Ministry Slaps Down Nova

[kusai Jijii]

I always thought the move for English teachers at NOVA was to ask your students to quit and then take private lessons from you on the side for less than they are currently paying. .

I always thought the move for teachers at Nova was to fuck as many of the good looking students as possible. Pure and simple.

[Greji]

[quote="kusai Jijii"]I always thought the move for teachers at Nova was to fuck as many of the good looking students as possible. Pure and simple.]

Quite perceptive of you KJ, except for the fact there was no "good looking" clause! It was open to all.

[ttjereth]

An article with an agenda:
CSM: School's closure in Japan exposes tough times for foreign teachers

I find myself having problems swallowing the lines:

thousands of skilled Western workers

Yes, they are college graduates, but I wonder what percentage of them actually studied anything even vaguely related to Education or TESOL? Having a degree in philosophy, art, business management, etc. doesn't really make you a qualified English teacher in my eyes.

Face it, if you join a company which is only hiring you because you are a warm body that speaks English, you really don't have much room to complain about being treated as such after the fact.

teachers should be treated as professionals rather than tourists who speak a language

I think the phrase "tourists who speak English" is probably a great description for most of the eikaiwa work in Japan. It should actually be in the wanted ads.

WANTED:
Tourists who speak English and can pretend to be teachers or at least keep "students" amused for an hour or two at a time

the image of Japan's English-language schools overseas has been dealt a severe blow

Does their image overseas matter? I mean, again, if people had looked into things while still overseas, and sought out actual information beforehand, I think they probably would have though twice before "severing all ties/throwing away their lives back home" to come and work for Nova...

[kusai Jijii]

Quite perceptive of you KJ, except for the fact there was no "good looking" clause! It was open to all.

Admittedly Boothie, my strike zone for what constitutes as "good looking" is pretty fucking wide. Hey wait. Jack and I DO have something in common. hehhehehehehehehe:rofl:

[obear]

Regarding whether or not NOVA teachers are teachers at all.

Hi,

Well I actually mentioned some of these points on another forum, and was subsequently attacked ( by what I would assume were ex NOVA "teachers").

I think that there are some who are honest with themselves and refer to themselves as "language consultants", to use a euphemism. While others really think of themselves as real teachers. I assume that the attacks I am getting on my posts are from the ladder group.

Most of these people, teachers or not, do fall into that demographic of recent Uni grads, young fresh and dare I say naive?
After all, as ttjerth said, if they had done their homework, they wouldn't have signed up to begin with.

I remember something my teaching instructor told me before I left home

Teacher: What ever you do obear! Don't work for NOVA!
Obear: What's NOVA?
Teacher: Trust me, don't work for NOVA

And well as if I didn't know by now, the proof is in the pudding.

o..

[oyajikun]

I assume that the attacks I am getting on my posts are from the ladder group.

I think the term you are looking for is the latter.Not the ladder.

[FG Lurker]

Regarding whether or not NOVA teachers are teachers at all.

My work is not at all related to the English language industry, but...

From the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary:

Teacher
Pronunciation: 'tE-ch&r
Function: noun
1 : one that teaches]Teach[/url]
Main Entry: teach
Pronunciation: 'tEch
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): taught /'tot/; teach·ing
Etymology: Middle English techen to show, instruct, from Old English t[AE]can; akin to Old English tAcn sign -- more at TOKEN
transitive senses
1 a : to cause to know something <taught them a trade> b : to cause to know how <is teaching me to drive> c : to accustom to some action or attitude <teach students to think for themselves> d : to cause to know the disagreeable consequences of some action <I'll teach you to come home late>
2 : to guide the studies of
3 : to impart the knowledge of <teach algebra>
4 a : to instruct by precept, example, or experience b : to make known and accepted <experience teaches us our limitations>
5 : to conduct instruction regularly in <teach school>
intransitive senses : to provide instruction : act as a teacher

I've met students from NOVA who spoke very good English yet had never lived overseas. While I have no proof that their attendance at NOVA helped improve their English it is a reasonable assumption that they did in fact gain English ability at NOVA. This fits well with definition #1b and definition #2 for the word "teach".

Since (as noted in the above definition) a teacher is one who teaches, it is therefore fair to call the people who taught these students teachers.

