoto (Rakusei) that some people might be interested in popped up in my feed this morning. I know nothing about this school or the job, and make no recommendations. I’m just passing on information that I guess a lot of people may not have seen.
Links:
On JREC-IN:
[https://jrecin.jst.go.jp/seek/SeekJorDetail?fn=3&ln=1&id=D122101760&ln_jor=1](https://jrecin.jst.go.jp/seek/SeekJorDetail?fn=3&ln=1&id=D122101760&ln_jor=1)
The school’s website:
[https://www.rakusei.ac.jp/news?detail_no=3705](https://www.rakusei.ac.jp/news?detail_no=3705)
[https://www.rakusei.ac.jp/20002/news/news_20221024133456.pdf](https://www.rakusei.ac.jp/20002/news/news_20221024133456.pdf)
Good luck!
A heartwarming moment with a high school student who struggles with correct written expression…
He’d made some common errors in his writing, and every time I corrected him, he said sorry. I told him, no, “Don’t be sorry for your mistakes! You’re learning”.
I circulated around the classroom, helped others, came back, and he’d corrected his work.
I pointed out a noun-verb agreement he’d missed, and he beamed and said “thank you”.
This made my day!
I’ll put this here, though maybe it deserves its own discussion thread.
I’m sure we all know the stories about “Get the visa to get into Japan, then go find another job ASAP”. Well, I heard today that this idea… it’s become a lot riskier recently. At a certain eikaiwa, someone showed up for one day and then quit the very next. Of course, this is technically legal… but then the boss took this issue to Immigration. Apparently, Immigration was Not Happy about this- someone getting a job through a company and then immediately abandoning ship. This person will probably be denied renewal of their visa after their year expires, and even possibly banned from ever entering Japan again.
So just a small warning- even if a company is infamous and definitely “black”, I wouldn’t advise just showing up for one day and then leaving- While being put on the company’s shit list isn’t terrible, being put on Immigration’s Shit List is VERY Bad.