Job Discussion Forums

[AdrianaBanana]

Hi I have finished university (I graduate in May) and I have also completed a Trinity CertTESOL. I have a job currently teaching ESOL (in New Zealand, and I am a New Zealand citizen), it is only short term but it will still be 80 hours worth of teaching that I can put on my CV. I have applied for a position on the JET program (it is possible that I might not get called for an interview) but I am beginning to have second thoughts about the whole thing. Basically I would like to find out about other schools or programmes in Japan where I could put my qualifications and experience to good use.

Thanks

[Glenski]

I guess whether JET is worth it depends on your goals. What are they?

[AdrianaBanana]

My goal is to start off working in NZ to gain the experience that some countries request job applicants have. After that I wanted to work in a language school teaching adult students General English in Asia or Europe. Another goal is to somehow get involved with teaching Business English.

[Glenski]

In that case, JET may not be for you. Not sure what you know of it even though you have applied.

JET ALTs are assistants to Japanese teachers. They are not the teachers themselves, and many complain of being underutilized (the term "human tape recorder" gets used a lot). You may get sent to several schools instead of staying at just one, so consistency goes out the window from class to class. You will likely live in a rural area, so if you don't fancy that sort of situation (and needing to know a fair amount of Japanese to keep sane), it's not for you.

JET hours are good and the pay is better than most eikaiwas. You could use it as a stepping stone to find business English schools (not a heavy commodity here) or other work. And it would be an insight into the Japanese public school system, if nothing else.

What are your long-term goals in life/teaching? That's more what I had in mind when I originally posed the question.

[AdrianaBanana]

Thanks for the information, from your experience are there any specific eikaiwas that would be worth looking at. It's just that I am unfamiliar with them, are they a type of school that focuses on conversation English? Sorry my long term goal is to become an ESOL teacher, I'm not looking at doing it as a working holiday. I'm already interested in teaching Business English but another subject that I would consider in the future is preparing students for exams such as IELTS, TOEFL or TOIEC. My current job has option classes where these subjects are taught but as a first time teacher I'll most probably be teaching conversation English. The ADOS where I work said it is possible to try and teach these subjects at some stage but it is essentially a case of experience.

[PAULH]

[GambateBingBangBOOM]

Eikaiwa are English conversation schools. Nova is the biggest of them. They hire people with undergraduate degrees in any subject, and are generally considered like McDonalds of English teaching. Actual training in teaching methodologies and experience teaching ESL are rumoured to be negatives in their hiring process because they want you to follow their method only. There tends to be a high turnover rate in eikaiwa chains.

There are people who have MAs in Applied Linguistics and worked for universities in their home country who are in the JET programme. A Trinity Cert TESOL would be a good background for the JET programme (at a minimum, a short introductory certificate programme like it should really be a requirement of JET, but that would drop the number of people who could apply dramatically) , especially if you go into it expeting to only use the information from it for conferences. It is definately not overkill. It's a full-time month. Where I did my training (a full time academic year at a university) the JET programme was being pushed as a good gentle introducation to teaching English.

As far as jobs go, The JET contract is better than most of the eikaiwas, but most JETs are in rural areas which leads to them not making a lot of contacts for jobs in Japan following JET. In fact, there is/was a rumour that people with a lot of training and/or experience in ESL/EFL education are put into rural areas in order to make it harder for them to get a teaching job part way through the JET contract (which finishes at one of the worst times of the year to find a job in Japan) and just quit. Plus, rural JTEs (Japanese Teachers of English) are less likely to go to things like methodology seminars etc, and more likey to have been teaching in the exact same (largely grammar translation) method (in practise, this means the students memorize the textbook passages and do very little else) for the last twenty years or so. I think the idea there is to have more recent English teacher graduates (hopefully with experience actually teaching) to gently demonstrate (without dictating) a different method of teaching. If that is the case, then it mostly doesn't work.

[Apsara]

I worked for Nova for a couple of years and while I was there, since I expressed an interest in it, I was put in charge of preparing students for TOEIC and TOEFL. I did that only about 10% of the time though, the rest was ordinary conversation lessons.
There were also Business English classes , both small group and one-to-one. Assuming it's still the same you may have the opportunity to teach any of these kinds of classes once you've been there a few months, particularly at a larger school. While Nova is not a wonderful job, they sponsor you for a visa and it's not a bad way to start off here before looking for something else if you want to.
JET sounds pretty far from what you want to do, if you're more interested in teaching mainly adults, maybe go for one of the big 4 eikaiwas to start off.

[lalalateda]

From what I hear, JET is a pretty sweet deal. The money is better the starting teacher salary at most eikaiwas I wish I had been able to apply for it.
Teaching at eikaiwas involves a lot of either entertaining small children or having free conversation classes with adults.
I would speculate that if you chose an eikaiwa over JET, you'll end up regretting it.

[GambateBingBangBOOM]

Most of the eikaiwa job ads these days specify working with small kids (sometimes starting at zero years old) as well as adults.

More and more adults seem to be giving up on English and are instead focussing on getting their kids to learn English (except that the focus is on 'playing in English' as opposed to 'learning English').

[wintersweet]

I'm in an MATESOL program, after getting my certification done least year. Nothing I have heard about JET makes me think it would be a valuable experience for someone who wants to be a career teacher. Maybe there are locations here and there in the JET program that allow for real teaching and development as a teacher, but these seem to be in a distinct minority. After all, the point of the program is not to bring in well-trained English teachers, but to make sure Japanese kids get to meet foreigners, right? (_Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET program_ might be worth a try.)

I'm not sure what route I'm going to take myself when I head out for overseas experience. I probably will go to Japan, but I'm working on qualifying for better jobs by studying Japanese, attempting to get published (when I get to that point), and so on.

[PAULH]

[wintersweet]

Thanks, PAULH; I am definitely paying attention to useful posts like that. I just want to get some experience before coming back to look for a permanent job here (in the US). However, you have a good point. Because of the particular MATESOL program I'm in, I'll probably get a full year of teaching a college class myself next year. So that will be good. As for specialization, I'll supplement the required courses as I can. The required classes include things like CALL, but I'm also doing things like joining the technology interest group for my state TESOL association, doing online and conference workshops, etc. And I'm trying to work out the finances to do some intensive language study in Japan this summer.

I don't have any starry-eyed visions of plum positions waiting to be plucked in Japan. If I can find a good enough job here at the end of my program (2007), I'll probably just stay here and save money for occasional trips to Japan. (I'm very practical...)

[AdrianaBanana]

[PAULH]