The idea of needing a license to teach is a relatively recent thing and actually somewhat bizarre. A license does not make a good teacher any more than a license makes a good driver. Practice, knowledge, and experience are required.

[amdg]

Nice call Lurk.

There's been a bit of NOVA teacher bashing here on this thread that isn't really waranted. Most NOVA teachers (or ECC or whatever) do a pretty good job, and for those 45 mins, or whatever it is for a class, seem to give it their best. They, and the students, are the victims in this story, IMHO.

[kusai Jijii]

Lurk and Amdg,
come on fellas, you gotta be shittin' me...Right guys?
Are you really, seriously, with a straight face, implying that Nova, with its 'cutting edge curriculum' and expertly 'trained' teachers deserve to be considered as part of the plankton feeding vocation that is education?

Stay off the drugs lads.

[ttjereth]

Since (as noted in the above definition) a teacher is one who teaches, it is therefore fair to call the people who taught these students teachers.

I think maybe the distinction intended was "qualified teachers" as opposed to the Nova "warm body, has a pulse" hiring policy.

There are definately some Nova teachers with teaching qualifications/training/experience other than Nova, but the vast majority wouldn't be acceptable as teachers in their own countries (this actually goes for most eikaiwa, not just Nova) and aren't hired by Nova because of their skill or ability to teach (which is largely still unproven at the time they are hired).

I know you are just going after his specific choice of words, and that there is a tendency here (and on the net in general) to pick on spelling mistakes and be overly pedentic about choice of words etc., but I'd imagine you actually do understand what he is trying to say, and the dictionary definitions above are a bit broad, since 1a and 1b qualify practically everyone on the planet as a teacher at some point in their life. (My dad "caused me to know how" to use a toilet and shoot a gun, that doesn't qualify him to teach English in another country) ]
The idea of needing a license to teach is a relatively recent thing and actually somewhat bizarre. A license does not make a good teacher any more than a license makes a good driver. Practice, knowledge, and experience are required.[/quote]

The license isn't supposed to impart the ability to do something (e.g. make a good teacher), but to certify that one has the ability to do something. I doubt many of us would argue that the variety of licensing/qualification schemes throughout the world are successful at accomplishing this, but I figured I'd toss that in there so long as we're being pedantic

[FG Lurker]

I'm not being pedantic. Many adult students (I have no idea about kids) who went to NOVA actually did end up with improved English. I doubt they learned by magic or osmosis, so...

I'm not saying that NOVA was a great company or that all students flourished there. Like most things in life it was neither as good as it could have been nor as bad as some (disgruntled?) people like to make out.

[American Oyaji]

Thanks FGL. You are completely right. (for once:D )

Let me tell you, my interview for Nova was over two hours long and I sweated my suit out. It was the most difficult interview of my life. I literally went home, and took a soggy suit off and took it straight to the cleaners.

This beautiful Maori woman interviewed me. I haven't seen her since, but I remember her name. Kisa Leotolu. I remember her for her beauty and for the hardest damn interview of my life. I was 24 then. I'm 34 now and I still haven't had a harder interview.

She gave me a "questionaire" that took about 30 minutes to complete. I say it was a test. It asked questions about the English language and its structures and forms, and the difference between different flavors of English (from different countries). Then it asked what were some of the difficulties non-English speakers had with English and then what were some of the particular difficulties that Japanese people had with English.

After that was done, for the next hour and a half, she grilled me on each and every answer I gave and made me explain my answer in greater detail and would present examples that she asked me how I would solve. Then she asked me why I thought my solution would work.

I'm glad I followed my mind and did not just throw out bullshit answers that satisfied the teachers at school and college. I answered questions thoughtfully and honestly. If I hadn't, the bullshit I threw out would have been thrown back at me and I would have had nothing to answer back.

So if you've never interviewed for NOVA, don't diss the caliber of instructors they hired. They are not ALL talentless un-qualified schlubs.

And BTW, I did NOT have a college degree. The degree was to satisfy some Japanese ministry requirement for the VISA. Since I did not need the VISA that was waived. And I doubt that I was the only one to have such a difficult interview. That interview taught me a lot about interviews and I have not failed to get a job I've interviewed for since.

