Job Discussion Forums

[fat_chris]

[Pitarou]

[fat_chris]

[FloridaTEFL]

Is there a limit on the hours and/or pay you can acquire each month at Gaba?

[HLJHLJ]

Only if you have a visa restriction (e.g. a dependent or student visa). Also, in most studios late morning through to early afternoon are pretty quiet. If you opt to take kids classes you can sometimes get them in the afternoon. Otherwise, things don't pick up until the evening when people get out of work. So although there isn't a limit, in practice you are unlikely to be able to work for 12 hours a day on a weekday.

[ksw09]

I just recently received an offer to work at Gaba starting this summer and am curious about what are the max amount of lessons per week I can expect to be able to teach given I am willing to work peak hours every day and am good enough at what I do to not drive away clients. For my first year in Japan I want to work as much as possible and have no problem working whatever schedule gets the most lessons. I realize there are multiple factors that come into play and therefore no exact figure can be predicted, but am curious of the opinions of anyone who has worked there before.

[HLJHLJ]

It varies massively depending on which center you end up in. Pretty much everywhere you could work 12 hours (less whatever breaks you choose) on Saturday and Sunday. In the week the peak evening period is about 6-10 or 5-9 depending on the center. If it has morning sessions then you could do split shifts and do 7-10 in the morning, some open earlier. (If it doesn't, then once you've proved you are reliable you can ask to work at more than one studio and do mornings somewhere else). If it's a center with a lot of kids you can get classes from about 3.30-5.30 as well. Some centers that cater mostly to housewives can be busier in the day, with less work in the evenings.

So if you did 2x10hrs at the weekend, and 5x4hrs in the week, that would give you over 50 lessons a week, plus any extra hours you can get depending on what's available.

[72308]

I currently work for Gaba, and have done for about 10 months. I've known two people on visa sponsorship, and they worked six or seven days a week in an attempt to meet the minimum amount of pay required for visa sponsorship. I worked briefly for AEON, and I prefer Gaba, but that might be because I am a member of the Gaba Union, and feel a bit more protected from some of their more shady practices because of this.

[Voyager2]

72308 what are the minimum amount of hours so as to satisfy visa issue / GABA sponsorship please? Thanks and rgds

[FloridaTEFL]

[HLJHLJ]

160 lessons a month, which is about 25 teaching hours a week.

https://teaching-in-japan.gaba.co.jp/apply/in-japan/requirements/


The starting rate is still 1500y/40 minutes, but if you work full time you can belt up to about 1800y for peak lessons pretty quickly. There are higher levels than that but they are much harder to reach. The maximum is 2,200y/40 mins, but only a handful of people ever get that.

[72308]

240,000¥ per month

[ksw09]

[72308]

Yup, they made it. It's just that's it's difficult when you start out because students don't know you so it takes a while to build up a client base. They worked at a major LS and they were working peak hours, yes. Almost all new teachers work split shifts at first to build up their client base. It's totally doable, it's just three months of hard slog, I think.

[HLJHLJ]

FWIW I could get 96 lessons a month (when I could be bothered putting the hours in) and I was only there at weekends. I think 160 a month is perfectly doable once you are established. I was at one of the smaller LS.