Job Discussion Forums

[Nando-X]

Back when I was hunting for information about Aeon I wasn't able to find a whole lot so I thought I'd post some of my thoughts about my working there in hopes that they might be helpful to other people who are interested in working for this company. If you have any questions or comments about my experience please let me know and I'll do my best to answer.

I've only been working for Aeon for about 6 months. Not a long time but I'm half way through my contract and I have opted not to renew. I'm not going to rant or rave about why I'm not renewing but I will get to that eventually.

The interview process has been covered a bit in other threads but I will put my two cents in. I interviewed in January 2004 and was hired in early March. The initial interview was a group interview and we had to prepare a short mini lesson suitable to pretty much any level of English learner. I chose a very basic low level lesson for mine. During that group interview we were also shown a video and had a discussion on what Aeon was all about. They were very up front with a lot of their information. After the end of the group interview we were given an envelope letting us know if we were to come back for another interview or not.

Needless to say I had a second interview and for this interview I had to give an on the spot mini lesson using the text book (I even taught this lesson not too long ago). Also, this interview was not a group style interview but a one to one interview. This inteview took place a week after the group interview. It was much more involved because it was closer to a regular job interview.

I was hired at the beginning of March and was to start my job in the summer. The recruiting office were always very helpful and informative and gave us the name of a travel agency to book our flights through that didn't require money up front so if we needed to reschedule our flight two weeks before this would be possible without any financial stress.

We were met at the airport for training and taken to a training facility in Omiya. Thankfully, the second day was a Sunday so we were able to relax and rest a bit. The training week that followed was one of the strangest experiences of my life. Training was very strenuous and draining. Many people who teach at Aeon say it is the worst time you'll spend there so it's good that you get it out straight away. The first day we were already sitting in the training rooms for a full day's worth of training.

The trainers are very genki (high energy). Almost unaturally so. You will wonder what kind of happy drug these people are on. But remember to leave your sarcasm at the door. They watch you like a hawk and call you on any behavior they find inappropriate while still smilng in a friendly way. I had no problems with them personally but some other teachers did and were verbally abused and even bullied in a way that was almost cultish. The picture that is painted by the trainers is not accurate to what actually goes on in the school. Aeon likes to have a very professional image and tries to hammer this in during your first week there. We are even told not to listen to what the other teachers who are already at our schools tell us about the training methods. Luckily I managed to forget all but the bear essentials.

You could almost liken training to bootcamp but one good thing about it is that it weeds out a lot of the bad apples in the process. 2 people were let go at the end of the training session, one because of his rotten attitude (he was really arrogant and sarcastic and frankly, I'm glad they got rid of him). The second guy was nice but was a bit of a nervous wreck and was going out all night and then coming into the training centre at 4 AM or so (we slept there during our training period). It started showing in his teaching demos and they eventually let him go. I was sorry to see him go but he really wasn't a very good fit from the looks of it.

Anyway, with the training finally overwith we were able to start our jobs, meet our schools and move into our apartments and such. Aeon does help pay for your apartment. They pay for half of mine but from my understanding they'll pay up to 40,000 I think and then you foot the rest. My apartment is an 8 tatami mat room (without tatami mats and roughly 10 by 15 feet). Not huge, but it works for me. I luckily have furniture inherited by other teachers, a bed (which is a rare commodity), a washing machine, fridge, microwave and TV. Some of the other teachers at my school didn't have any furniture at all in their apartments so I was lucky. Transportation to the school from your home is paid for by the school as well. If you are frugal you can save yourself quite a bit of money as you are paid 255,000 per month.

I work at a very busy school in Tokyo. I teach about 27/28 classes per week. I work a Tuesday to Saturday schedule (the most common) and teach 7 classes on Saturday. Saturdays are totally brutal (usually a 9 hour day) and a lot of teachers don't teach this many depending on how busy their school is. Otherwise my schedule is about anywhere from 4-6 classes per day.