And on another note, some of my best students became my best friends. They did not like me because I was so strict at first. But they came to love me later BECAUSE I was so strict. We TAUGHT damn it.
They sent me to another school for a two day training seminar on how to teach Kids. I was then required to instruct on the new curriculum.

So unless you've been a part of NOVA, don't diss it. I know some have been a part of it and hated it, but our school got the job done and loved every moment of it.

[ttjereth]

I'm not being pedantic. Many adult students (I have no idea about kids) who went to NOVA actually did end up with improved English. I doubt they learned by magic or osmosis, so...

I'm not saying that NOVA was a great company or that all students flourished there. Like most things in life it was neither as good as it could have been nor as bad as some (disgruntled?) people like to make out.

I don't really have any particular vested interest in the whole Nova situation one way or the other, I never worked or studied there, although I know people who have worked (Japanese and not) and studied there, and have even tried to help people "study" when they went there.

First I think that it's important to point out that Nova has (had?) different types of classes, sometimes by design, sometimes just because of the teachers, and that a great deal of them were not actually focused on teaching, but on conversation, hence the term eikaiwa.

Of the people I know who studied there at some point, I can honestly say none of them made any significant improvements in their English skills in the time I knew them (some for as long as 7-8 years), and definitely not any improvements equivalent to the amount of money they paid to attend.

The 2 or 3 people I know who attended and speak passable English, spoke that well before attending Nova and used it more to keep in practice than to actually learn anything new (one of them, a teacher when I worked out in the boonies, was one of the odd people who could speak really well, but had never actually left Japan or intensively studied English, and he swears that his English skills all came from the average Japanese Jr. High, High School and College English classes that everyone takes, so obviously there are exceptions to every rule).

I have also honestly, never met a single person who actually learned to speak English (or any of the other languages offered for that matter) by attending Nova, so you have to excuse me if my personal experience to date tends to leave me skeptical on your statement that "Many adult students... who went to NOVA actually did end up with improved English". In fact, the vast majority of those I knew who attended did end up disgruntled, or regretting having spent the money, and many of them were much happier after switching to other schools (Gaba in particular seemed to be well rated).

But, it's also been my experience that the majority of Nova teachers (and other eikaiwa teachers in general, honestly) do not tend to give their best when "teaching", but rather tended to try to find the best ways to kill time to get through lesson periods, and are actually incapable of answering many specific questions students have (especially grammatical) and usually just responded with something along the lines of "I don't know", rather than bothering to possibly research an answer to provide to the student for the next lesson and such.

I'm not disgruntled as such, since as I've said I've never personally worked or studied there, but I do have an overall negative opinion of Nova (and Eikaiwa in general) and I think there is a just as much (more, honestly) anecdotal evidence pointing to Nova being bad, as there is pointing to it having been good. Unless we start providing some sort of hard evidence to back up either onion (which is practically impossible I think) there's really no point in going back and forth about it, or challenging what really ends up amounting to differing opinions.

The one thing I will grant in Nova's favor, is that that they were obviously quite good at sales, and those are the people I would say other enterprising businesses should try and swoop up after all this mess.

However, my original problem with Nova teachers in this latest situation was, and still is, people expecting me (or anyone for that matter) to feel sorry for their poor life choices.:p

[American Oyaji]

You're just throwing around FUD.

"In your experience" my left nut hairs. Your experience is whistling in the wind compared to the many people that experienced NOVA.

Perhaps it was in your area, but we were held to a higher standard in Aomori. Our students learned and we assigned homework. Yes homework because just coming to class did not cut it, one had to study outside the class as well to learn.

I really do not appreciate you trying to paint everything NOVA with your crap stained brush. It is evidenced by the media reports and by the company going under that something smelled in Osaka without a doubt, but the whole company was NOT foul and there were teachers that did their best and there were students that learned. Many of our students left and went on working holidays. Another was able to go the U.S. to learn how to do hair in California. I helped her with her application.
Our students passed the TOEIC and TOEFL. And if they did not we showed the why they did not and had them pass it on the next go around.

Man, I'm not going to argue with you because you're so full of shit. You're having fun slamming on people who work hard for a living.

