Job Discussion Forums

[auckies]

You dont have to hurt my feelings jimdunlop.

This thread is finished.

[Brooks]

so,
does anyone know of any eikaiwas in Osaka that are on a list from ETJ?
Would Nichibei be included?

[shmooj]

As far as I'm aware there is no blacklist or whitelist associated with ETJ.

I recommend you start out your search by visiting the ETJ website and perhaps signing up on their mailing list and asking more specifically there...

http://www.eltnews.com/ETJ/index.shtml

There is also a classifieds section with Jobs on offer though not a lot. ETJ is just starting out really and the website is brand new. But it has huge potential and is very well run so far. I've been a member for about two years since it first started.

[nomadder]

I agree with Shmooj. Not all eikaiwas are created equally. Some do have owners who actually want the students to learn something-like the one I last worked in. I could do whatever I want and it was challenging to come up with good lesson plans and to help them actually progress.

[shmooj]

Nomadder, I'd like to see how your eikaiwa's details compare with mine. I wonder if there are characteristics of good eikaiwas v bad ones which would help people like Brooks and JimDunlop2 to know whether they are looking at a place worth working at.

My eikaiwa:

Privately owned by a married couple.
Owners lived in US for a long time so understand cross cultural issues and living in a foreign culture to a certain extent.
Owners speak English very fluently.
Owners financially independent from the school so not in it for profit.
Apartment provided (though rent not paid) and so no key money issues.
Up to 20 hours teaching a week.
20 days holiday you can take when you want though only two weeks off concurrently at a time. Most public holidays too plus extra off at New Year.
Three days paid sick leave per year.
One year renewable contract.
Teaching decisions deferred to the teachers who have total flexibility in classes re what they do and how.
Only native speakers hired.
Small - three full timers and around 180 students at all levels young and old.
Experience and qualifications in TESOL desirable but not essential.
Owners very caring i.e. would take you to the doctor if you were sick, get you medicine, invite you round for a meal and get you a plumber and so on

How does this compare with others' schools? I think the owners may be a key factor in the whole thing.

[Brooks]

I guess my concerns would be if I do work for an eikaiwa next year would be about wages and vacation time, mostly. At some schools there aren`t raises or it is a joke (nine yen).
Not having to pay for key money is a big plus.
Some schools are small and there isn`t a teacher`s room so teachers don`t have a place to plan, or if the teachers want to buy a book, they have to pay for it themselves.

Some things I will miss about the high school where I work:

two bonuses a year, the vacation time, 150,000 yen a year to spend on books. And having a boss that I get along with.
But I won`t miss discipline problems, laziness, or bad manners on the part of some students. Nor will I miss working six days a week or only teaching teenagers.

[shmooj]

[JimDunlop2]

Sorry to be negative (as in my previous posts I tried being positive) but my eikawa dropped some bad news on me today so I'm not terribly impressed with them today.

Compare your eikawas to what I see to be a mediocre one (mine)....

Shmooj wrote: (italics)

Privately owned by a married couple.

Mine: Subsid of a large company with a questionable reputation

Owners lived in US for a long time so understand cross cultural issues and living in a foreign culture to a certain extent.

Mine: Kocho sensei believes the following: staff should not be given holidays because it makes them lazy; don't complain: a) you should be glad you have a job here, b) we are a LOT better than working at NOVA. (These are actually his own words)...

Owners speak English very fluently.

Mine: Kocho sensei speaks little English, but refuses to speak any of it unless absolutely unavoidable... (He refuses to lose face by lowering himself to the level of the students at the school) By the same token, dislikes speaking to foreign teachers that are fluent in Japanese... (Again, he actually said this). Culture? A box of yogurt has more than him.

Owners financially independent from the school so not in it for profit.

Mine: school so desperate for cash, they will go to any lengths. Example: the last student they accepted (on his first day of class) pulled down his pants and started playing with himself in the middle of class, mooned his classmates, and when the teacher had the class writing things on the chalkboard, the kid messed up everyone's work on purpose.... The school's answer: well just give him some time to adjust and in the mean time, don't use the chalkboard -- we'll give the students paper to write on...

Apartment provided (though rent not paid) and so no key money issues.

Mine: 1DK for Y43,000. Although the last staff that came said her apartment was so filthy (and infested) it was unliveable. She had to write a formal complaint to even get new wallpaper. (I saw her place -- it WAS awful)...

Up to 20 hours teaching a week.

