Job Discussion Forums

[Atlas*]

Has anyone ever heard any information about the company World Pacific?
i have searched their webpage worldpacific.ca but it only has information about their Korean operations and not their Japanese dealings.
Any help would be appreciated.

I couldn't find anything when searching - it seems world and pacific are too frequently used words.

[sethness]

A quick googling shows lots of ads for World Pacific jobs-- some in Korea, some Japan, some China.

Here's one in Japan: http://www.goteach.ca/jobboard/index.pl?read=21716

...complete with an email address, mail address, phone, and fax:

WORLD PACIFIC
[email protected]
2539 East Pender Street
Vancouver, British Columbia
Canada, V5K 2B4
tel: 604-518-7886
fax: 604-357-1460

Presumably you could contact them and ask'em more about their school(s)in Japan, faster than one of DavesESLcafe's members can Google it for you.

If you're looking for an experienced opinion of their help-wanted ad, here's a point-by-point breakdown of the ad listed above:

30 contact hours: That's 5 more than usual. "Up to 25 hours" is normal, with the exception of Nova (which requires 40 classroom hours, but doesn't require any lesson preparation).

-FREE!!! Fully furnished accommodations (5-10 minutes from the school) provided by the school.at the cost of the school 62,000 yen ($552 USD)
Beware of anyone who uses that many exclamation points. In reading this line, I'm unclear on whether the school is offering to cover your security deposit and key-money (thousands of bucks... roughly a third or less of schools will do this for you), or whether they're offering to cover the rent too. If the latter, I'm stunned, because usually only desperate schools in the (relatively inexpensive) countryside will offer to give you an apartment free. In Tokyo, it doesn't seem likely....but then, $550 a month for an apartment in Tokyo already seems unlikely, unless it's a carboard box on a streetcorner. $550 is normal for a 1~2 br apt in most suburbs, but not in inner cities.

- Salary from 260,000 yen per month ($2180 USD)
Normal entry-level is 250,000 yen, so the pay's 4% above normal, but remind yourself that the classroom hours are 12% more than normal.

-reimbursement of airfare up to 150,000 yen
Doesn't say if this is given when you arrive, or if it's return-air-fare, or reimbursement for flying here...but paid when the contract's finished in a year or two.

-half of the cost of health insurance during the second year of employment
This is a nice feature. In your first year, national health insurance is trivially inexpensive-- maybe $40 a year. In your second year, it skyrockets to perhaps 2x or 3x that.

-10 Paid vacations, and about 15 days of national holidays.
Squire, this sucketh mucus through a rusty pipe. Although most Japanese office workers only get 4~10 days of sickday/vacation per year (plus national holidays), it's normal for an "eikaiwa" (English conversation school) to offer significantly more-- but to force you to take the 3~4 weeks of vacation during the lemming-rush seasons when national holidays occur ("Golden Week", "O-Bon", and "Christmas/New-year's") and no students will come in anyway.

-Students from 7-16 years of age
The kids under 10 will be energetic, enthusiastic...fun. The older kids will might be lifeless hulks, embarrassed to speak above a whisper. It's mildly uncommon that the school doesn't mention adult classes. Perhaps they don't cater to older clients, or perhaps their current staff doesn't enjoy teaching kids. (I've known a number of teachers who dread kids' classes. Dunno why.)

-Working visa provided, we will help you apply for one
-12 month contract required
Both these lines are perfectly normal.

I don't see anything to worry about, except perhaps that they don't mention whether there're required office hours (non-teaching), what you might be required to do during non-teaching office hours, and perhaps most importantly, whether there're any long commutes to teaching locations other than the main school "5-10 minutes from" your apartment. Many of the undesirable schools will force you to make the most incredible voyages between classes, but not consider that time as part of your job. Likewise, occasionally schools will place unreasonable demands on you outside of classtime, but during "required office hours"-- for example, if you have a class at 10am and the next is at 4pm, they might expect you to stay in the school and make yourself available for any student who wanders in and wants to chat in English or have you correct their homework/memoirs/email/whatever.

[sethness]

here http://www.teachoverseas.ca/Jobs/index.pl?read=21717 is a nearly identical ad for a couple of teaching jobs with World Pacific in Osaka.
The 2 differences are

1) the salary is 250,000 yen (normal), about $100 less than the Tokyo job.
2) the description says you're responsible for making lesson plans when you're not teaching-- that's true for about half the English conversation schools. (The other half have rigid lesson-plans designed by someone else.)

[Atlas*]

thankyou for your helpful replies.
especially for breaking down the position for me. that is the same ad that i had seen and was a little suspect of some points. i will contact them for more details and can update here when i find out more. at first i was thinking that it might be a dispatch type company, but now am unsure.
well i will say more when i know more.
thankyou again.