ALso, many of them have come to love Japan. Sure some came to slag as many J-chicks as they can, no doubt, but I doubt that ALL of the teachers are like that. What about the female teachers? I doubt they were laying up under as many male students as they could.

[Behan]

Just to offer my two cents...

I think that a lot of students improved while I was at Nova, but, as my friend pointed out, that was in spite(despite?) of the book.

Nova used to have a maximum of three students, although it went up to four later, and a lot of times there were only one or two students in the class.

Just the contact time with native speakers helped the students improve. The books and their teaching methods were so bad that a lot of teachers ended up teaching around them or just chatted to avoid the pain of using them(GCs, General Conversations, in Nova lingo).

With these small classes, for Nova to be profitable after paying all their advertising costs and ekimae rent, they decided to turn the schools into sweat shops forcing full-time teachers to teach 8 lessons a day.

I often went home feeling like my head had been sucked out of my head. It can be really hard to keep talking with beginner-level students all day.

I hope some of what I wrote was coherent.

[ttjereth]

So if you've never interviewed for NOVA, don't diss the caliber of instructors they hired. They are not ALL talentless un-qualified schlubs.

First off let me just say, that for myself anyway, I am not saying ALL Nova instructors are bad/scum of the earth/etc., and I don't judge anyone based having worked there etc. ("Nova!? Get out of my sight!"). I do know a handful of good people who worked there (although most of them did not enjoy the experience), including a Japanese friend who was one of the managers at the main Utsunomiya branch in Tochigi.

Working at Nova does make one a bad/less worthy person, but a job which, you're personal experience aside, had overall low hiring standards will tend to attract people of low quality.

However,

So unless you've been a part of NOVA, don't diss it. I know some have been a part of it and hated it, but our school got the job done and loved every moment of it.

This is similar to saying don't comment on Japan unless you're Japanese. There are plenty of things in life that for which direct participation isn't a requirement for any sort of critical critical response/view.

I don't deny that the school you worked at may have been good, or that you had a grueling and difficult interview, but I will guarantee that wasn't the norm.

For one, you interviewed in Japan? A great number of teachers interview outside Japan, and the interviews/application process are fairly notoriously simple in most cases, hence Nova being known as a way to easily get a working visa.

If all the interviews were as difficult as yours, I doubt as many people would have been able to use Nova to get here on a visa and then change jobs.

In fact, I know a few real dumbasses from university who have gotten jobs at Nova, and I can't begin to imagine they would have made it (successfully anyway) through an interview like the one you went through

[amdg]

Lurk and Amdg,
come on fellas, you gotta be shittin' me...Right guys?
Are you really, seriously, with a straight face, implying that Nova, with its 'cutting edge curriculum' and expertly 'trained' teachers deserve to be considered as part of the plankton feeding vocation that is education?

Stay off the drugs lads.

Nah, I just thought that the story of the day, and especially of this thread, was “NOVA goes bust due to gross mis-management and fraudulent practices”, and it disappoints me that people want to take this opportunity to lay a final kick into the NOVA teachers. Some of whom were actually pretty decent.

Sure, there are plenty of (ex-) NOVA teachers who were phoning it in every day, or were pure-bred pussy hounds, or were underqualified to be even a conversation partner. But hell, spend enough time at any major company and you’ll see all of the above, and worse (as Lurk alluded to).

I was never a fan of the conversation style ‘learning’ system, but it was there and it was popular. I’m even less of a fan of turning against the victims when the real culprits are in plain sight.


P.S. I like the drugs.

[omae mona]

Perhaps it was in your area, but we were held to a higher standard in Aomori. Our students learned and we assigned homework. Yes homework because just coming to class did not cut it, one had to study outside the class as well to learn.

AO, just out of curiosity, do you think it's possible that the standards for teachers dropped over time? Your description of the gruelling interview process at Nova is very interesting. I have noticed that among forum posters (on FG and other places) who claim to have worked at Nova, you are the only one who writes in coherent and gramatically correct sentences. Perhaps Nova changed their hiring policy and curriculum after you worked there many years ago.

[Midwinter]

Anyone who works for Nova is obviously an idiot as they can get the same money, working less hours, in a better environment elsewhere. That's about as factual as you're going to get in this arguement.

