Hi,
I am interested in moving to Japan. I am from the UK and part Japanese. My Japanese is pretty good and I am constantly practicing and improving. The thing is, I only have a bachelors in English and a tefl certificate. So I am considering going back to school for a masters (probably English or Tesol).
What would my options be with a masters in English, TESOL or something like that?
From my understanding it’s mostly private schools, international schools, direct hire (ALT) and universities (seems to require a PHD though most of the time [at least for tenure]). Is this correct or is there more?
What about non-teaching options if anyone knows (Japanese or English)?
Thanks in advance ^^
4 comments
That would be the bare minimum you need for a job in the education sector that has a livable wage…. today. Going into the future it looks like you are going to need either a doctorate or 10+ published papers to even get your resume looked at if you stay in English.
Non-teaching jobs require experience. Do you have experience outside of teaching? Japan isn’t really big on career changed or giving entry level jobs to people over 25.
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The most important question is, “Do you really want to teach for the rest of your life?”. If you are studying something just to get a visa, you are going to have a VERY, **VERY** bad time. Teaching is a tough job and lots of people figure out they don’t like it. Here in Japan you will be trapped in that sector and won’t have many chances to get out because the types of jobs that would hire an illiterate immigrant don’t sponsor visas. “pretty good”, to me, means you are far away from being able to function in an office. If you were “pretty good” at Japanese, you wouldn’t be here. You would be searching for jobs in Japanese.
You’ve posted similar things here before.
Point blank: teaching English in Japan is a crappy long-term career. The market is over saturated with applicants, opportunities were already drying up before covid budget cuts, and you need an increasing amount of qualifications for decreasing pay. This is happening across the whole sector, from eikawa to ALT to university.
If you want to stay in teaching and have job security plus good benefits, try and join the British Council after you get 2-3 years of teaching experience, then ask to be sent to Tokyo. But even then it’s no guarantee you’ll 1) get a job with them and 2) end up in Tokyo.
If all you want to do is to move to Japan, then go into IT. That’s the only industry were you can make decent to good money in Japan.
Have you lived in Japan before? If not, I recommend getting an ALT job now for a year or two. You may find you don’t like it here. If you decide you want to stay, you can do an distance MA in TEFL or similar while getting work experience.
If you decide you don’t want to stay, you haven’t wasted your time getting a degree that won’t help you.
With a Masters and a few years of experience you can get part time work at a university. I know many people who stack together 20 classes (35 hours of classroom time) at 5 universities and make pretty good money this way, but it will be an 8 month grind. Winter and summer are off.
After a few years of part time you can try to get full time (non tenured) with a masters but it is very competitive. My suggestion is to try out teaching as an ALT or Eikaiwa for 1 or 2 years to see if you like it. Then if you want to stay enroll in an online Master’s program.