There is one major beef I have with Aeon and it's the imbalance between teachers working a Mon-Fri schedule versus Tues-Sat. First off, M-F teachers don't work Saturdays so they don't have a 7 class day from hell. But the big thing that bothers me most is that many national holidays fall on a Monday so if you already have Monday off as a weekend day you lose out completely. For 2005 we loose out on 5 holidays. That's a whole work week. There is no compensation for this and we are paid the same as the M-F teacher. Roughly 25% of the teachers have this schedule. If you can get it, enjoy it, appreciate it and count yourself lucky. If not, you can grumble with the rest of us.

Aeon has two types of classes - one grammar conversation based, the other expression conversation based. The expression based classes are cheaper and can have up to 8 or 9 students. The other type can have a max of 5. They used to squeeze extra students but thanks to a recent upgrade to the attendance system this is not possible anymore! Sometimes I teach classes with just one student. Sometimes no students show up and we have a free period to look busy or whatever.

The text books are decent for the most part. To be honest I have nothing to compare them to so I can't really say. However there is one really horrible low level text book that they are thankfully phasing out so by May the current version of Get Set should be phased out with a new and hopefully better version. I swear this book actually makes students dumber the longer they spend with it. Lesson planning isn't too difficult with these books. The only problem is that the writers of the texts and the training department seem to have different ideas on how to teach classes. Luckily the training department has a nice intranet set up where you can download lesson plan help for each text book. This really simplifies planning your lessons.

Aeon teachers usually work 3 8 hour days and 2 9 hour days. When you aren't teaching you are expected to prepare your lessons, give interviews and even do a little bit of cleaning (I take out the garbage and am responsible for vacuuming my room and keeping it neat - not a big deal). You are not supposed to read or study Japanese or anything not related to work and personally I have no complaints with this. Some schools (like ours) share lesson plans amongst teachers. This is good because it takes a lot of burden off your shoulders from having to prepare every single lesson you teach. This also sucks though because if you have a teacher who doesn't prepare lessons very well you are sometimes stuck with a crappy lesson plan unless you take the time to prepare your own which you are totally welcome to do. If you work in a school that doesn't do this or have the misfortune of working for a new school - be prepared to spend a lot of time in preparation.

One thing I really like about Aeon is that you only teach at one school and do not split your time between two or three. You are given a regular usually unchanging schedule and teach the same students sometimes for a good 4 months as you go through a text book cycle. I think this is good because you can build a relationship with the students, get their trust and also a good grip on their English. As I am still quite new to English conversation instruction it takes me a while to figure out students weak points. I really like getting to know my students and being able to talk with them.

That brings me to lobby talk. You are expected to chat with the students during the 10 minutes between classes. Sometimes if you are preparing for your next class this isn't always possible. I can be a bit shy sometimes so I don't always like lobby talking with students I don't know. But luckily my school is laid back so we aren't pressured into doing this. Some schools are different though so it's all luck of the draw. It's not a big deal though and the students usually like to talk with you to try out their English and to get to know you better, especially if you aren't their teacher.

At some points in the year Aeon has campaigns for selling really high priced self study materials. I don't like selling much to begin with and this is something I really don't like doing but I put on my happy face and do it anyway. Depending on how busy your school is you might have a lot of pressure from your manager/head teacher to sell sell sell. Luckily my school is quite busy so the pressure wasn't that strong. We didn't make even half of our target but personally I'm not too worried about that. We are also expected to give prospective students interviews and always look our professional best when doing so to give the prospectives a good impression of the school. This leads me to another point about Aeon. You are expected to dress in Business clothing.

For Men that means suits and a tie. For women it usually means a business suit of some kind but the women teachers at my school rarely wear a jacket and tend to dress more casually than the guys. In the summer wearing a suit is absolute hell but luckily you are not expected to wear your jacket in the class room. You are expected to wear it in the lobby but even that is flexible depending on the school. For interviews though you are expected to wear it.

From a lot of what I've read here I think Aeon is one of the better Eikaiwas to teach for. But be warned. This is work. I worked for 8 years in a bank prior to coming here so I was no stranger to a days work. Many people that come here are fresh out of college and have maybe never worked a full time job before. Don't expect it to be fun and games. You will get bored. The lessons can be very dull after you've tought 2 rounds of them. Also, this is a Japanese company with very conservative ways of doing things that makes a starchy bank back in North America look like a free-love commune. You can make your classes more interesting interesting by using your own ideas but if you make them too weird or if the students aren't learning from them they will complain. They pay a lot of money for these lessons and deserve some quality instruction.

