How to transition from an ALT position to anything else?

14 comments

1. I moved from ALT to juku. Best thing I did.

2. >I’m an awful student and procrastinate a lot

   Honestly, the best advice I can give you is that this is a bad habit you can fix! It takes discipline but if you can break this habit you will be doing yourself a big favor. Also, my advice would be if you plan on staying in Japan for a long time or make it you home, you need go upgrade your skills, which might include getting a masters degree/phd.

   The bigger question would also be this, do you want to teach English as a career or do you want to transition to a different occupation? A lot of people would argue the way things are in the education world that it’s becoming a lot smaller and harder to find good quality jobs that pay well.

3. I think career options are limited in Japan for you until you can speak fluent Japanese and have a marketable skill like accounting.

4. As a person who did 1.5 years in Eikawa and left for greener pastures outside of “English teaching”, my best advice to you is to improve your Japanese skills and develop a marketable skill(s) that isn’t just teaching English. I know a few career ALTs/Eikawa workers in their 40s and 50s who still have poor Japanese skills after more than 20 years here. It is not a pretty picture and they are living on the poverty line while trying to raise their families.

5. The only other foreigner-esque job that an ALT is qualified for is recruiting, but even that has its fair share of issues.

   Otherwise, you have to improve your Japanese.

6. Improve your Japanese and decide your direction to improve your skillset in. For example, if you enjoy working in education then do CPD, Network, conferences, relevant qualifications connected to teaching and deciding the educational path to go down to get a decent teaching job.

7. As someone who has been here about 20 years, please let me know the answer once you find out!

8. Did you teach ELA in your home country? Having an actual license to teach makes you more attractive to schools, but if you want to work at a nice private school as a lead teacher, you’ll probably need to increase your Japanese ability.

   You might get lucky with an international school with only one year of experience.

   If an article 1 school likes you, they can (depending on the prefecture) apply to get you a special teaching license so you could work there as a lead teacher. Most of these places will have you do other teacher related duties (homeroom, lead English extracurriculars, club activities, different school committees), so Japanese language ability is pretty damn important. You’ll be making more than an ALT but the increased workload is significant.

9. If you want to advance in teaching get a teaching license from your home country

10. Number one advice is improve your japanese. Don’t bother with JLPT, as a lot of companies could care less and it really doesn’t help with speaking. I’ve met loads of people passing N2 that can’t speak at all.

    Get loads of conversational practice. When you reach conversational level, then you can start finding work outside of teaching. A good starting point are the factories as you don’t need a lot o japanese.

11. I haven’t seen anyone mention gaijin pot. A legitimate profile on there can get decent amount of attention that lead to job interviews from serious employers in education.

12. Skill up

13. Only been here two years myself so might not be the best advice, but here’s what I’ve picked up from my time.

    Yeah man…get the Japanese up, you’re gonna have to just bite the bullet on the procrastination stuff and run it through. My study advice, grab Genki 1 and follow TokiniAndy’s lesson videos on YouTube (and if you haven’t already know Hiragana and Katakana fluently) and then Genki 2 > Quartet 1 > Quartet 2. That whole process could take you about 15-18 months maybe to get to the end of Quartet 2 which some say is N2 (I’m halfway through Quartet 2 myself)

    Don’t rely too much on the JLPT, on a CV it does help with employability a little, but JLPT exams focus on grammar, kanji, and listening mainly. The ability to communicate yourself will still be tested in your environment every day. That’s not me saying not to get it, definitely do, but it’s not a golden ticket.

    Get networking – It doesn’t have to be going around with a fishing net and finding someone in the field you want to work in, but just building your social circles in Japan like you would any other country has the same positive effect, someone knows someone who knows someone who can help. “It’s about who you know, not always what you know” translates well in every language. This will also help with your Japanese skills as you’ll be able to talk to more locals (I joined a flag and contact American Football team and saw great improvements in my Japanese)

    Looking at what other people have said here and I agree with everyone else too, build transferrable/marketable skills of course and build a profile for employers the look at with interest.

    Also another thing, don’t listen to negative people, nothing to do with employability or anything like that, just a mindset thing. You’ve got people in your corner my guy.

14. As others have mentioned, Japanese proficiency would be a big boost–hell, even Wolt (one of the food delivery services) requires N2 of their delivery dudes.

    Additionally, you mentioned a degree in psychology–is it a Bachelor’s, or advanced? If you have a Master’s, you could consider using that to offer counselling to English speakers. If you have the full Doctorate, you could consider clinical psychology (and then get to prescribe happy pills!)