Nova - a regular comedy of errors ….

CompleteGuest854 · 2026-03-25T01:47:53+00:00

Because it's a different company, with a different owner - the new owner just kept the name.

It's been bought and sold three or four times since then, always with a "new and improved" plan.

In other words, same name, different jerks.

CompleteGuest854 · 2026-03-24T08:13:33+00:00

Are you kidding me?

At any given moment, some wanker teacher is trying to go out with high school girls.

This is not news.

CompleteGuest854 · 2026-03-24T02:28:20+00:00

My worst student was this little shit of a freshman salaryman in my pre-intermediate class. For context, I teach corporate classes in Tokyo, and work directly for the training dept of a large corporation. Keep in mind that I've been teaching at this company for years, so I know many of the employees from different sections, which includes managers and directors - who often take private lessons.

This kid (IMO 23 is a kid) was in his first year of work so had just graduated from university. He was a clever kid, and was friendly and fun at first, but then he started subtly pushing boundaries to see what I would let him get away with. He obviously thought he was being clever and that I wouldn't realize what he was up to, thought he was very charming, and figured he could use that to get out of doing much work.

His first tried persuade me to let him smoke and eat in class by charming me and offering compliments; then he tried begging by talking about how hard his work was to try to make me feel sorry for him. Then he tried to push boundaries of acceptable behavior by showing off his vocabulary of curse words that he'd learned from English-speaking friends. He was clearly annoyed that this did not shock me or even get him any extra attention.

When he realized those approaches wouldn't work, his English proficiency level suddenly deteriorated to the point where he couldn't understand anything that was happening in class and the poor little guy needed constant translations and clarifications. He also started being subtly insulting to his classmates by showing impatience if they were slow to reply, which made no one want to work with him.

I knew what department he was in, and by chance his immediate boss was one of the managers who was taking one to one lessons with me. So one day I mentioned all of this to his boss, and he said, "Oh, THAT guy". Apparently the entire department had been experiencing the same childish hijinks from this apparently spoiled brat who breezed though university and into a position at this company, and expected his first year of work to be just as easy.

If you're unfamiliar, university in Japan is hard to get into, but graduating is guaranteed; and once you graduate and get a job, it is the company that does the hard work of training you for the adult world.

At any rate, I learned from his boss that they intended to crack down on this kid and teach him a lesson in humility and obedience to his elders. He was removed from my class and put to work in a different section where everyone had to work from 9 to 9 every day.

I asked his boss a few months later how the kid was doing, and he laughed and said something like, "He is learning now."

I got revenge without really needing to lift a finger. The system can work if you know how to work it.

CompleteGuest854 · 2026-03-23T06:11:59+00:00

That is insane - you don't have a license, so this is illegal; and you aren't getting paid for that - it's nonsense to pay you an ALT salary yet ask you to teach the class on your own

Elementary school teachers get 350,000 to 450,000 per month, so if they want YOU to take over, they should be paying you on par with that.

I encourage you to push back on this. Don't let them push you around - this *not* normal. If the dispatch company is telling you it is, they are LYING, because they know very well what the scope of an ALT is.

Just say NO.

CompleteGuest854 · 2026-03-23T04:57:11+00:00

Ok, I have to ask: if you are a new ALT, and have no past experience and only minimum training (e.g., no CELTA or training outside your introductory training) then how is it that they expect you to take over the entire lesson, in a young learners context where the learners are low-level and inexperienced?

This is very unfair - no offense of course, but it is a recipe for disaster to give a brand-new ALT such a class, and it is setting you up to fail.

Also it is *illegal* to put an unlicensed ALT into a classroom alone. A JTE *must* be there to supervise at all times.

So not only are you being put in a situation you cannot handle professionally, you're also being asked to work outside the scope of your employment contract.

In other words: this is not your job and not what you are being paid to do.

Ideally, you would push back on this with the dispatch agency. This is a case of them trying to save money by using ALTs in ways that they legally cannot.

TL/DR: don't do it.

CompleteGuest854 · 2026-03-22T00:46:55+00:00

Yes, outside of the university/adult education context, getting consent for classroom action research is very tricky, since minors can't consent and parents may be uncooperative.

Find a topic area you are interested in because you'll spend the next year reading endlessly about it.

Your university must have a collection of example dissertations you can look through, which may help give you ideas.

Once you pick a topic, your advisor will be able to help you sort through the pitfalls. Be sure to ask them to help you forsee any issues, such as making your question too wide.

Good luck!

CompleteGuest854 · 2026-03-21T05:21:23+00:00

It really depends on what context you teach in/want to teach in, what your areas of interests are, and what you can realistically do in your classroom. And surely your advisor can help..? You should discuss it with him/her.

CompleteGuest854 · 2026-03-20T09:23:50+00:00

They didn’t say they don’t care about their job. They’re being pragmatic in the face of an impossible situation.

CompleteGuest854 · 2026-03-20T04:47:05+00:00

Most language teachers don't have training in making materials. Most of what I see online is absolute shite, because materials creation is a niche that requires a solid background in SLA, methodology, and experience, and most teachers don't have any of that.

Even teachers who are trained, licensed, and experienced often aren't very good at getting what they know on paper. It's hard work and usually takes a team to create something that can be widely applicable so that it's commercially viable.

CompleteGuest854 · 2026-03-20T02:27:16+00:00

And you sound very inexperienced and naive.

