Question # 14. What are the ESL teaching conditions like in Japan?

Question # 14. What are the working conditions like?

Depending on the number of students the teacher has the working conditions usually amount to a room about the size of your bedroom – roku-jo or hachi-jo.

There might be a table that everyone sits around or the student's might have independent chairs with desks that flip up.

A whiteboard is good…and if you have markers that the teacher before you remembered to put the caps on or did not use all the ink up and forget to tell someone…you are in business.

The students will have their own textbooks or copies of the lesson that you are teaching. Some schools sell their students much to much 'learning material.' The teacher usually has no control over that.

What is needed is a place for the student/s and teacher to sit, a place for the students to write on and a board for the teacher. Many times, I carried copy paper with me and put it on a kitchen table between me and the student to serve as a white board.

Businesses provide conference rooms with long tables for 10-16 people and whiteboards that can sent its contents to a printer.

I have sat there with one student and me at the corner while the rest of the table looked on.

Universities/high schools, middle schools will have very large rooms that can squeeze 40-50 students in them, with a space between rows that the teacher will need to walk sideways to get through.

Chalky greenboards are the standard…and getting 40 future mechanical engineers to engage in a 'conversation class' is a formidable but not impossible task.

Working conditions – expect anything.

What you need – something to study, a place to sit and something to write on.  

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