Job Discussion Forums

GK · Joined: 18 Mar 2004 Posts: 8 Location: Far Far Away Land

I just started my research recently. I was browsing the web and found WinBe English School. Could anyone tell me about this school? Any pros & cons? I know Japan's school term starts in April. Most of the teacher should be arriving in Japan by now. But I don't want to go until August/September. Is it possible? Am I too late to apply?

PAULH · Joined: 28 Jan 2003 Posts: 4672 Location: Western Japan

Winbe is a private language conversation school and thus is not really affected by the regular school terms unless they send dispatch teachers to work as ALTs. High schools and universities start in April, have regular hiring periods but conversation schools hire year round. Students starting school will usually wnat to enrol in a language school to supplement their high school or college lessons.

Usually if they are not hiring teachers or advertising its not much point sending a resume but you can find out if they are needing anyone as people leave duuring the year. You may get lucky.

Have a look on the Job Information Journal as there may be some posts on there. Havent heard anything bad about them though.

No news is good news.

Iwantmyrightsnow · Joined: 12 Feb 2004 Posts: 202

some winbe teachers have started their own forum.....go and ask there.

www.winbe.net

joncharles · Joined: 09 Apr 2004 Posts: 132 Location: Beijing

WinBe is an interesting group. I was hired by WinBe after I left Nova. WinBe has only a few company owned schools. The vast majority of them are franchised. Mostly within a "Cram" school ( which is also franchised) Sometimes you will be the only Native English Speaker in the school. Their training is a week long and is fairly interesting and they seem to be more teacher oriented than the big three. AS with most of the schools now, you will teach a lot of kids. WinBe has a very good supply of resources to use to aid in teaching.

Be warned, if you go to a franchised school you are at the whim of the owner and not WinBe. I lost my job and had to come back to the USA (financial reasons) after I went through training. Then the owner of the school I was assigned to, refused me because he decided at the last minute he wanted a younger female teacher. WinBe didn't have any other school openings at the time so I had to leave Japan. It is a strange contract. You are a WinBe employee, but, you are under contract to the school they send you to. For what it's worth, most of the teachers I met were happy there.

Bozack · Joined: 30 Mar 2004 Posts: 5 Location: Canada Man!

I checked them out at http://www.winbenet.com/.

It looked interesting enough, but after checking their message board ... it's not overly positive and there's a large proportion of drunks.

Iwantmyrightsnow · Joined: 12 Feb 2004 Posts: 202

Try http://winbeunion.org/ then.

It doesn't have a BBS but I am sure they won't mind if you send them mail.

joncharles · Joined: 09 Apr 2004 Posts: 132 Location: Beijing

You have a point about the drinking, however, I found that a great many teachers from all schools imbibe more than enough alcohol. In fact, where I was, it seemed that the most common drunken foreigners were from the Shane schools... and in Nova, it seemed that the heaviest drinkers were Canadian. There also was a lot of bragging about doing drugs (ecstacy and mushrooms) as well. The fact is that most of the teachers at these schools are young and are still in a party till you drop mode. Schools don't care as long as you show up to teach, your teaching is not affected by the drinking, and you stay out of trouble with locals which could give a school a bad reputation. I have seen several of my fellow Nova teachers show up still drunk or quite hungover and teach. So just because WinBe seems to have a lot of "drunks" as you say... it goes for every school.