Job Discussion Forums

[matador]

At your average eikiawa (English school) in Japan what is the % of classes that you can expect to teach?? For example:

Kids - 40%
Adult conversation - 40%
TOEIC prep - 10%
Business English - 10%

Is this about right??

[nakanoalien2]

Hard to say - I think it would depend on the management and strategy of the school/chain.

I worked for 2 companies. At Nova, you need special training (ok, it is a stretch to call this training) to be eligible to teach business english, TOEIC, or Kids. So a basic teacher would be:

100% (or therabouts) adult teaching (16-70 yrs. old)

I stayed completely away from children. For TOEIC, it was about 10% of my lessons.

At a smaller school (2 school chain), my schedule was fixed. I had the same 2 conversation students every week and the same company class, on-site, every week. 50-50.

[Guest]

I'm sure it varies a lot. At GEOS I had about one third kids to two thirds adults. TOEIC was taught only by Japanese teachers, and there was no demand for business English at my school.

If you're good with kids - or your co-workers tend to scare them - you might find yourself with a higher proportion of kids classes.

[Lynn]

I worked for a small privately owned Eikaiwa.

60% adult conversation
40% children including babies

There was no business/toeic/toefl or anything remotely close to actually studying. It was all pretty silly to me; therefore I quit after 5 months.

[cafebleu]

It depends on the school. Some schools have more kids than adults even if the curriculum will accommodate everybody. If you are going for a job interview, make sure you find out the percentages because if you don`t really want to teach children then you don`t want to be at a school which has mostly kiddie students.

Some people think teaching adults is easy compared to kids but I disagree. I have no teaching preferences but be warned that if you don`t regularly use a textbook in certain level adult classes, you will find that time passes awfully slowly. I find beginner/low level adults like to talk but if you let it go on too long you will be driven crazy by the sheer lack of topics and the way the conversation goes in circles or doesn`t go at all.

This can be far more draining than teaching kids, even spoilt brats. On the other hand, usually adults are fair and won`t make up stories about you and why they are quitting. I taught one nasty little piece of work two years ago, was too easy with him, and he quit complaining that I was too strict. His mama who was probably 70 percent responsible for the way he was, made a huge drama.

That hasn`t stopped me enjoying teaching kids. It just has made me into a laying down the law teacher for kids when they come to my class for the first time. That way they know they cannot get away with rude or crass behaviour.