On the subject of vacations Aeon gives national holidays (if they don't fall on your weekend day) as well as a week off during Obon (August), New Years and Golden week (April/May). You are also given 5 "vacation" days though they are used up if you call in sick. Also, you are expected to take good enough care of yourself not to get sick which just baffles the mind but there you are. I haven't called in sick yet but I did use one vacation day so far. If you are lucky and have a kind M-F teacher who'll switch the odd Saturday for a Monday (which is like a day off in itself) you can have yourself a nice 3 day weekend too.

Aeon is not flexible with changing your schedule from a T-S to a M-F. We are told it can't be done so don't ask. Many things work like that at Aeon. Once I needed to leave 5 minutes early to get home in time for a delivery that was going to come at 9PM. My class finished at 8:50 and I asked if I could leave 5 minutes before 9 after my class was already finished. I was told flat out no and that I couldn't leave until 9. I accepted that, didn't insist and moved on. Luckly I managed to catch the delivery guy as he was on his way (after running all the way from the bus stop). However, I didn't like this lack of flexibility and thought it was a bit harsh and unecessary.

Some other teachers I trained with initially who were sent to other schools haven't had such a great experience. Some work in country schools where they push selling a lot onto the teachers in order to make expenses and if possible a profit. A school can be really good or bad depending on the relationship between the Japanese staff and the "foreign" (us) staff. Luckily my school is pretty good and my head teacher is very competent and friendly. Other teachers aren't so lucky. Some of them have very petty and downright mean head teachers and managers so it's all luck of the draw so to speak.

My only real big beef with Aeon is the Monday to Friday thing. If they could iron that out I think they'd be the best Eikaiwa to work for. Mind you, this is only from my own experience and reading about the "horrors" people have gone through at other companies. I've been really lucky in my time here. I work at a great school with wonderful staff and students. I'd like to stay longer if I could but there are other things I want to do with my life.

I came here to Japan to clear my head and figure out what I wanted to do with my career. It was a very difficult decision to not renew with Aeon. They had offered me a full year's renewal so they did like me as a teacher and I appreciate that. I honestly felt bad telling my manager/head teacher I wasn't going to renew but my head teacher is cool enough that I could talk about it with her openly without worrying about there being some kind of petty retribution because of my decision. If I was in my 20's I would renew in a heartbeat because it has been one of the best jobs I've ever had but I'm in my mid 30's and not getting any younger and have to push myself in a direction with more of a longterm future in mind.

I hope this very long winded essay has been informative in some way. If you have any questions about Aeon I will do my best to answer them. My experience at Aeon has been a good one for the most part and I would highly recommend them if you are interested in an Eikaiwa job. The fact that you don't hear too much about them on this site is a good sign. They aren't perfect though and depending on the staff you work with and the school you're put in what type of experience you have is anybody's guess. But that can be said of pretty much any school out there.

[yeka]

Hey, great post. I work for AEON*Amity, and I trained with some AEON teachers, and your training was a lot more intense than ours. However, there are lots of similarities and a lot of differences. I've only been here 5 months so I'm not at the renewal stage yet, but I am also willing to help answer questions about AEON*Amity if anyone wants to know.

[semitribe]

From just a casual reader of the forum, but as someone who is also always searching for info on Aeon, THANK YOU!! This is the most useful description I've heard yet.

[starshine24]

nando x-
thank you very much. v.v. informative, and not a rant like some posts tend to be!

[worlddiva]

Nando-X,

I can't say how much I appreciated your post and information. I too am in my thirties looking for a new experience in my life as I'm not too sure what to do with my career.I will be leaving in 3 weeks to go work for AEON. Your post helped to answer some questions I had which only someone in your position could answer.

I was quite concerned about the training...I figured it would be like boot camp! The interview process was something out of "the apprentice"! LOL

I will be living in a smaller city and am a bit worried about the selling thing you mentioned. Do you have quotas??

re:training

How many people were with you during training?
What were your accomodations like during this time?
How bad was the jet lag? (ps: I'm never been on a plane for more than 4 hours.)

