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rich45
Joined: 26 Jan 2006
Posts: 127
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 Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 5:40 am Post subject: |
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| natsume wrote: |
| rich45 wrote: |
| There will always be doom merchants (see previous two posts) |
Very hard to tell just how you read my post. I am hardly a "doom merchant". It was an ironic comment about age and somebody characterizing 31 (I am well past) as perhaps being close to "too old". Too old for what?
My aunt was an elementary school teacher for her entire career, and she still mentors elementary age students in her eighties. |
I apologise then, as I read it as "31 is too old for JET/eikaiwas who would prefer a fresh faced 22 year old." My mistake. |
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seklarwia
Joined: 20 Jan 2009
Posts: 1546
Location: Monkey onsen, Nagano
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 6:27 am Post subject: |
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[quote="rich45]I apologise then, as I read it as "31 is too old for JET/eikaiwas who would prefer a fresh faced 22 year old." My mistake.[/quote]
I don�t think that anyone with even an ounce of up-to-date knowledge would claim that this is true anymore.
I�ve been noticing a rapid rise in the average age of ALTs especially. When I arrived, in 2009, aged 23, I was one of the oldest ALTs in my (previous) placement area. Only a couple of years on and suddenly at least a third are older than me with fair few old enough to be my parents.
In my new area, I don�t know all the ALTs by any stretch but we�ve had a number of meetings that a good number of ALTs have had to attend� I�d hazard a guess that most of them were either close to my age (26) or older (some substantially so); I could probably count the ones in their early 20s on one hand.
Certainly the industry has started looking to employ more mature-minded and/or experienced people as opposed to the young and bouncy new grads who often had never had to hold down a FT job before and spent more work hours hung over after nightly partying and drinking, coming in late, calling in sick or taking holidays left, right and centre � Japanese teachers (not only those from my school) love to bitch about the antics of my predecessors, especially at drinking parties.
I can�t be so certain about the general age of eikaiwa employees, but I do know quite a few who certainly are not fresh out of uni � some because they have been here for a number of years, whilst some were hired at an �older� age. |
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nimaime
Joined: 14 Aug 2011
Posts: 51
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 6:40 am Post subject: |
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There will always be doom merchants (see previous two posts) but I am/was very similar to you. I am 30 years old, had worked in Korea for a couple of years, but Japan was the place where I wanted to be. I made the move and I don't regret it one bit. I'm doing a distance Masters now with a view to working in a University (yes I know, publications etc etc), be it in Japan or elsewhere.
As for my typical day, my school only has about 100 students so I am not overloaded with work, although one of my JTEs is useless so I teach those classes virtually by myself. So start at 8.20 and finish at 3.45. Usually 3 lessons in a day on average, with plenty of time to prepare. Eat lunch with the kids, play basketball for a bit, cleaning, and...that's pretty much it. Definitely the easiest, most stress-free job I've ever had. |
Korea is just not the same. We can both agree with that. That's that the general sentiment among most people. What program are you with over there if you don't mind me asking? Like I said my job is sweet but the program is folding up in a few years and while most schools are ditching the no longer mandatory native teacher, my school said I can stay another year, possibly two if I'd like.
Anyway, if you wouldn't PM'ing me (don't have enough posts yet) I'd appreciate it. I'd like to do some kind of masters program like you (I realize I can't do this forever) and wouldn't mind some advice since we're on similar paths. Thanks! |
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nimaime
Joined: 14 Aug 2011
Posts: 51
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 6:50 am Post subject: |
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| natsume wrote: |
| rich45 wrote: |
| There will always be doom merchants (see previous two posts) |
Very hard to tell just how you read my post. I am hardly a "doom merchant". It was an ironic comment about age and somebody characterizing 31 (I am well past) as perhaps being close to "too old". Too old for what?
My aunt was an elementary school teacher for her entire career, and she still mentors elementary age students in her eighties. |
Well, "too old" for a Japan newbie to get hired.
In this crowded job market, if it's fresh meat employers want, I'm not that. I realize 31 isn't exactly old per se but in Korea I am one of the "older" foreign teachers. My days of carelessness and wild partying are over, I'm starting to weigh long term options. |
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natsume
Joined: 24 Apr 2006
Posts: 409
Location: Chongqing, China
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 9:48 am Post subject: |
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| nimaime wrote: |
| natsume wrote: |
| rich45 wrote: |
| There will always be doom merchants (see previous two posts) |
Very hard to tell just how you read my post. I am hardly a "doom merchant". It was an ironic comment about age and somebody characterizing 31 (I am well past) as perhaps being close to "too old". Too old for what?
