Nova Page 3

Fasten your seatbelts, this could be a long and rough ride.

I worked for NOVA for nearly two years, from May 1999 to April 2001. I had lived in Japan before as an exchange student, and minored in Japanese (my college didn't offer a major so I took what I could get) so I thought I'd try working in Japan; you know, the whole being-on-your-own-on-the-other-side-of-the-world thing... well, Forrest Gump said it best, "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get".

I had my interview and orientation in Boston, as they have a recruiting office there. Sadly, I was more well-informed about Japan than the leader of the presentation, so the other interviewees ended up directing their questions to me. The things they showed us about NOVA, like their F1 racing division, their multimedia division, their communications division, the housing and insurance they provide for their foreign employees (more on this later)... it seemed pretty damn good. NOVA seemed like a fairly large, stable company that had its eyes on the future. Well, as long as the future holds fat ass loads of money.

I was hired on the spot that day. The second interviewer looked at my CV, and said, "You've lived in Japan before. You also speak Japanese. So, where do you want to be placed, and what school do you want to work at?" and that was the extent of my interview. No questions about my command of English. No Grammar test or anything like that. Just, "Oh, you went to Japan before. You're a native speaker of English. You're hired!"

A few months later, I arrived at the airport in Japan and was whisked away to another orientation. But not before I had to take over for the nitwit they sent to meet us new arrivals. He was trying to explain to a shipping company where to send our luggage (so we wouldn't have to lug it all the way to our apartments), but he couldn't speak Japanese and didn't even have our addresses printed out in Japanese for the shippers to use. That whole episode didn't seem very professional, and the guy I had to step in for seemed peeved that the new guy had the advantage with the language. Remember what they say about first impressions... it holds true about 90 percent of the time.

In the following days, we had our so-called training. Training at NOVA amounts to two and a half days of basically figure-it-out-yourself-ESL teaching. The trainer told us things like, "At NOVA, we use an eight-step approach to a lesson. Here are the eight steps and eight definitions (hands out card stock cut outs). You have three minutes to talk together and match them up." Almost all of the training was like that, so it was pretty much hit-or-miss, and at the end of the time limit the trainer gave us a brief summary of the correct answer and then moved on to something else, again and again. The second day of this half-assed training we had to teach half of a lesson. Let me ask you something. In any of your own classroom experiences, have you ever had a teacher in training teach HALF of a lesson and then take off, with the original (or usually scheduled) teacher prancing in and finishing up? Personally, I haven't, and thought this system was flawed. The third day of training, we had to teach a few lessons back to back, by ourselves, with the trainer or another teacher looming over our shoulders outside of the cubby-hole sized fishbowl classrooms (the rooms are about 6 foot square, with three foot walls and windows that go almost to the ceiling, all around). Nerve-racking. Then the next day we were full-fledged NOVA teachers, and were sent to our assigned schools where we worked from then on. I was thinking, "Three days of half-assed training and now I'm a TEACHER? How much are the students paying for this? Do they know about this?" The answer is of course NO.

I have to be honest though. When I went to my school, which was Kuzuha on the Keihan line between Osaka and Kyoto, the other teachers went out of their way to help me adjust and find my niche in the school. I didn't have such a warm reception at the training school, nor at some of the other schools where I worked overtime or was transferred to (more about that later). For the first year, there was a very good atmosphere at that school; between the teachers and the students, the teachers and the staff, and the students and the staff. This was a rarity as I would discover in time. But, all good things must end sooner or later...

The first problem I encountered was when I met one of my friends from my exchange student days in the hallway at NOVA. We hadn't seen each other for nearly a year, and naturally were pretty excited. As it was, the student, (N), and myself had a mutual friend, (Y), who N hadn't heard from in a while. I happened to have Y's phone number, so I offered to give it to N, and she said sure. Well, the Japanese manager was eavesdropping on our conversation, which was in Japanese (as I had always talked to N in Japanese in our previous relationship at school and whatnot). So the manager said "You should speak English." I replied "You should mind your own business." Well... she didn't like that. So, she filed a complaint against me. About three days later, the Foreign Personnel Area Manager paid a visit to our school, and suddenly one of my scheduled classes was switched out and I had a meeting with him. In very condescending language I was informed that a complaint had been lodged against me for violating the teacher's contract by exchanging phone numbers with a student in the hopes to engage in an outside-of-school relationship, which is strictly forbidden, as clearly stated in the said contract. I was pretty angry about being accused of something that was not anywhere near the truth, so I calmly explained to the man what really happened. He didn't seem to believe me at first, but when I took out my phone and offered to call the student in question and suggested he ask what we talked about, he backed down and said he would talk to the school manager and try to clear things up. I didn't really feel like he was on my side from the beginning, and was pretty disappointed at the juvenlile manner in which this situation was handled. But, this is the way most things are dealt with at NOVA.