[Mulboyne]

If everyone had had a bad experience of NOVA then they wouldn't have lasted so long or been able to expand as they did. However, I've always thought of NOVA together with the gym chain Tipness since they are both in the business of holding out the possibility of self-improvement. In both cases, customers have been willing to enter into lengthy contracts partly as a way of convincing themselves that they really mean to do something this time about learning English/losing weight. If every member of a Tipness gym actually went once a week then there would be massive congestion. Similarly, NOVA worked out that many customers bought lessons that they didn't use and that was especially true if the lesson prices were cheap which meant they could build in some redundancy and not hire as many teachers as they needed to match the lessons sold.

The problem appears to be that they took this to an extreme and ended up with too few teachers. If you bought six months of lessons, went along for three weeks and then found convenient excuses never to go back then you'd probably blame yourself and write the money off as a bad job. If, however, you couldn't schedule your first lessons in the way that you'd been promised, then you'd likely blame the company and want a refund. And so the refund policy became a central issue causing the government to step in and rule against NOVA.

For anyone who claims they always knew NOVA was going to collapse, you could have made a lot of money on the stock market if you genuinely believed that. The government certainly didn't expect this outcome when they imposed the business restraint order on the company or else they would have made stronger efforts behind the scenes to eject Sahashi and find a corporate benefactor willing to take on the business.

On the question of whether NOVA teachers deserve to be regarded as a class of educators, it's worth pointing out that most have the same qualifications and prior experience as JET instructors who are employed by the government to be an integral part of the national education system. I don't think the majority of NOVA employees set out to be bad teachers and there must be some decent people out there. It probably is true, though, that many of them decided to take the line of least resistance and did the minimum to get by once they understood what kind of company they were working for. Those are the teachers that students complain about and they do deserve some criticism. Doing a good job in the circumstances where your bosses don't seem to care becomes an issue of respect for the students who have paid and also respect for yourself.

There is a tendency to take this to an extreme and see NOVA teachers as a band of marauding football hooligans. That's often been the stereotype propagated on foreigner forums like this one. Here's Steve Silver, himself a language educator in Japan, writing on the NBR Forums just the other day:

I have had former NOVA students and teachers themselves tell me numerous stories of widespread sexual harassment misconduct occurring on the part of the male teachers. Of course, this is certainly not limited to NOVA, but their reputation was certainly among the worst in this regard

We know that some NOVA teachers have posted stories of their student conquests on the net but Silver is surely overstating the case or stretching his definition of sexual harassment.

[FG Lurker]

Anyone who works for Nova is obviously an idiot as they can get the same money, working less hours, in a better environment elsewhere. That's about as factual as you're going to get in this arguement.

Okay, I'll bite. Please explain where the ~5000 ex-NOVA teachers can now go and get the jobs you describe.

[American Oyaji]

Okay, I'll bite. Please explain where the ~5000 ex-NOVA teachers can now go and get the jobs you describe.

Indeed FGL. As my fellow Hachinohe-jin Canman could attest to, jobs in that area are slim pickings since it is out in the boonies. A non-American would have an even tougher time since they could not work on the base which is an hour away.

[ttjereth]

You're just throwing around FUD.

"In your experience" my left nut hairs. Your experience is whistling in the wind compared to the many people that experienced NOVA.

You really have a bad habit of suddenly exploding and getting angry with people because their viewpoint is different than yours lately.

I'm fine and good with discussing things and I'm just as entitled to my viewpoint as you are to yours, but if all you want to do is start name calling and throwing profanities around, you can feel free to just ignore my posts because I'm not going to stop making them because you don't like what I have to say, and honestly you're really not doing your own arguement any good by suddenly going off into agressive tirade.

I am saying in "my experience" because that's what it is and I want to make clear that I haven't worked at Nova and that my experience ISN'T based on having worked there.

I have worked in eikaiwa, and the vast majority of my opinions on Nova hold true for the majority of eikaiwa. Other than that my Nova-specific experience is based on the number of people I know who have worked or studied there (that would be in several towns in Tochigi and areas of Tokyo, compared to your single Aomori example) and the percentage thereof that did not have a positive experience being nearly 100%.

Perhaps it was in your area, but we were held to a higher standard in Aomori. Our students learned and we assigned homework. Yes homework because just coming to class did not cut it, one had to study outside the class as well to learn.