Mine: Up to 25 teaching hours a week. But no one ever can achieve that because it's a theoretical figure... E.g. I teach 26 classes a week, but only 21 hours -- so the company feels free to load on extra classes at their whim (which they commonly do).

20 days holiday you can take when you want though only two weeks off concurrently at a time. Most public holidays too plus extra off at New Year.

Mine: No holidays. Ever. Public holidays ARE off, but quite often moved to different days of the week (so the same students don't get affected all year round).....

Three days paid sick leave per year.

Mine: the same.

One year renewable contract.

Mine: the same.

Teaching decisions deferred to the teachers who have total flexibility in classes re what they do and how.

Mine: some flexibility in what games you play and how you teach certain things, but mostly a rigid system and set of rules to follow. Curriculum and textbook are forced on the students and subsequently on the teachers... (You have to use the textbook because the students paid for them).... Whether the students like the book or not.... Difficulty or level of the book hardly not taken into account at all -- because they want students to be able to switch between days of the week they attend, and the branch where they attend. As a result, I have entire classes where we cannot touch the textbook because the contents are way over their heads, but they have already bought them when the year started so nothing can be done.

Only native speakers hired.

Mine: Mostly the case, but hasn't always been... Right now it is.

Small - three full timers and around 180 students at all levels young and old.

Mine: Twelve foreign staff (many Japanese staff)... Many students -- mostly young -- age 2 and up, incl. jr. high, high school and adults.

Experience and qualifications in TESOL desirable but not essential.

Mine: same deal.... Very picky in hiring new staff, but they haven't had much luck lately -- all the staff keeps leaving unexpectedly for some reason. Almost no one has ever stayed more than a year. (No joke)... But that's OK.. Management actually prefers a high turnover... (But they want people to finish their contract)...

Owners very caring i.e. would take you to the doctor if you were sick, get you medicine, invite you round for a meal and get you a plumber and so on

Mine: Questionable at best. Don't care about you one bit, at least not on a corporate level. I once spent a half-hour trying to get someone to find me a doctor's clinic I could go to (as if no one had ever asked them before) for a simple (but very painful and annoying) problem. Invite for a meal? Good God, no. That would cut into the profit margin. Anything else? Not likely. The only reason I even had a futon to sleep on (an unnecessary expense that was denied by the kocho sensei, even though it was promised to me) my first night was because someone "lent" me one from their home that they weren't using at the time.

I could go on, but that would be pointless... The list just gets endlessly longer in ALL aspects of lousy working conditions. But yet, I console myself by thinking (and knowing) that there are even WORSE places to work out there -- heck I've spoken to some of them (and their employees)... But I am definitely in the market of shopping for a new place to work -- have been for a while, but my situation is a little complicated.

Good luck to anyone who is looking for a place to work... Any advice I can give: watch out... Be careful, and know what you are getting into. If. for example. a manager (or anyone ever) tells you: "Well, the contract DOES say that, but it doesn't really work that way in reality -- it's an old clause from days gone by" don't believe it. It means: "We can and will enforce ALL clauses of this contract (which is meant to protect US and not YOU). There is a reason why we put this stuff in here, you fool!"

I truly apologize for my rant tonight. I don't want to be bitter.... I just had to get that off my chest. I really do try to make things work and not get upset by things...

[shmooj]

Jim, that was so insightful... thanks for baring your soul here. The good thing about it is that, now that you are streetwise, the only way is up.

FWIW, contracts are worth less than the ink they use on the paper they are printed on. My boss is very considerate when we throw the old "but it's in the contract" routine and adjusts it as we argue it should be for westerners. But, while doing so, he always says "Japanese don't put much stock in written contracts". Hence, most westerners feel betrayed by a double standard. I think this is simply cross-cultural miscommunication.

This is the reason why I think the primary thing you should look for in a new eikaiwa is an owner who is very very familiar with the west (for want of a much better term), its language and its culture. Do that and I think the rest will follow...

Anyone else care to compare their eikaiwa with Jim's?

[Gordon]

Jim,
Sounds like you're working in Korea. That's too bad man. When's your contract up?

[JimDunlop2]

Yeah... From what research I did before coming, I was reading about Korean hogwans, (sp.?) and it may not be too different....

We have one fellow who spent a year doing that (teaching in Korea) and he says that compared to that, he's in paradise now..... ;-P

Contract is up end of March.... Our eikawa school year goes from April 1 to March 31. But like I said, turnover is so high, of all the 12 foreign staff we have, only 4 actually have their contract up at this time. All others have their contract renewal time somewhere in the middle of the year (each in a different month) because they were all hired to replace someone who was leaving.