My aunt was an elementary school teacher for her entire career, and she still mentors elementary age students in her eighties. |
Well, "too old" for a Japan newbie to get hired.
In this crowded job market, if it's fresh meat employers want, I'm not that. I realize 31 isn't exactly old per se but in Korea I am one of the "older" foreign teachers. My days of carelessness and wild partying are over, I'm starting to weigh long term options. |
I was accepted on JET at 38. My main school has generally been pretty happy to have an adult ALT on board, as the previous two apparently left something to be desired in the maturity/life experience departments. At my particular school, I am still on the younger end of the staff, so age, in my case, is a total non-issue.
My days are pretty similar to Rich's, with a bit of eikaiwa (for students), club activities, visits to a special needs school, and prefectural committee work thrown in. Please put the (old) thoughts out of your head about age. It does not appear to apply these days in Japan.
This (JET) is the first part of a career change for me. I plan to work towards QTS and an MAT in the next couple of years. |
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rxk22
Joined: 19 May 2010
Posts: 1629
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 12:07 pm Post subject: |
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| seklarwia wrote: |
| [quote="rich45]I apologise then, as I read it as "31 is too old for JET/eikaiwas who would prefer a fresh faced 22 year old." My mistake. |
I don�t think that anyone with even an ounce of up-to-date knowledge would claim that this is true anymore.
I�ve been noticing a rapid rise in the average age of ALTs especially. When I arrived, in 2009, aged 23, I was one of the oldest ALTs in my (previous) placement area. Only a couple of years on and suddenly at least a third are older than me with fair few old enough to be my parents.
In my new area, I don�t know all the ALTs by any stretch but we�ve had a number of meetings that a good number of ALTs have had to attend� I�d hazard a guess that most of them were either close to my age (26) or older (some substantially so); I could probably count the ones in their early 20s on one hand.
Certainly the industry has started looking to employ more mature-minded and/or experienced people as opposed to the young and bouncy new grads who often had never had to hold down a FT job before and spent more work hours hung over after nightly partying and drinking, coming in late, calling in sick or taking holidays left, right and centre � Japanese teachers (not only those from my school) love to bitch about the antics of my predecessors, especially at drinking parties.
I can�t be so certain about the general age of eikaiwa employees, but I do know quite a few who certainly are not fresh out of uni � some because they have been here for a number of years, whilst some were hired at an �older� age.[/quote]
I think the party days are well gone. No way can most ALTs or eikaiwa monkeys afford to go out more than once a week. The pay just isn't there anymore. Plus as an ALT, I only get 5 days off a year, that I can use at my discretion. So calling in sick, is really only for legit occasions. |
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Glenski
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
Posts: 12844
Location: Hokkaido, JAPAN
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 1:52 pm Post subject: |
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I got hired at 40-41 and have been here quite a while now. Since that first job (eikaiwa), I changed to HS and then to university. Does that make me a newbie each of those times?
31 is far from being labeled an old newbie, IMO. |
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dove
Joined: 01 Oct 2003
Posts: 271
Location: USA/Japan
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 2:30 pm Post subject: |
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| I teach as a free-lancer( mainly company classes) so I am running all over the Tokyo area. By the way, the companies that send me to the company classes DO NOT hire the young and perky types. No way. They are too much trouble and the students don't want to be taught by them. I would guess the average age of teachers for company classes is mid to late 30's with quite a few teachers in their 40s and 50s. |
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Inflames
Joined: 02 Apr 2006
Posts: 486
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 3:07 pm Post subject: |
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I've met a few of the young and new people and most of them seem to know what is expected. They might not be the best teachers, but most of them rather quickly figured out what is expected (in terms of attendance).
I've known 35 and 40 year olds who had a hard time turning up for work at 1 PM because they were drinking the night before. I know someone who owns a bar and who works part-time at a uni and never shows up late (or hungover).
I think the most troublesome are the people who are in their mid/late twenties who come over - tons of them have had "issues" and I know a few of them who have been fired or transferred because of them.
