Job Discussion Forums

[Zzonkmiles]

There's a lot of bashing of eikaiwa in general and of the Big 4 (NOVA, GEOS, AEON, ECC). So many English teachers in Japan seem to berate the eikaiwa world and want to bail as soon as they can for one of those "plum" or "cushy" gigs at a high school, university, or technical college. And while those jobs may pay more money than your standard 250,000 yen gig at AEON or ECC, you have an entirely different set of headaches to deal with in the English (non-eikaiwa) classroom:

1. Managing student personalities. If you work at an eikaiwa and you meet a really annoying or unpleasant student, there's a good chance that you won't have to teach that student again. This is especially true for instructors at NOVA and its Multimedia Center. However, if you have a personality problem with an actual student at your SCHOOL, you're stuck with that student for the next two or three months. And if you come down hard one one student, you risk alienating that student's friends as well who will come to his/her defense. That can make for a rather icy classroom atmosphere if you are not careful--an atmosphere far worse than having a 70-year old retired woman, a 40-year old salaryman, and a 14-year old junior high school girl in the same eikaiwa lesson.

2. Managing multi-level classes. Eikaiwas generally put their students into various skill levels, which are more or less accurate. The lessons you are supposed to teach the students are generally level-appropriate, so these classes are not too difficult to teach. However, in a college or high school classroom, you have to deal with the reality that some of your students might be at the level of false beginner while you have a handful of students who have studied abroad and could carry on a reasonably natural conversation with you. So the challenge lies in making the lesson easy enough to not overwhelm the weaker students, while also being challenging enough not to bore the more advanced ones. This is not as easy as it sounds.

3. Conducting your business in Japanese. This is a double-edged sword. At an eikaiwa, most of the staff (that deals with the teachers) can speak a reasonable level of English. Your Japanese ability might not improve if your coworkers (Japanese and foreign) are always speaking in English (let alone your students). However, you are at least able to communicate with them. But at a technical college or junior high school where you're the only foreigner (and usually the only English speaker) in the office, you are on your own as you have to handle all administrative issues in Japanese. This includes staff meetings, counseling students, advising staff, explaining make-up homework/tests, and conversing with the staff in general. Even simple things like using a copy machine that only has kanji characters can be difficult if you aren't comfortable with the language. This is good for those who are serious about studying Japanese. But sometimes it can be very, very frustrating because of misunderstandings and simply not being able to express the seriousness, complexities, or nuances of a situation in a foreign language.

4. Testing, grading, and designing materials. I must stress that this is just a normal part of teaching responsibilities. Sometimes I find myself taking my work home with me and/or putting in overtime so I can avoid working at home. Working normal business hours or having holidays off doesn't mean much if you're still working. When you have 10 classes of 20-40 students, that's a lot of preparation you have to deal with. At an eikaiwa, you NEVER take your work home with you. When you are off the clock, you are off the clock. I'm not saying it's good to be a slacker who has no responsibilities, but sometimes you simply just want a break. You can get away with sleepwalking through an eikaiwa lesson, but you can't get away with that at all during a 90-minute lesson. Serious teaching (not eikaiwa) is WORK.

This post is not a rant. People just seem to be focused on finding ways to escape eikaiwa because they think the grass is greener on the other side. They think they can make more money for less work with more prestige and more vacation time to boot. There's nothing wrong with wanting to improve your working conditions. But non-eikaiwa English-teaching is WORK--and there are HEADACHES. Before you sign the dotted line at your new gig with a month of paid holidays or whatever, keep in mind the added responsibilities you are about to take. Being blinded by yen signs and vacation time alone might land you in a pool of responsibilities and new headaches that you didn't bargain for--enough to make you long for the days of your NOVA voice room or AEON man to man lessons.[/b]

[nomadder]

I didn't work at the big 4 but I worked at one smaller chain school and one small eikaiwa and the only thing I can agree with is #3.

