- Joined
- Apr 9, 2020
- Messages
- 606
- Impact
- 292
Ok Dave i agree with your businesses and tourist zones being open but i 100% disagree with your opinion on English teachers.Hard to estimate or know for sure, but the tourist zones are, I'd say, about 30-40% operational with reduced hours and staff.
As far as English teachers go, there is still recruitment going on as well as schools offering lessons. While I know from experience, there has been a decline in new enrollments as well as a couple suffering some losses of students. However, it still doesn't stop smaller schools from profiting, especially with foreign teachers, as people are still willing to pay 10,000-40,000 yen per month for 4-8 lessons per month (higher when you go with the conglomerate schools), as their companies reimburse them for learning due to it being a vital skill for employees as tourism is heavily reliant on breaking the language barrier to garner new customers.
I disagree because i am an English teacher who is laid off. I can tell 100% truthfully there are no schools offering lessons and there are no English schools open at this time. I have been an English teacher on island for 10 yrs and i know for a fact that all English school businesses don't have any or maybe a few native English speaking teachers on island. Yes they are recruiting for new teachers but there is none available. Businesses that want there employees to learn English stopped last year, example holowork, if I spelled that right which i did that to, those companies have done away with those in house teachers and turned to a dvd classroom for English and for those companies to be reimbursed they should be arrested for stealing money and its a bigger scandal then you think. Problem Okinawa is having with Native Teachers is contracts and pay. The pay isn't what it use to be in fact it's lower pay now then it was say 5 yrs ago and the classes are not inviting enough to draw in new Native English teachers. Most all English speaking companies want teachers to teach kids in pre-school centers (day care) from ages 1 to 3 yr olds and teachers don't want those kinds of classes because its not just 5 kids to a class it more like 50 kids to a class and each class is an 1 hr long. For those 1 long classes you only make between 1,000 yen to 2,000 yen a class and by the time paychecks roll around its not what the teachers expected in fact there mouths drop from the site of that pay being so low and after they finish their 1 yr contract they must sign, they leave the company and leave Japan. Getting an English teacher a native English teacher in Okinawa is extremely difficult.
The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of Okinawa.Org.