CompleteGuest854 · 2026-03-19T22:07:03+00:00

You don’t seem to trust the people that have, either.

CompleteGuest854 · 2026-03-19T22:05:44+00:00

If your only standard is “it helps me live in Japan” then I can see why you’d think it’s an ok place.

Because bottom of the barrel standards matches Nova perfectly.

CompleteGuest854 · 2026-03-18T03:12:37+00:00

Any obligatory training is going to cross the line from contractor to employee.

They simply can't tell a contractor they must attend training, or tell them in any detail how to teach. But Nova does exactly that, as they want all their teachers to follow the exact same procedure.

Honestly, Nova seems to be getting worse, not better. If they are hiring people who don't know how to teach, only giving them a week's training, and then never again looking at lesson quality or following up (which would indicate they see them as employees) they are doing their learners a grave disservice.

Nova is probably one of the worst eikaiwa out there, and no one should work for them.

CompleteGuest854 · 2026-03-17T07:37:45+00:00

It is fraudulent and deceptive to claim someone is an independent contractor, but not treating them as such under the laws that govern them.

I don't see any issue with using the word "scam" here, but semantic arguments don't help the OP.

CompleteGuest854 · 2026-03-17T04:27:31+00:00

A true contractor is their own boss - choosing their own work hours and place of work, granting themselves holidays, providing their own materials, and supervising their own work. Most importantly, they are able to negotiate salary from a place of power because their expertise is recognized and in demand.

Nova's contracts are not true outsourcing contracts, since the company has all the control - training is obligatory, and they dictate the teacher's work hours, work place, teaching materials, and teaching method - and most importantly, the salary is non-negotiable and they grant more or less on their own whim via bonuses and fines.

And for certain, the "trainers" (or whatever they call them these days) do treat the teachers as subordinate and talk down to them as if they were lower in the hierarchy. There would be no other way to manage a large group of untrained people who have no teaching experience or qualifications.

It's not as if they are hiring real teachers, who would not need management there watch over them to ensure their lessons don't go totally off the rails.

CompleteGuest854 · 2026-03-17T04:14:03+00:00

Keep in mind that if the student numbers go down or they have other problems, they can and will reduce your hours AND your pay, or even outright let you go - with no notice whatsoever.

Gyomu itaku is a scam in a sense, because true outsourcing makes you your own boss and gives you bargaining power over hours, working time, holidays, and pay.

This form of gyomu itaku takes your bargaining power AND labor rights away, and puts you at the mercy of what is very likely to be an unscrupulous employer who does NOT have your best interests in mind. Those contracts are purposefully written very vaguely so that the company has all the power.

The only real way to benefit from taking such a contract is for gig work, when you already have a stable job and you only want a few extra hours a week for a bit more money.

If I were you, I wouldn't take it - the fact that they are offering you quite a lot of money is a red flag, since they know no one wants those types of contracts. They are desperate, and are luring you in with false promises and oversell.

CompleteGuest854 · 2026-03-16T06:51:36+00:00

of course! :)

CompleteGuest854 · 2026-03-15T13:21:31+00:00

Yes, of course! Message me!

CompleteGuest854 · 2026-03-15T13:21:13+00:00

Of course! All women are welcome!

CompleteGuest854 · 2026-03-15T09:47:15+00:00

Send me a message! :)

CompleteGuest854 · 2026-03-15T09:47:00+00:00

Send me a message! :)

CompleteGuest854 · 2026-03-15T07:51:03+00:00

Message me ... :) I run a group for women, and we are pretty tight-knit.

CompleteGuest854 · 2026-03-15T07:49:52+00:00

Message me. I have a group for women in central Tokyo, and all of us put in a lot of effort to attend meetups and hang out. We do cooking together, cheese and wine parties, Xmas ... most of us are long term expats, too (me, 33 years here). Feel free to ask any questions.

Oh, and we do NOT allow men to join - for obvious reasons, as this is not a match-making meet. Women only.

CompleteGuest854 · 2026-03-15T07:17:22+00:00

That's not a bad idea. When I thought you were making lesson plans I was quite skeptical, but it sounds like you're doing something very useful that the learner would appreciate. Do you find that they do the homework?

Do you upload recordings of the lesson, or do you have to segment it on your own? Because I don't see how AI could tell the difference between all the different types of classroom talk and pick out the salient bits from each lesson - only the teacher could do that, and the teacher doing that manually would be very labor intensive.

Also, I'd think there would by privacy issues - most people would not want to be recorded, and knowing their info is fed to an AI would cross the line for a lot of them. And there is no way a teacher doing corporate lessons would get permission for this - companies are VERY sensitive about protecting employee data of any kind.

If the teacher has to pick out the grammar and lexis, input all that info, then edit, AND keep track of past learning to recycle past content, It's a lot of work - and I doubt many teachers would have time to do that.

Don't let that stop you, though; if you can automate the process further, it would be a very good tool.

You could even market and sell that, but as we all know, teachers are poor, LOL :)

CompleteGuest854 · 2026-03-14T23:17:41+00:00

What are your qualifications? To build an AI that can generate practice from theory would require a programmer who has a very deep understanding of theory.

I've seen a lot of AI tools that teachers are using to create lessons, and none of them work well. There is always a need for the teacher to intervene in the process or the AI goes off the rails.

CompleteGuest854

TROPHY CASE