The teacher's contract is always a source of debate, and is continually under fire from various teacher's unions in Japan. One clause in this contract stipulates that teachers are in no form or manner allowed to associate with students outside of the classroom. Especially forbidden are personal relationships and dating. So, if we meet a student by chance in a convenience store and start up a normal conversation like most people do, if a staff member happens to see it, teachers run the risk of having complaints filed against them, and having to justify themselves in the face of very unprofessional managers. Teachers do end up hanging out with students, and a fair number of Japanese staff simply turn their heads and pretend to see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil... but it seems that the staff love to have some kind of card up their sleeve that they can use against teachers when it's convenient to do so. That's one thing that really struck me about the majority of the Japanese staff at NOVA, the way they like to smile in your face and act cute and nice, but as soon as you turn your back they seem to be thinking about how they can work you over.

This brings me to an important point. NOVA is really two companies: the Japanese staff side, which is solely concerned with sales; and the Foreign staff side, which is the teachers and other non-Japanese. These two sides are almost perfectly separated from each other in most situations, as the teacher's and the staff's areas are usually in spearate rooms if not buildings, and because the majority of the Japanese staff couldn't hold a simple conversation in English, and the majority of the non-Japanese staff are at a similar lack of ability with Japanese. 9 times out of 10, I was asked to be a sort of translator for teachers and staff, in various situations both in and out of school. This is not a good way to run an establishment which employs people of different nationality and language. But NOVA's main concern is NOT the promotion of cross-cultural understanding or communication, no matter how much their TV commercials try to convince you. They are solely concerned with taking the student's hard earned money and sticking it in their bank accounts, bottom line. Staff who can't properly communicate with the teachers can not properly relay feedback to the students about how to improve their English. But the main goal of the staff during these so called "counseling" sessions is not promoting the well-being of the student; the goal is to get the student to sign a new contract, or buy the TV telephone for lessons at home (which suck anyway), or to use the NOVA Academy so they can go on a study trip abroad (terribly overpriced and too short to be of any real learning value). Simply put, the goal of the staff is sales. Truly caring for your students in this environment is pretty difficult and downright annoying. But most of the teachers at NOVA are just floating their way through a one-year contract, and then they float off somewhere else to waste time in some other meaningless environment, so they simply don't care one way or another. As long as ther! e is a steady source of beer money, hey, who cares, man? This! is pretty much the essence of NOVA. A staff of money hungry, overworked Japanese, coupled with an entourage of under-trained, ill-informed pseudo-alcoholics who basically put themsleves on autopilot and coast through their 8 classes day in and day out (until their contract is up and then they disappear). Two separate but equally inefficient halves of the number one monster Engish factory in Japan.

Near the end of my second year, almost all of the teachers who worked at Kuzuha when I started to work there had gone on to greener pastures, and the school's staff had been rearranged about five times as well. Needless to say, the place was nothing like it had been, and I was getting pretty bored with the same thing day after day. About this time, another mysterious complaint was filed against me, regarding the way in which I corrected a student's mistake in class. This time, the Area Manager didn't come to scoff at me, but the new Assistant Trainer gave me a talking to. It went something like this: "A student, we won't tell you who, complained that your correction technique was too aggressive and made her feel embarrassed in front of her classmates. So take this as a warning to clean up your act. Any questions can be directed to the Area Manager by fax. Dismissed." Kind of like telling a child he's being punished for something bad that he did, but not giving details so the child will know exactly what behavior to correct, no? I was a bit more aggressive with this complaint, and almost got out of hand trying to get the AT to see things how I saw them. Eventually he agreed that the whole thing was pretty vague, and that I was doing an exceptional job otherwise, and the "meeting" concluded at that point. I started thinking about looking for work elsewhere at this point.

Let me say something about the housing now. NOVA does provide a place to live for teachers upon arrival in Japan. But this system is full of holes, and is another part of the "profit or die" mentality. The apartments that NOVA rents to teachers are generally 3LDKs, which means 3 small bedrooms and one shared living-dining-kitchen room which is about 7 feet by 12 feet. EACH occupant is charged either 65,000 or 69,000 yen depending on where you live, which totals either 195,000 or 207,000 yen. The next-door neighbor told me that he was paying 70,000 for his apartment, which was the same layout as ours. Did I miss something there? NOVA was getting 125,000 yen over and above the amount of rent that the normal apartments were going for. Granted, our utilities were included in our rent, but for a comparable apartment with 3 occupants, the utilities do NOT come to 125,000 yen a month. Actually it's something like 25,000 yen. So what is NOVA doing with the extra 100,000 yen? And there were 2 apartments they owned in our building, and all of the other teachers on the Keihan line who were at NOVA-owned housing were in similar situations. After I found my own housing, I was really shocked at how much they must be raking in off the unsuspecting teachers. That really annoyed me, that the company I worked for was so money hungry that it would virtually steal money from its own workers. But then I haven't said anything about the insurance they offer either.