Each place has their own ideal teacher. I'm in my late 20s and I whenever I apply for business English jobs places call me right away and call me when they have new work. Preschools and the like almost never respond. The ALT companies I've worked for call me to offer me work each term. Once you start working, the actions you take are far more important than other characteristics. And for the places that hold those characteristics against you - there places you don't want to work for. |
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seklarwia
Joined: 20 Jan 2009
Posts: 1546
Location: Monkey onsen, Nagano
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 7:17 pm Post subject: |
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| rxk22 wrote: |
| I think the party days are well gone. No way can most ALTs or eikaiwa monkeys afford to go out more than once a week. The pay just isn't there anymore. Plus as an ALT, I only get 5 days off a year, that I can use at my discretion. So calling in sick, is really only for legit occasions. |
Partying and drinking doesn't have to mean blowing 5 thousand yen per night on nomihodai and karaoke, you know. From what my teachers tell me, some of the more notorious ALTs were often seen by teachers, students and parents going to the supermarkets and leaving with only crates of beer just after leaving school. Even as a dispatch ALT, I have 100,000 yen of disposable income most months and our JETs have more... that's enough to buy more than a few hangovers per month and still put aside a bit towards the next trip.
As for turning up hungover, taking time off or coming in late it doesn't have to happen all that often to get you a bad rep over here. And not all ALTs have only 5 paid days-off per year; one of my predecessors from only 2 years earlier was a JET who used to take time off in the middle of the term to travel with his gf... since he wasn't exactly known for pulling his weight either, the teachers had little nice to say about him or his holidays which he would brag about at school on his return.
We recently had a school event where one of the ALTs was late for no good reason... the whispers of disapproval were not very subtle.
And my predecessor, a dispatch ALT, would often turn up late if they didn't have a lesson first period (apparently they seemed to believe that if they didn't have a lesson first period, they didn't have to be in school). This along with a number of other persisting issues meant that they did not have their contract renewed the following spring. |
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Mr_Monkey
Joined: 11 Mar 2009
Posts: 661
Location: Kyuuuuuushuuuuuuu
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| Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 12:54 am Post subject: |
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The cost of living obviously has a lot to do with where you live.
You could live on 200,000/month and save quite easily outside Fukuoka in Kyushu, provided you don't choose an expensive apartment. Not a huge amount, but it's possible. Naturally, being a spendthrift will help.
My typical day:
- Get up at 7:30 and take my boy to school.
- Get home and faff about for a few hours.
- Leave for work at ~11. Read stuff on the train, write if I can be bothered - trains aren't exactly the best environments for composing text.
- Get to work ~12:30.
- Mark homework/prepare some materials/read more.
- Teach 5 lessons. It's always 5. Never more. On Wednesdays, I'm off from the eikaiwa and teach at a university.
- leave work at ~21:30, catch train.
- Read/write on the train (again, if I can be bothered)
- Home by ~23:20.
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purple_piano
Joined: 02 Jan 2009
Posts: 33
Location: New Territories, Hong Kong
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| Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 2:18 am Post subject: |
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I left Japan 2 months ago but I worked for one of the big chain eikaiwa for two years.
My weekdays (I worked Tuesday to Saturday, Saturday schedules were different)
12:30pm Arrive at the school after a 15 minute commute. Materials prep continued from the night before.
1pm- 4pm Teach 3, 45 or 50 minute lessons, usually privates or small groups. Some days a staff meeting.
4pm-5pm BREAK.
5pm-9pm Teaching, all 50 minute lessons. Mostly adults but some kids lessons from 5-7pm depending on the day.
9pm Students leave, sort out paperwork- registers, and placement tests etc. Prep for following day.
9:30pm leave. 15 minutes commute home.
We were a busy school, I usually had 6/7 classes a day. 5 classes was a slow day. On Saturday we started at 10pm until 7pm, that was 8 lessons.
Tough going at times but it really taught me to be organised with my planning! |
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OneJoelFifty
Joined: 06 Oct 2009
Posts: 463
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| Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 4:33 am Post subject: |
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I work at a public JHS as an ALT. Typical day:
Get to school just before 8:30am. Classes start at 8:40am, I usually don't have a class then. I'm scheduled to teach 16 classes a week, but I rarely teach them all. Let's say I have one class before lunch.