Most important
How much money did you bring with you and how much did you actually need to be comfortable before you got paid?
I don't know if I'm going to have enough $...I'll be bringing 1200.00$CAD converted into yen and trav.chq. + the 300.00$CAD they will be returning to me. Do you think this will suffice?

Anyways, I'm glad to hear that your experience was good overall. Frankly, it can't possibly be worse than any call center job I've had in the last few years. Although some people may choose to bash 'eikaiwas', if you take a good look at most of the other jobs available in north america, it could be worse.

I am looking forward to my experience there and am hoping for the positive. Wost case scenario, I'm gonna turnaround and come back home., and that'll be that!

that's all for now.
WD

[Sody]

Awesome post Nando-X, thanks very much for sharing.

Sody

[Nando-X]

World Diva good for you for taking off and doing what I did too! I think you'll like it here. As for training, I trained with about 15 or so other people. It could have been more. I shared a room with one other person. Some of us had simple rooms with beds, some of us had the traditional tatami mat rooms and shared with more than one person.

Training is a bit harsh but it's not so bad. Just remember to take everything with a grain of salt and if you like to make sarcastic remarks outloud do your best to say them under your breath out of trainer's earshot. Training is a whole week and can be pretty awful BUT I've done much worse things, like working in a call centre. I did that for the bank I worked at for a good 5 years. So you probably have experience dealing with all sorts of personalities on the phone.

The trainers aren't bad people I'm sure, they just have to stick to a strict code set by the company. Don't worry too much about it. If you don't rock the boat you won't have a problem but training is intense. It's the worst part of working at Aeon. Or at least it was for me. At the same time you can meet some great people too. These are the other teachers who will be training with you. Sometimes there will be the odd obnoxious jerk but for the most part everyone is decent.

I found there was no real time to deal with the jet lag because the next day after we're there they get us in training right away. It's better that way actually and the day after that you can relax and stuff. I didn't really notice it. Once in a while you have trouble sleeping but it all depends on you.

As for selling stuff. It's not the main focus of your job and it will only happen seriously for about 2 one week periods out of a year (or possibly 3 depending on when you start). We had quotas to fill but like I had mentioned in my essay thing we weren't pressured to do it. I believe they wanted us to sell to 10 or so students. Not a huge number if I remember it correctly but I'm positive I didn't sell that many.

One technique I suggest to you is if a student shows any interest in the study materials after you have councelling with them (it happens usually during councelling week) take them up to the front desk and tell the japanese staff they are interested and let them take it from there. The school may want you to do the selling but it's the J-staff who actually get any kind of bonus from it so it's in their best interest to sell more than it is in yours. Your school may not want you doing that though so be careful. Some of the students genuinely want to buy the materials though and despite the high prices they are helpful to the student. It's just hard to try to sell something to a university student for example who you know has no money to buy it. That was the main problem at my school. Many students were uni-students so they had little money to afford this stuff.

As far as money is concerned, I brought way too much with me. I brought 250,000 Yen or so and had a good 100,000 left over. You should have enough. I think but be careful, you can exhaust your money supply really quickly if you like to go out drinking or eating in cafes and such. I ate at Matsuya quite a bit. It's a very cheap restaurant that serves Japanese food. Ask the other teachers where they like to eat and what choices there are or just make your own lunches. I'm too lazy to do that but the cost of eating at Matsuya is sometimes the same as making your own lunch. Groceries are very expensive here, especially in comparison to Canada. I shop at Seiyu which is like an equivilant of Walmart or something and they have decent prices. Ask your students where they shop for food. It all depends on your tastes. If you try to eat Western food all the time it will cost you a lot.

[Unity]

Thanks for the information. I am applying to AEON next month and was going to post a thread with questions, but you answered many of them already. I might have missed it in your post, but where do you work? I really want to go to Hiroshima, but do they consider placement requests?

Also for yeka, how is AEON/Amity? I think I'd rather work with college or high school students, but is teaching the kids difficult? Thanks again.

[yeka]

Unity -
I also thought I'd rather work with college or high school students before I took this job. I do teach quite a few high school and junior high students in addition to the children. In fact, my oldest student is in her 30s. Teaching the children isn't so bad, sometimes it is easier because the lessons you teach them do not include difficult English concepts. I find it's a bit difficult to teach junior high schoolers though, often because they are so shy, they don't want to talk in the lesson. They aren't bad, just very quiet.

