It’s been about a month and a half since I first got my first job here in Japan: teaching English at a “juku,” or “cram school” as it might be translated into English. The name of the place is A+ English School and they actually have a website. Yes, that’s me in that video on the front page. No, it’s not that embarrassing. :P Clicking around the site, you might notice it’s primarily a school for young children. We have students as young as 3 years old, all the way up to about 11 years old. In the course of working there, I’d had chances to teach and play with all of them. If you’re curious about teaching in Japan, or what kind of opportunities there will be for you to work as a foreign exchange student, then this post is for you!

It all started at the beginning of the October. I was starting my second semester here, which I hadn’t originally planned for (I extended), so my parents and I decided it would be a good idea for me to try and find a part-time job. I’m certainly not one to be adverse to working – I’ve had several jobs since I turned 16, working everywhere from Burger King to GameStop to factories. Additionally, I had already gotten my visa exemption to work in Japan, so I decided that first week of classes I would ask around and see what I could come up with. First thing I did was ask in the International Center and see if any jobs were available for foreign students. I was told by several people that this is the best thing to do, but unfortunately nothing was available at the moment. Oh well, there’s still plenty of other places that I can check out.

It just so happened around this time that I was in Hannah Sawada-sensei’s office asking about possibly signing up for this special internship class (I didn’t end up getting accepted). In the course of our discussion, I brought up the fact that I was looking for a part-time job and she surprised me by saying that she had a contact at a particular English school who was looking for foreign students to help out. Of course, I jumped all over it. I was surprised that, given that so many new students had just come to Hirosaki University that she hadn’t mentioned the offer to any of them, or that they hadn’t asked her about work (Sawada-sensei is the faculty adviser for students from English-speaking countries). I just chalked it up to luck and/or coincidence. The name she wrote down on the back of a business card was for one “Sakuraba-san.” Sawada-sensei told me that she ran an English school near the station. There was also an email address written, so as soon as I got home I set about getting in touch with this Sakuraba-san. I fired off an email to her and ended up getting a response almost right away. She said that she was interested in meeting me and seeing about a job! I quickly agreed to a meeting time of tomorrow out in front of the station. She would meet me there and then we would walk together to the school.

The next day after classes I made my way to the station front and anxiously shifted around, eyeing every middle-aged looking woman and trying to discern who I was here to meet. It didn’t take long to figure out who, though. I got a call from a number I didn’t know, answered it and then looked to my left. She came up to me with her phone against her ear, a pretty good way to figure out who someone is in a crowd. Sakuraba-san struck me as a very kind person, and indeed she is. However, considering that she runs an English school, I was surprised to find that she didn’t really speak English well. From this point forward, we started conversing in Japanese and I got the typical reaction of shock at being able to hold any kind of conversation in Japanese. We made our way to the school together, which was nestled behind one of the hotels out next to the station.

Once we got to the school, I had something of an interview. She gave me a tour of the school, introduced me to a couple different teachers (all of the full-time people are Japanese, but have really great English) and then sat me down to get my information – name, address, my visa exemption, etc.. I was really proud of myself because I was able to do the entire interview in Japanese. I was surprised by this, since you might think that interviewing for a job in Japanese would require total fluency, but I was able to impress upon Sakuraba-san that I would be a good teacher and that I was flexible when I could work despite my then-and-still limited Japanese skills.

So that’s how I ended up getting the job. Now just what exactly does teaching at a juku entail? I’ll talk about a typical shift now. I usually work for three hours at a time, three times a week. I show up early, maybe around 15-20 before classes are set to start to check with the other teachers and ask them what we are going to be doing today. Then we go into the lessons proper. The age of the kids goes from youngest at the start of the day to 5th graders at the end of the day. The focus of my particular juku is on conversation – the school brands itself as a “eikaiwa,” or English conversation school. Because of this, most of the emphasis in the classes is on speaking. At most, there are only three or four student per class. My largest class is actually one with preschoolers, with six kids. Classes start with a “warm-up” period, where we ask the kids their name, age, weather, etc., after which we have a review period, where we work on what was learned last lesson. Following this, we go into the class’s new material, usually by playing a game or doing an activity of sometime. For the young kids, especially, the teachers are always looking for ways to turn things into an activity that won’t be boring.

Considering that I’m the only native speaker of English in the classroom, I have to always be speaking in English and trying to find ways to encourage the students to speak English as well. This is probably my biggest challenge in the classroom. The school evaluates the students almost entirely on their ability to speak and understand, so making sure that the focus in the class is on speaking and not just explaining grammar points is important. I’m pretty sure that a juku for middle school and high school students would be just the opposite, however, since the emphasis in English classes at Japanese schools is on grammar and reading. If you do find work in a juku, make sure you know what kind of material you will be teaching so you can be sure you’ll be comfortable with it. As for myself, I love to just talk with the kids and play and interact with them. It’s too bad that the actual Japanese school classes can’t be like this, but it’s just too impractical considering the number of native speakers of English available in Japan.

There are more than just jukus out there if you really want to find part-time work as a student teaching English here. Occasionally, high schools put out offers to foreigners to teach during special Saturday classes. Once person I know is doing this. In addition, you can just teach privately. Last semester, I knew of one student doing this, he met with someone twice a week for a couple hours and charged 2000 yen per hour for it. If  you are really determined to teach here, I’m confident that there are the opportunities available.

That just about wraps it up for this one. If you have any specific questions for me, just leave them down below in a comment or send me an email, my address is on the right side of the site.