Like I said in my previous reply to you, that I'm guessing you hadn't read before firing off the vitrol filled post I'm replying to now, I think that it was YOUR situation that was exception to the rule. I don't deny there were good teachers/people at Nova, or even entire decent branches, but it has still been my experience based on accounts from people who do not know each other, and attend or worked at schools far removed from each other that the overall Nova situation and majority of the teachers were not good.

You can yell about nut hairs and tell me that my experience means nothing because YOU had a positive experience with them all you want, it's not going to change my mind anymore than my opinions are going to change your thoughts on your positive experience.

I really do not appreciate you trying to paint everything NOVA with your crap stained brush. It is evidenced by the media reports and by the company going under that something smelled in Osaka without a doubt, but the whole company was NOT foul and there were teachers that did their best and there were students that learned.

Again, I have really been making an effort to make sure and not say "all or everything" about Nova was bad, but I do believe the majority was and that I think, based on what I have experienced up until now, that your good situation was an exception. I base my opinion on what I know through first hand interaction with Nova employees outside of work, and what I have been told by and seen through friends and aquantainces.

You may well have had a wondeful experience and been at a great branch, that doesn't change for example, constant problems with Nova teachers in Utsunomiya that my friend (and even myself on a few occasions where they also involved JET teachers I had to babysit) had to deal with constantly as a manager, including teachers being arrested, having accidents, a variety of problems related to being drunk, not showing up, constantly "winging" lessons, or complaints from students etc., or my friend in Tokyo who often complained (up until the recent troubles when she quit Nova after using her prepaid lessons up, and switched to another school) of how one of her teachers didn't actually teach, but spent the entire lesson talking about himself and how he likes to travel around the world, or about teachers who can't answer what should be fairly simple questions for someone claiming to be a language teacher, or teachers more interested in trying to make time with cute girls in class than in trying to teach a lesson.

Our students passed the TOEIC and TOEFL. And if they did not we showed the why they did not and had them pass it on the next go around.

Allow me one pedantic moment here just to note there is no pass/fail on the TOEIC or TOEFL. You get a score, but the score doesn't indicate passing or failing, simply your supposed ability with the language, so I'm not really sure how you help people pass it after they had failed it?

Man, I'm not going to argue with you because you're so full of shit. You're having fun slamming on people who work hard for a living.

Again, sticks and stones... but as for the whole slamming people who work hard for a living thing, allow me my moment of being indignant to say screw you and your insinuation that I am somehow laughing at the poor working class from my lofty position, because I busted my ass to put myself through college and to work my way up to the semi-decent living I have now, and there is no way in hell I will grant a Nova teacher (or most Eikaiwa teachers) working 30 hours a week worked harder than I did putting in more time than that a week in unpaid overtime.

[Mike Oxlong]

AO,

Your interview experience was different from mine. I interviewed at NOVA, and it was a 30 min.-1 hour thing where I was asked a bit of general stuff about myself, education, relevant experience. Then a look at a NOVA textbook, and some time to explain how I'd teach one section of one lesson. A 'thanks we'll call', and a couple days later the offer came. I went to an ECC interview, and was required to spend the entire day at their office. A one hour grammar test, a standard interview of about an hour talking about my experiences, education, and reasons for coming to Japan, reasons for coming to ECC. Given a teaching scenario, and a short time to plan and demo a sample lesson. Also role playing as a student in other applicant's demos. Critiques of each other's demos. It was a tough day, and made the NOVA interview look like coffee talk. I understood both interviews were typical of each company's style from others who'd been through the same thing. I ended up going with ECC, and got two weeks full-time training followed up with quarterly seminars to improve teaching skills. I was told NOVA had three days of training, consisting of two days of observing regular teachers, followed by being observed teaching yourself by a regular teacher on the final day. No follow-ups.

Your NOVA story is completely different from any other I've heard. If it were more typical, they wouldn't be in such a bad place right now.

[American Oyaji]

You know what Mike, you reminded me of something. I DID have to do a practive lesson on one of the staff. I'd forgotten about that.

But yeah, in all honesty, there were some jokes in the office about the "interviews" some of those coming in from overseas had.
Such as interviews in hotels.
I'm not saying any hanky panky went down, but I can't in all honesty say 100% it did not happen.

