Many years ago, I used to work at a daycare center as a nurse. I don't know about what other countries' daycare centers are like, but this is one custom my daycare had: GOHOBI SEAL, a reward seal.
So you want to be a teacher? You figure you want to be a certified ESL/EFL teacher and use it to travel around the world teaching English? You can do it, of course if you have the correct credentials. You'd think working at one of these big schools in Japan, you'd get them. However, the only training you get is in-house, with in-house developed training material.
TOZA used to be a mid-sized eikaiwa until it went bankrupt in 1998. The TOZA situation built up slowly over a period of a few months. I didn't know it at the time, but all of the teachers at TOZA hadn't been paid their complete salaries in 4 months. They had received 20%, 30% depending on how bad their situation was; usually just enough to pay the rent at the gaijin house. They hired me in February of 1998 and nobody told me that they hadn't been paid since Christmas. I was surprised that nobody told me. Their response was," If we told you, would you have worked here?"
Background: We were initially surprised to find an email from GEOS. The subject line didn't bode well, either. However, as you read, you'll see that the missive is in our favor. We appreciate the note and revel even more in the notion that people are coming to our site for information.
Subject: A word to the wise Date: Wednesday, 14 February 2001 19:25:15 +0900
I had to get a day off, which is not the easiest thing to do at Nova, with one week's notice. Of course I could have just called in and said 'not today I have suddenly found a great drinking buddy on the train last night so I won't be up to 7 seniles all day' (the first level at Nova is 7C and the students are rarely beginners so the lessons are frightfully boring for the students unless the teacher acts like a monkey or worse窶蚤 drunk lunatic desperately seeking intelligent interaction), which is what my schedule seemed to be full of at this point.
When I joined GEOS I was a very willing teacher. I would have done almost anything for the company. I thought being a teacher was a noble thing (still do), after all, you're not trying to convince somebody or sell something. I looked forward to a career in the company. The recruiting office in Vancouver had told us all about the wonderful opportunities in the other divisions of GEOS: travel, publishing, management. I figured I'd like to make a go of it. I thought I could be the kind of guy who works for a company. I thought I could get something marketable from the experience.
Many thanks to our Deep Throat for providing these documents. She tells me that these attendance sheets are nothing but a headache for managers when a student asks to see them. They are something that she would never show to a high level student and would use every excuse in the book to keep them from being read. For low level students, she would cover and read them, making up a BS story the whole time. Read them. They speak for themself.
When I was teaching in Chiba, I found out that one of my students was an ex-GEOS manager. There was an instant connection when I told her that I used to work for GEOS as well. We talked about our experiences and this is the result.
So just what was the Odawara GEOS school like? My first impression was when I got off the elevator and saw a mess of GEOS-related pamphlets and hand written posters in thick marker ink. If GEOS was such a huge and established company, why were the managers drawing posters? I mean, the stuff looked like it was prepared for a garage sale. Surely, GEOS could be more professional than that. Didn't image mean anything to the big wigs?