[PAULH]

[johanne]

Zzonkmiles makes a very good point. I worked at NOVA and other smaller eikawas and now I work at an international school. Although I make much better money now and have way better holidays I work very hard. I'm usually at school at 7:00 and back home at 6:00 and I only have a 30 minute commute. When I taught in eikawas I went to work and I came home and then went out with other eikawa teachers. I rarely taught more than 4 or 5 hours a day (except at NOVA, but there the work was so repetitive and required so little creativity that I still had lots of energy at the end of the day) The work was very easy and I was never that tired at the end of the day. As zzonkmiles says, I never took the work home with me and in fact usually had a nice time chatting with the students. I hoped they progressed but it wasn't really my sole responsibility so I didn't worry about it very much. Now, I am these kids' primary teacher and if they don't learn it's serious. I'm teaching them to read, write and learn basic numeracy skills, as well as content areas such as science and social studies, and if I do a half-ass job it makes their academic future that much more difficult. It's no longer playing English games for 1 hour a week after school with these kids, but rather teaching 6 hours a day of serious elementary school.
I love my job, so I'm very happy with the choice I've made in getting a teaching certificate so I could qualify for this type of job, but some days in my exhaustion, I look back at my eikawa days and realize how carefree they were. I especially feel this way when I'm justifying my decisions to parents who have shelled out 2,000,000 yen a year to send their child to this school and be educated by me and in many ways rightfully feel they should know why I'm doing what I am in the classroom.
So yes, zzonkmiles, I'm with you. Eikawas may not be where everyone wants to end up, but they are not the most horrible thing in the world and those so-called "plum" jobs come with responsibilities and pressures all their own.

[saloc]

I've worked in both eikaiwa and regular Junior High Schools (although not full-time) and, based on my experience, I much prefer ekaiwa work. That said, I don't agree that you are unlikely to teach an annoying student again, unless you are working in an eikaiwa school which uses a ticketing system. Tthose schools are by far the minority. Otherwise, unless the annoying student requests a move, there is a fairly good chance you will be teaching him for as long as he keeps coming to class (which could be years!). Neither do I agree that eikaiwa teachers never take work home. Yes, it is rare, but the teachers often have heavy workloads and some, who are dedicated, do take work home simply because they don't have time to prepare fully during work. If this is the case, they are probably being given too many classes to teach, but it does happen.
I'm also curious as to why you think it's easy to sleepwalk through a lesson in eikaiwa. I think a student can often tell when you are not prepared, and it's pretty hard to hide the fact when it's just you and five or so students in the room expecting to be taught (unless you are defining eikaiwa classes as free conversation classes, which most are not). Sure, you can go in unprepared, but you'll probably do a half-arsed job and couldn't you do that at public schools too? Personally, I don't see any difference in responsibility regarding teaching kids at an eikaiwa and teaching them in a regular elementary school. It is not just about games and having fun at the decent eikaiwa schools. A lot of parents really want their kids to improve, and they ae paying for it and have a right to expect it.

[Glenski]

Zzonkmiles makes a good stab at distinguishing differnces between mainstream schools and eikaiwas. I've taught in both (my mainstream experience involves almost 4 years in a private junior/senior high school).

A few comments from my experience are in order.

Eikaiwas might be separated into those with lessons that are pre-formatted with lesson plans, and those with lessons that the teacher has to make himself. In the former, the instructor merely has to review what is prepared for him and know what he has to do in the class. In the latter, he might have to create something based on a textbook point, or do a lesson completely from scratch with no textbook to provide much reference. With the former, you can wing it more easily. With the latter, you must do everything by yourself, and unless you have built up a portfolio of materials (and those which can be used at many levels), it is hard work. Some eikaiwas don't even offer the simplest tools, like a photocopy machine!

Another distinction I'd like to make between eikaiwas and mainstream schools is class size. Here, you face a handful of students (I've taught eikaiwa classes from 1 to 15 students, with an average of 4 or 5) or a large class ranging from 20 to almost 50. In some universities, you could even face larger groups. So, leaving an eikaiwa situation means learning a lot more names, managing classroom logistics with such crowds, and keeping track of attendance (no easy feat sometimes, especially when students cover for each other to avoid punishment).

Eikaiwas as far as I know don't involve team teaching. Many mainstream schools do, whether with another native English speaker or a Japanese teacher. This means handling problems with meeting time to plan lessons, agreeing/disagreeing on lesson plans, and in the case of some Japanese teachers it could even mean bearing with cultural and language barriers. Serious ones, at that.