I can't speak for other schools, but our area taught, and taught well.

I can't attribute the current problems to the type of teachers, but I do realize that the management of the company could not have been all good. I also interviewed back in 97. I don't know when you did.

Any of you guys remember the "Mr Brown, there is a banana in your ear" commercials?

[Behan]

I think you really put it well, Mulboyne.

... I've always thought of NOVA together with the gym chain Tipness since they are both in the business of holding out the possibility of self-improvement. In both cases, customers have been willing to enter into lengthy contracts partly as a way of convincing themselves that they really mean to do something this time about learning English/losing weight.

I totally agree with you on this. There must be some kind of consumer psychology at work here, too, and I think the staff get training for this.
The students get cornered into a cubicle and get bombarded with psychological warfare. You need English to survive in this world and your future prospects are promising if you sign on the dotted line. Kind of an emotional rollercoaster ride of fear and hope.
They also add in what we get at supermarkets back home: discounts for bulk purchases. The unit price for a lesson goes down a lot if you buy 600 lesson(or 'point') packages. I know a retired judge who got a couple of those.

If every member of a Tipness gym actually went once a week then there would be massive congestion. Similarly, NOVA worked out that many customers bought lessons that they didn't use and that was especially true if the lesson prices were cheap which meant they could build in some redundancy and not hire as many teachers as the needed to match the lessons sold.

And your second point is what me and my co-workers also used to think the profit margin was. Nova knows people won't show up for lessons. It was really frustraing to be in the middle of an exhausting day, to see a cancellation, hope for a break and relief only to see it get booked with a new student.

Students had to pay for man to man lessons by paying three or four points, one for each student in a regular class, but if they didn't cancel by 4PM the previous day the points were lost.

Damn-thoughtful students would courteously call in to cancel and the staff would book some else in, taking the points from both of them. If the first kind soul hadn't called in the unfortunate teacher would have had a break when the student failed to show up.

... And so the refund policy became a central issue causing the government to step in and rule against NOVA.

We could often see the staff huddled, discussing how to get out of paying refunds.

On the question of whether NOVA teachers deserve to be regarded as a class of educators, it's worth pointing out that most have the same qualifications and prior experience as JET instructors who are employed by the government to be an integral part of the national education system. I don't think the majority of NOVA employees set out to be bad teachers ...

Good point. There have been too many Nova teachers to stereotype them all.

Doing a good job in the circumstances where your bosses don't seem to care becomes an issue of respect for the students who have paid and also respect for yourself.

This was one of my main problems with Nova. For a while during my tenure with Nova I used to spend a lot of time preparing my own materials but not only did I get almost no credit for it, later on I increasingly got into more and more trouble for it.

Putting creativity into your lessons was what made it bearable for me. If it were interesting to me the enthusiasm would carry over to the students. Some of them told me they preferred the materials I used.

But I kept on getting reprimanded for using them and finally the staff moved the photocopier out of the teachers' room so I gave up on most of it.

My friends and I could only come to the conclusion that it wasn't so important to be a good teacher as it was to be a brown noser to the gaijin manager and a good salesperson for the Japanese staff.

[Ol Dirty Gaijin]

Money put to good use.
http://www.asahi.com/national/update/1030/OSK200710300072.html

[Midwinter]

Okay, I'll bite. Please explain where the ~5000 ex-NOVA teachers can now go and get the jobs you describe.

Home? Seriously though, how the fuck should I know?! All I'm saying is that there are plenty of BETTER jobs out there for those that show some gumption, and go looking. Shit, if you're smart enough you don't even have to burden yourself with a company and can freelance instead.

[FG Lurker]

Home? Seriously though, how the fuck should I know?! All I'm saying is that there are plenty of BETTER jobs out there for those that show some gumption, and go looking. Shit, if you're smart enough you don't even have to burden yourself with a company and can freelance instead.

As expected you were spouting bullshit -- it seems to be a habit of yours. Free tip: Put brain in gear before mouth.

NOVA accounted for a very large percentage of eikaiwa jobs in Japan. Even ignoring location it simply is not possible for all NOVA teachers to move to other jobs as there are not enough jobs available.

[Mulboyne]