The Amity lesson plan format includes games to reinforce the language you are teaching the children. If you enjoy playing games and being creative, teaching the younger children is not so bad.

[prlester]

how is that better from nova? I have only done jet. I knew i had a great job, but i cant imagine these other schools. Are all the schools strictly tues-sat for newbies? Planning never took me that much time. if you teach about fice classes a day, you might have a lot of free time in the office. how do you fill it.
i still think the best thing to do is find jobs and move on as soon as possible. it takes months. i only had one to do it when jet ended, so i came back to the u.s. but i am sure eventually you could find something.
the best part of japan is the night life. cutting out fri and beting tired sat, is not cool and defeats a lot of the reason to go.

[yeka]

I disagree with you a little bit there... while the AEON scedule does get in the way of having a social life, I still find plenty of things to do and classes to take. You just have to get a little creative in some cases. Then again, I don't really like going out to bars and clubs.

[sildentokyo1]

I also work fulltime for Aeon and have been there for a while. I found everything that Nando-X had to say to be on the money--- especially about the frustration of working Tues-Sat and watching all those public holidays go by that you don't get to take advantage of.

The other thing that I think can be a bit hard about Aeon is how rapidly your school can change. What I mean is, while you may love the people you work with and the schedule you have when you get there, people come and go so often and other things change because of Head Ofiice mandates or whatever. If a manager or a head teacher leaves, the whole atmosphere of the place changes. Before you know it you can be in a place you don't even recognize anymore.

As for the question about what we do in the office during our non-teaching time, Aeon teachers are scheduled to work a 35 hour week (though I personally frequently end up working closer to 38-40). Anyway, at a busy school you could be scheduled to teach anywhere from 26-29 classes in a week, leaving not a whole lot of time to prepare. Preparing the average class from scratch (making all the materials and whatnot) only takes about a half an hour or so once you're used to it. But if you have to prepare 9 or 10 classes, including private lessons and kid's lessons, there ends up being not a whole lot of time to do it in.

All in all I agree with Nando that working for Aeon is a pretty good deal, as long as you understand what it's all about before you sign on. It's no career, but it can be a fun and interesting thing to do for a year or so while you're trying to find something better or figure out what you want to do with your life...

[chitownesl]

In defense of the Tues-Sat AEON schedule, it does allow you to go shopping, run errands, and do a long list of things on those Mondays without the crowds and long lines.

[guest of Japan]

When you're the lone teacher with Saturdays off, the Friday night can be a bit anti-climactic.

A few years ago Aeon tried to balance out the holidays. They gave the waturday workers an extra two days of holidays a year and required the monday workers to work an extra day a year. I think they found the implementation of the idea to be a lot more of a headache than listening to the complaints of the saturday teachers.

[Nagoyaguy]

I did a year at GEOS, and it is similar to AEON, except with a little more fascism thrown into the mix. Not surprising, since they both used to be part of the same company, called AMVIC, back in the eighties.

I found GEOS to be very much more high pressure in terms of sales and student renewals. There were various campaigns through the year, and teachers had to do the hard sell to the students. School managers were frantic about sales, and would usually rob Peter to pay Paul. Often pretending to have sales, then saying the students cancelled the contracts. Then other times, asking studnets to renew their contracts months in advance to count the money now.

Plus, the faxes!!! GEOS had a fetish about faxes, especially during sales campaigns. There would be lists of the schools in the area, their sales goal (set by head office), and how many sales had been made. Schools and managers at the top got little happy faces and crowns on the fax, schools at the bottom got frowny faces and big arrows pointing up. The managers could be heard crying tears of frustration while trying to explain to the higher-ups about their school's performance.

Lots of busy work for the staff too. All posters and promo material was hand made and had to be placed by the manager on the street. Plus, folding brochures, stapling stuff, all done by the staff. I took pity on them and helped sometimes, but it really didnt seem like a "management" function to me.

For teachers, there was one saving grace. We got bonuses based on student contract renewals. I usually cleared an extra 25,000 or 30,000 yen a month for this. As I recall, we also got small bonuses for pushing the company books and overpriced CD sets.