JMA, or Japan Medical Assistance, is another of the myriad offshoots of NOVA's parent company. For 6,000 yen a month, teachers are entered into the company insurance program. Now, the medical system in Japan is far, far less expensive than in the States (what I was used to), so generally, things like colds and stomach viruses and so on can be taken care of for under 5,000 yen. So the cost to the average person is not that high. NOVA's insurance is the pay-it-all-yourself-and-we'll-re-imburse-you-fo r-what-we-think-is-ok type. Which translates into a system where it's pointless to show your insurance card to the doctor's office because you have to pay for the entire deal up front anyhow, and then you probably won't be paid back for it in any event. 6,000 yen a month for health insurance seems pretty good, but when you experience the system, it's better to get your own insurance from a more reliable professional source.

NOVA also doesn't deduct the proper residence taxes from teacher's pay. Given that most of the teachers get sick of it and go home after their one year is up, this is generally not a problem. However, for anyone intending to remain in Japan for more than one year, this is a major inconvenience. To be suddenly confronted by a letter from the tax office which says you owe about 80,000 yen in residence taxes is no small surprise. Luckily, monthly payments can be arranged, but this is something that NOVA should have the initiative to take care of from the beginning. VERY unprofessional. Things like this would amount to prison terms in other countries.

Well, as I was saying, I was thinking about looking for other employment, when the next (and final) incident occured. I received a call from the Area Manager that a parent of one of the high-school girls who was a student at my school had called and complained about me. Apparently, her daughter was consistently coming home late at night, and her school performance was going downhill. When the mother confronted her daugher about her behavior, the daughter said that she was spending her time with one of her teachers from NOVA, and my name was mentioned. Now, this accusation was blatantly untrue, because I lived in the same apartment complex as the Assistant Trainer of my school so we were always going home on the same train to the same building, every night. But, the facts were never looked into, and I was told that upon my return from vacation (I was just about to leave to go back to the States for a month), I would be working at another school, which was the same school where the Area Manager worked. I was furious! I had been accused of nothing short of pedophilia, and with no solid proof of any misconduct I received deisciplinary action and was reprimanded. I contacted the teacher's union in Osaka, and was informed of what my legal rights were, and wasted no time in contacting the Area Manager again and demanding an investigation in to this complaint. As usual, no names were mentioned, and there was a disturbing lack of any congruent or cohesive explanations or evidence. Nevertheless, I was transferred and also received a schedule change and a pay cut. This kind of thing back home would end up in a lawsuit, or a mass murder involving automatic weapons. This brings me to a sad but true point about foreigners in Japan in general. We are second-class pseudo-citizens, who will never be equal to the Japanese, no matter how long we live here, and no matter how good our command of Japanese language, customs and culture may be. Additionally, we are a dime a dozen, easily replaceable and therefore not well taken care of in most employment situations. One of my friends came up with the idea that we are viewed as zoo animals, just higher up the evolutionary scale than the primates, and when we can speak Japanese, the reaction is always like "Oh look at the Amerimonkey! How quaint!" And if a foreigner can use chopsticks, amazing! Their own 2 year old children can use chopsticks, but they never think about that. Sad but true.

So, I had decided to look for a new job, seriously, when it came time for my annual contract evaluation meeting, which was postponed twice, and finally happened one month and one day before my contract would expire; the last day they could give me the evaluation and still be legally within the guidelines they specified in the teacher's contract. At these meetings, usually the titled teacher directly superior to the teacher being evaluated presides, and basically gives feedback sourced from observations of the teacher's classes and comments from the Japanese manager of the teacher's assigned school. But, for my evaluation, the Area Manager and the Regional Manager were both present. They handed me a letter from the Main Foreign Personnel Manager, someone who I had never met, which said that I would have to present a written apology for my contract violation to be considered for renewal, and that renewal would be difficult as I was engaging in acts that were harmful to the image of the company. I couldn't believe the audacity! So I lost my temper and stood up, and basically told the fat bastards what they could do with their contract, and walked out. I handed in my one day notice the next day.

Since that time I have found employment at another of the English Factories... but I have had an immeasurably better experience at the place I currently am employed. I'll call it "E". Those of you in the know will easily figure out where I work... What's so good about my current job compared to NOVA? National holidays are paid days off. We get the same consecutive holidays as the rest of Japanese workers; 2 weeks New Years, 7 days Golden Week, 2 weeks Summer (O-bon) Holiday. we work less hours daily, and the time between classes is truly our time (no filling out student files or frantically planning the next lesson). The staff really care about the students, and while sales are important they are not the only aspect of the Japanese staff's job. The staff try to form healthy working relationships with the teachers, and even schedule get togethers on cpmpany-wide days off. Teachers and staff can hang out with students in their time off if they want to, as long as an amount of responsibility is used. And so on. . .