Difficult students in eikaiwas could be solved more easily than in mainstream situations. I've had my share of eikaiwa "class killers" who monopolize the time, or are far too weak to even be in the class (despite level checks), or whatever. They can be shunted out somehow. However, in a mainstream situation, this is rarely the case. And, you might even have to deal with kids with serious social/mental problems with no school psychologist at hand. These are kids who practice self-abuse, are semi-retarded, on medication that causes near catatonia, and those with family situations that create such shyness that the student won't utter a word or lift his head the hold year (yet he is pushed through the system). Try making a speech class or info gap lesson work in those situations!

Multi-level classes are pretty much the norm where I work, even though the HS staff try to group each homeroom into some sort of homogeneous category. You'll have returnees sharing classes with kids from the previous paragraph, and those who, despite 5 or 6 years of mandatory English classes, cannot read or write a single comprehensible sentence, let alone understand what you say. Moreover, those returnees may not always be the easiest to teach, either, because of the peer pressure from their classmates inhibiting their performance. Many times, they just knuckle under and pretend to be worse than they really are, or else they would lose their friends.

Eikaiwa classes that I'm familiar with don't come in much variety. You usually try to review/teach some grammar or you have a freestyle chatting class. In mainstream schools, you could be assigned to specialty courses like reading/literature, speech making (which usually involves coaching after class, followed by attending the speech contest without extra pay), writing, or some kind of special projects. Teachers where I work have all of these from time to time, and you aren't selected to teach them because you have some sort of background in the specialty. So, for all of you who skim by with poor spelling and writing skills, heads up.

One does not have to be a full-time teacher in a mainstream situation. Part-time workers abound, whether by stringing together a bunch of such work, or by serving through a dispatch agency. You may feel like the wind blowing through a school for an hour or so every day, but in the long run, you are still responsible for grades (which may be altered by the school despite your hard work to create standards and rubrics), attendance (usually kept daily, then tallied, checked, and double-checked at the end of the semester), and team-teaching duties (so just try to squeeze in a lesson planning meeting in those few hours you might grace the school with your presence). PT teachers have the luxury of avoiding most administrative functions, but not all in some cases. And, just because you miss a department meeting doesn't always mean a good thing. You miss out on providing valuable input for certain issues, and all you can do is whine about it when the dust settles.

One more point. Since it is unlikely that foreigners will attain FT status in a public high school, it is more likely to get such work in a private one. That means working half of your Saturdays every month in some cases. Whether you already work Saturday for your eikaiwa is moot. The point I'm making is that you run the risk of working 6 days a week whether you like it or not. At my school, with mandatory club activities, you may even find yourself being there 7 days a week and often well into the evenings.

[Gordon]

Quite simply, one is an apple and the other, an orange. They don't have much in common.

[rai]

I used to work for Nova ('bout five years ago) and now I teach at junior high as an Assistant English Teacher. At Nova I taught 7 lessons a day, on average (with one period in the "voice room"), but at junior high I rarely teach more than 15 lessons A WEEK. I'm employed directly by a school board, so I do have some responsibilties outside teaching (I help the Broadcasting Club; eat lunch with students; go to assemblies, Sport's Day, etc.) but in general my schedule is MUCH easier. I get paid more and have more holidays (I had ALL of August off, paid!).

I make all the lesson plans and materials, but since I teach 7th, 8th and 9th graders, I only have to make one lesson plan a week for each grade level. I have never made more than three lesson plans in a week. When I leave Friday, I usually have all of the next week's lesson materials sitting on my desk. I occassionally do work at home, but this extra work is MORE than off-set by my pay and vacation time. And the extra work is completely voluntary on my part; it's just stuff I do to make my lessons better. It makes a big difference psychologically if extra work isn't REQUIRED.

In general I find my junior high job more satisfying personally. I'll never forget the head teacher guy at Nova criticizing me for coming in early to pull my student's files and plan my lessons ahead of time! I was a teacher back home, and I PREPARE lessons before I teach I used to work at a dispatch company, and I preferred that to Nova, too. I got 250,000yen/month and the holidays weren't so great, but the job was REALLY easy. I wasn't expected to do ANYTHING outside of teaching (the school paid the company by the lesson), so when I did do extra stuff I was treated like a rock star.