I'm currently trying to look around and consider doing the ALT gig... People keep telling me that many schools don't do JET or go through a middle man -- that they will actually do their own individual hiring. Unfortunately I don't speak enough Japanese yet to know which ones, and I don't speak enough Japanese yet to have a meaningful conversation with the people at the local school board office.

For the record, I'll have been here for one year in February.

Anyway, I'm off to work now... (Tue-Sat)...

Cheers,

JD...

PS. You're right shmooj.... Contracts don't seem to be worth the paper they're printed on... Except for the times that it best suits the company. Then they're worth their price in gold. The difference between your eikawa and mine, is that you can actually talk to management and they might listen to you. Our requests (even simple ones) get expertly ignored. For instance, we hand out many papers, posters and notices to all our students on a weekly basis. They announce upcoming events, class cancellations, special classes/courses, etc... All entirely in Japanese.... And no one has EVER told any of us what it was we were in fact handing out to the students and why. That's a bit of a concern when over half of all these notices affect the teachers directly in the way of schedules and workload... All of the foreign staff are trying to get these notices to be translated (or at the very least an explanation as to their rough contents) but it has been made crystal clear to us that they have no intention of doing so.... Then, we get the inevitable: "mmmmyeah. How's it going, Jim? I'm going to have to ask you to go ahead and come in on Saturday...." (<--- blantant misuse of Office Space reference) Because there are many such events randomly scattered throughout the calendar, and staff are needed to work that day. It's written into our contract, and we don't get paid for these days. Nor do we get time off in lieu.... Again, that's just a minor example out of many.

[PatrickHardy]

The whole caring/not caring this is a bit bogus. 2 important points to think about:

(1) Teaching English is a job - not a calling.
(2) A foreign language has to be learned, it can't really be taught (although good teaching can help a motivated student).

There's no reason why you have to 'love' or 'care for' your students in order to teach them competently and effectively. Don't overestimate your own importance in the lives of your students or your 'impact' on them. Anyone who has visions of bringing heathens out of the dark ages and carrying on some 21st century version of the 'white man's burden' has it all wrong. You're being paid to be what your students or boss wants you to be, especially in an inward-looking culture like Japan. That might be very different from the way you see yourself, and for some people that can be quite a shock.

As English teachers in Japan (and other places too), we're really just part of an experiment. Often, people who find themselves 'not caring' are probably burnt out from trying to make their students learn something that they're not interested in learning. To learn a foreign language, the brain has to be engaged somehow. If they don't want to learn, there's nothing you can do to make them. You might be able to buy momentary cooperation with some sort of gimmick, but what they do during that time will probably have very little lasting impact on the student. This is the reality of teaching, and this could just as well happen in a school in your own country. There isn't any reason to get so hung up on caring or not caring. Do what you're paid for, try not to be an a**hole even if the situation is bad (for your own sake more than anything else - trust me, I've been there), and enjoy the good when it comes your way.

[shmooj]

PatrickHardy, I'd be very interested to know how long you have been in Japan and where your longest teaching gig was. I have a feeling that may be the reason behind why I see the teaching world differently from what you describe in your post.

[denise]

I wonder how strong a correlation there is between the school not caring about the teachers and the teachers not caring about the students. And what about the school caring whether or not the teachers care about the students?

d

[TokyoLiz]

shmooj and jimdunlop2,

Sorry if I sounded disrespectful of your work. I know that, when you've walked into a new country, not yet conversant in either the culture or the language, and with no formal pedagody behind you, of course the job will be a challenge every day. Even after you've become used to the culture, language and business practices, and gotten a few teaching tricks and method figured out, there are always new things to learn.

I've been teaching for about ten years, and I've taught everybody from kindergarten to obachans, from Hi, my name is...to Chinese immigrants, newspaper literacy to Buddhist nuns, essay writing to grad students. So, I guess you could say I have some experience. But sure, even I learn new tricks of the trade every year.

I'm sure there are lots of things that would be new to me in the eikaiwa business, and shmooj, I believe you have one of the nicer eikaiwa jobs out there.

jimdunlop2, my sympathies. Good luck in your search for a new job. There are lots of decent employers out there, but you have to look for them. I was lucky to land the job I have. It can be done!

PatrickHardy wrote