Hello,
I recently got offered a position to work in Japan as a chemistry teacher. I love chemistry, but don’t feel so confident in teaching it since it’s been a while since I graduated college. I have been in the industry since and I definitely don’t want to teach the wrong thing to student by mistake. I was considering going to language school instead to learn Japanese. This I believe will give me the chance of having a more relaxed time.
7 comments
It’s up to you. Language school can be demanding as well like a full time job with the stress of just burning through your money as fast as possible. If you actually got an offer I would try it out because I feel like teaching STEM here would be a great and different experience than the majority of English teachers here.
No one in any subject field has everything ready to teach. What you do have a solid base of knowledge to look at material and textbook and know what to pass onto students. Will you make mistakes, probably, but we all do in every field. As semesters go on you will get yourself better at it just like any job.
I’d be pretty suspicious about any institution that has offered you a position to teach chemistry without a teaching qualification…
I’m confused what kind of role did you get offered.
If its teaching Chemistry at a local Japanese school, why would they have hired you if you don’t already know Japanese?
If its at an international school, there’s no need to learn Japanese but doesn’t seem legit if you aren’t a licenced teacher in the first place.
So… sounds like a bilingual school? In which case well, all the best. You should be preparing by studying whatever curriculum the school has, asking for resources like assigned textbooks etc to start preparing materials, lessons and activities. You’ll want at least a week, ideally a month’s buffer of stuff ready so you aren’t just ‘staying afloat’ when you start.
What level are you teaching? What curriculum?
I’ll give my experience (Chemistry teacher for 8 years):
Like any teaching job, it can be a major headache or it can be a lot of fun! Key is to practice – don’t run experiments that you haven’t tried yourself first.
I started as an Eikawa teacher, then moved into an “international” school. They asked me to move to Chemistry as that’s my Masters degree. No teaching qualification at that point. I did a PGCE while teaching.
Japanese schools may still hire you if they are looking for someone for an English program. My current school is a prefectural school that’s got a dual-language program. There’s two high school chemistry teachers – myself and a Japanese teacher. We work together to plan, then I teach the kids who want to do it in English and they get the kids who want to learn in Japanese. The school will get you a special teaching license in this situation.
The textbook is set up pretty well to follow any standardized testing the students will do. Is this high school or middle school?
The first year at least, you can rely on the text as a guide while you think of and develop your own additional bits and pieces, and figure out what ideas or concepts students struggle with and how to adapt to that.