Having said all this, I have a friend who's been at Nova for five years now, and he's happy. It all depends on what you came to Japan for and what you are interested in doing. I've taught in some REALLY bad junior highs with some really bad kids, but at the same time I think I've learned a lot about Japanese culture by working in the public schools. I will NEVER go back to eikaiwa.

[Glenski]

[saloc]

[Zzonkmiles]

[saloc]

Yes, I understand the point of your thread and I fully agree that lots of people want to jump ship from Eikaiwa to the "better" jobs without knowing all that much about what is involved. I suppose what I was trying to suggest was that eikaiwa work can be challenging and stimulating if you make it so (or are allowed to make it so!), and therefore agreeing that public school jobs may not always be "better".

Your comment that "Serious teaching (not eikaiwa) is WORK" prompted me to post as it suggested to me that you think eikaiwa is not real teaching, and is a bit insulting to people in eikaiwa schools who do take their jobs seriously.

[Gordon]

[craven]

I think Glenski made some excellent points about dealing with students who have severe mental or emotional problems in public schools. I work at both a regular JHS and a school for the blind (in Japan, students with multiple mental and physical disabilities are often lumped into the blind schools). At the latter I have the materials, resources, and an accepting staff to help me deal with these kids, but in the former there is NO support or even understanding of the problems these kids face.
While working for Aeon, I worked with kids who made up the top 99.9% of the academic elite in Japan (I now realize), while in public school it can be a really different ballgame. Personally, this is something I really enjoy, but it's not for everyone.
My schedule is not more or less strenuous than Aeon was. Eikaiwa teachers often do put in huge amounts of work, and although I never had to take work home with me, I was always more drained at the end of an Aeon day than I am at the end of a public school day, even if the public school day is often longer and filled with a whole lot of different responsibilities.
We should also distinguish between privately hired public school teachers, and those working for JET or for a dispatch company. The schools in the former generally expect much more from their teachers, and are much more interested in having REAL English taught at their school (since they're taken the initiative to get their own teacher). While there are lots of great postings with JET or with dispatch jobs, there are also a lot of schools that only have English education because the Education Ministry forces them too. The different working environment at these types of jobs can have a big effect on both job conditions, and teacher state of mind/sense of job fulfillment.

[Willy_In_Japan]

I worked for GEOS, and now I work as an ALT in a Junior High School.

Thankfully, I am free of responsibilities for club activities, and grading. I concentrate on team teaching and making activities that the students can practice the target English with. Luckily, I work with two excellent JHS teachers. I only teach 16 50 min classes a week, out of 3 different text books (one for each year). I NEVER take work home and I get all the national holidays off, and all of August, and a week or so in July.

Compare that to GEOS, where I was doing about 33 classes a week, out of about 10 different text books. I was ALWAY running around at GEOS trying to get lessons planned with the approximately 5 non-teaching hours a week I had. Extra duties at GEOS include, 'lobby talk', 'counselling', 'interviews', PAPERWORK, 'teacher' meetings (basically talking about finances and renewals), telephone meetings and 'poster making'. This is not to mention the 'voluntary' (mandatory) social events that you had to attend with your students (and pay for) after classes on Saturdays usually, such as bowling, BBQ's etc. I worked all of august, and since monday was my regular 'day off', all national holidays falling on Mondays were lost. My hour lunch at GEOS, was 'my own time', but usually was spent preparing lessons. Of course, you cant walk back into GEOS on the hour for your next lesson, so it wasn't really a true hour of lunch even though lunch was 'unpaid'. GEOS has a '20 min rule'.....ie you have to come in 20 mins before your shift........(it is Japanese custom dontcha know!).....and many of my classes would end right as my time on the clock was ending. The result was the mandatory paperwork, plus the 20 min rule would squeeze an extra hour a day out of you unpaid. GEOS was in effect, 10 hour work days. My job as an ALT is an 8 hour work day.

One thing regarding annoying students.........in GEOS, you are under the taninsei system, and you teach the SAME people week in and week out. If you get annoying students, you are stuck with them. I had quite a few students I didn't care for at all in GEOS, and was so glad when I finally could tell them I was leaving.

I am sure that working as a teacher in a High School or a University is much more work, but working as an ALT in a Junior High School is a breeze compared to GEOS. (I cant speak for the other big 4 schools).