Spring is in the Air

The first week of spring break was actually a break for the teachers, except for the fact that they still had to help the kids with their club activities and who knows what. Anyway, the second week of spring break in the staff room was quite amusing. Don't get me wrong, I still had nothing to do the whole time I was there, but I can't say the same for the other teachers. On Monday, the old teachers said their final goodbyes and the new teachers arrived. Let me explain. In Japan, schools rotate teachers every year and teachers cannot stay at one school for more than 8 years. However, that doesn't mean that one can't be moved even if he/she has only been at a school for a year. The worse part about this whole moving thing is that the teachers don't find out if they'll be moving until one to two weeks prior to leaving! This year, we only have 3 new teachers, a new assistant teacher, a new counselor, a new groundskeeper and a new principal. That's it.

Not only do the teachers get switched to different schools, every teacher pretty much gets a new position as well! For example, my 1nensei JTE will now be the 2nensei JTE and so forth. A couple of the new teachers came from elementary schools and have never taught at a jr. high before. Teachers find out about the grades/subjects they're teaching pretty much a week before school starts. Clazy. This is very surprising due to the fact that Japanese people are usually so organized and detailed about things; I'm surprised they take in these MAJOR changes so casually.

On Thursday, we all moved our desks in the staff room according to the new grade levels everyone would be teaching. It was a pretty chaotic scene as we literally moved each desk around the room...just imagine playing Tetris...no no...um...you remember that game where you had to move different pieces on a board in order to get the correct pattern, but it had to be done in a certain order or else the pieces would get stuck?? Ok, sorry to go off on a tangent. Anyway, so yeah, desks were moved here and there as a year's worth of dust bunnies floated in the air. And they pretend to be so organized and clean...

My desk also got switched to a new position and now I'm sitting next to the new assistant teacher who speaks no English. Oh well, she seems really nice. The original position they wanted to move me to was at the way corner, right near kyoto sensei, but my JTE convinced him to move me somewhere else as the kids wouldn't be able to talk to me as easily if I were in that far corner. Thank goodness I wasn't put there or else everything I did would be monitored. Whew!

That day, the 2nensei and 3 nensei also showed up to school to clean everything in preparation for the opening ceremony for the new school year. Child slave labor indeed. I don't understand why they don't have janitors in Japan. How clean can your schools be if you only have teenagers cleaning them??

On Friday, we had our opening ceremony. That was very boring as all types of ceremonies are in Japan. The new 1nensei showed up and they looked soo scared and tiny! I remember the switch from elementary school to jr. high as well and what a scary time that was. Aww, they were so cute! Can't wait to have them in my classes!