Teacher Discussion Forums

I am seriously considering teaching English in Japan with either the Nova Group or with AEONet and was wondering if anyone else has worked with either of these groups and, if so, what you thought about them.

Here isn't really the place - you'd do better registering for membership of the International/Job Discussion forums (the application process is a bit more involved than on the Teacher forums, so as to discourage trolls, spamming etc); bear in mind however that anyone asking very general questions (that show little awareness of 'Sticky' threads for FAQs, and little evidence of having used the 'Search' function) will probably be ignored or treated frostily. But in quick reply to your question, I haven't worked for any of the big eikaiwa chains, but there may be benefits to doing so e.g. your professional and at least initial social life could be helped from having the wider circle of colleagues than one would find in a smaller, possibly ailing non-chain school. From what I've gleaned over the past few years on the forums, AEON isn't considered too bad.

There is another thread on this somewhere, I will try and look it up. http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/teacher/v ... ight=japan
I would recommend the smaller schools myself because if you are lucky, they are like a family and you are more with Japanese which to me is the whole reason for going. I tried to avoid the whole exPat scene as much as I could just to improve my Japanese and get a better experience of the country. Six years ago, there were complaints about the big schools because you never get the same students and don't get to know them. They have tickets for the school and can go to any branch at any time and just have lesson number 6 and so on. It means you can see them for lesson 1 and 13 and so on. You must stick to the lesson because they are paying for it that way and even if they didn't understand lesson 12, you have to go on to 13. The teachers said that they had to stay in the school for their full hours because a student might suddenly turn up and they couldn't even go out for lunch. In a small school, you might be able to go to different locations to teach thus varying your day and you will have the same students week in and week out and watch them grow and become their friend. I also heard that the big schools will send you to branches far away and you are not paid for your time to get there, but that is just all hearsay and I don't know if it is true. Check on the job's dicussion group though as Fluffy advises. There is a wealth of information on the Japan section - more than you will ever need to know. I would recommend any school run by David English House.