Lunch at 12:30pm. I get my lunch from one of my English teachers' classes, and take it to whichever class I'm eating with that week. Different class each week, different table each day.
After lunch lesson at 1:40pm.
Cleaning time from 3:30pm to 3:50pm. I always go to the gym and stroll around with a big broom, talking to my best friend at school.
Leave school at 4:45pm. Home by 4:50pm.
I do on average around two hours of marking a week, and an hour or two of prep. So there's a lot of time sitting around. I study Japanese, I write, I do bits and pieces (laptop but no internet at my desk). If there are any sports tournaments that mean I have no lessons that day, I go along and watch.
It's easy. |
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Rakuten
Joined: 14 Jun 2010
Posts: 67
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Fri Oct 28, 2011 2:34 pm Post subject: |
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My typical Japan day (working at one of the "big-4" Eikaiwa)
Wake up around 10-10:30 am.
Make coffee/browse the internet/study Japanese at a cafe/Mister Donuts for about an hour or so.
Leave for the commute to work around 1pm.
Commute time varies anywhere from 15-20 mins on the subway to over an hour by train. Depends on the day. Sometimes I have to wake-up/leave the house earlier than others.
Work from 3-3:30 to 9-9:30 pm. No breaks while at work. (aside from a few mins in between classes to prep for the next lesson/drink something/have a sit).
Leave around 9-9:30 and get home anywhere from 10-11:30 pm depending on the commute time.
10-11pm: make dinner/browse the internet/watch a movie, read a book, play video games----i.e. relax at home
12-2am: go to bed
(repeat all week)
Sunday/Monday are my days off. I do one of three things with my weekends;
1) take it easy at home/lounge around my town/go to mister donuts/study Japanese/relax-- time to myself
2) see friends/go out for drinks or meet the boyfriend
3) take a day-trip/weekend trip somewhere like Mie/Gifu/Osaka/Kyoto/Tokyo (one of the convenient features of living in central Japan)
Eikaiwa life kinda throws your schedule off and you end up working pretty late- until most everything else is closed, so you have to get used to doing things/running errands in the mornings before you work (it took me forever to get used to this and sometimes I still like to indulge and sleep in until noon or later!) |
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rxk22
Joined: 19 May 2010
Posts: 1629
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| Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2011 1:19 am Post subject: |
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| seklarwia wrote: |
| rxk22 wrote: |
| I think the party days are well gone. No way can most ALTs or eikaiwa monkeys afford to go out more than once a week. The pay just isn't there anymore. Plus as an ALT, I only get 5 days off a year, that I can use at my discretion. So calling in sick, is really only for legit occasions. |
Partying and drinking doesn't have to mean blowing 5 thousand yen per night on nomihodai and karaoke, you know. From what my teachers tell me, some of the more notorious ALTs were often seen by teachers, students and parents going to the supermarkets and leaving with only crates of beer just after leaving school. Even as a dispatch ALT, I have 100,000 yen of disposable income most months and our JETs have more... that's enough to buy more than a few hangovers per month and still put aside a bit towards the next trip.
As for turning up hungover, taking time off or coming in late it doesn't have to happen all that often to get you a bad rep over here. And not all ALTs have only 5 paid days-off per year; one of my predecessors from only 2 years earlier was a JET who used to take time off in the middle of the term to travel with his gf... since he wasn't exactly known for pulling his weight either, the teachers had little nice to say about him or his holidays which he would brag about at school on his return.
We recently had a school event where one of the ALTs was late for no good reason... the whispers of disapproval were not very subtle.
And my predecessor, a dispatch ALT, would often turn up late if they didn't have a lesson first period (apparently they seemed to believe that if they didn't have a lesson first period, they didn't have to be in school). This along with a number of other persisting issues meant that they did not have their contract renewed the following spring. |
Oh wow, sounds like some real losers there. I have no problem with people who drink. But if you are getting drunk on a weekday, esp on a daily basis, something is really wrong.
In Kanto, ALTs don't normally have 100,000 in extra cash every month. From my single friends, seems like saving 20,000 every month, in my company is more of the norm.
Also, before Nova went under, seems like people had more money to throw around.
Also JET is cushy, and some people take advantage of the benefits.
But still, I think the whole ALT partying it up image is more image now, than reality. There just isn't the money in being an ALT/eikaiwa goon anymore. |
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