granted it was still pay day, but yesterday, my experiences in japan were once more expanded.
first, you need to understand a little something about the education system in japan. every year just before the end of the school year in mid-march, there is this mad shuffle of teachers all over the place. whereas in the states, the same teacher can be at a school for 30 odd years, in japan, there is a limit to how long you can be at a certain school. how long you stay there is dependent on how some really high up person decides to dish out your fate.
nagasaki prefecture is also unlike any other prefecture. whereas in other places in japan where they notify you about a month in advance whether or not you're moving, in nagasaki, they tell you the week before you need to report to your new schools. just to give you an idea of how little time they have, this is the timeline:
- monday, march 19: principals are told which teachers are leaving and coming in
- tuesday, march 20: notify teachers starting at 3:30pm
- wednesday - sunday: the time you have to pack up your desk, cancel all your bills, find a new home if you're going to the mainland or somewhere significantly far away, move allll your stuff to your new home, and say goodbye to all your friends
- friday, march 23rd: last day of the school year
- monday, march 26th: report to your new school in the morning
insane, no? you get LESS than a week to pick up your life and go somewhere you may not even want to go.
now, nagasaki is unlike most prefectures in that it has many, many islands:
the only way to make things fair is that people who are from the mainland have to go to the island at one point (because you'd figure there wouldn't be enough teachers to teach on the islands). generally, teachers stay at a school between 3 - 6 years, but if you're from the mainland and you're out at an island, you have to do 4 years on the island. if you're from the island and want to stay on the island, you have to serve 4 years on the mainland (that may be wrong, but you have to serve mainland time at least once, and afterwards, you can return and keep rotating around the island). you can stay at a certain school for up to 6 years.the thing is, this system is arbitrary. even if you've only been at a given school for 2 years, you can still be moved to another school for another 2 years. and if you've been at a school for 5 years, that doesn't mean you'll automatically be there for 6. the boogey man will find you and tell you you have to move to a new school. bottom line: no one is safe from the lottery.
which brings me to yesterday. i was at my favorite school (a junior high). i can honestly say i like both teachers and students equally there, whereas at other places, i like teachers more or students more.... i have truly become attached to this school. which is why when 3:30 rolled around and the principal was walking nervously around the teachers room, i knew it was coming.
he first tapped the kyoto-sensei on the shoulder, who everyone knows, is my favorite kyoto-sensei ever. i always end up having really awesome conversations with him in japanese and in english, and we always walk away learning something really crazy about one another's culture/country/people. since he's in a higher position, his job says that he has to rotate every 3 years as opposed to 3-6 for the teachers. which is why when he was tapped first, i KNEW that meant he was leaving. *sigh*. you have no idea how bummed i am about that. he is truly an awesome person, and i really really respect him.
he followed the principal into the principal's room, and afterwards, the kyoto-sensei came out and tapped 3 teachers on the shoulders, and led them all into the principal's room. remaining in the room were the school nurse, the tea lady, the clerk, the history teacher, and me. if only you guys could have seen the looks of sheer shock and disappointment on their faces. they kept whispering, "uso..." which means, "it's a lie...."
of the 4 people leaving the school, you could kind of predict that 3 of them were at the end of their stay on the island (they're all mainlanders), but the 4th teacher, the music teacher, who i've come to realllly like because she realllly tries hard to speak with me in english, was the total surprise. no one expected her to leave. she's into her 5th year at that school, and she's from tsushima now. everyone just thought she'd stay for 6 years, but instead, some higher up decided to mess around with her fate, and she's moving to a smaller school in the neighboring town... at the exact opposite end of that town. it'll be about a 30-35 minute drive for her, but add in her 2nd grade daughter who will still be going to school near home.... and you get panic, resentment, indignation, you name it.
20 minutes later, the principal took off for the BOE, and the rest of the teachers returned from 6th period classes. the kyoto-sensei then hung up a poster that had all the leaving teachers' names and all the names of the incoming teachers. all the teachers in the room at that point gathered closely to the poster, which meant standing in front of my desk.
please try to picture this: the poster is hung up behind you. you're still sitting at your desk which is in a line of 3. all the teachers in that school are standing in a line surrounding those three desks and gawking in resentment at this poster behind you. you peer up at the teachers surrounding you and all you can see are their hearts breaking for their leaving friends. they all start to discuss what they think the newbies will like. "judging from his name, he sounds like he's from tsushima..." "that name sounds like he's a little older, doesn't it?..."
i cannot begin to explain to you how bad and out of place i felt sitting at my desk with all the teachers around me trying to fathom what their school will be like next year with the loss of their loved colleagues.
experiencing all this has given me a lot more perspective. i now understand why the JET Program operates the way it does. last year in may, all incoming SF JETs got emails at the same time saying where they'd be placed. in my case: "Nagasaki-prefecture, Tsushima-city." after that, oh man, the mad scramble to scour the net for any at all info on where in the world tsushima is and what it was like. i can remember clearly the months of panicky waiting to find out where i was blindly agreeing to pick up my life and move to. i wish i could i say i understand my teachers' disappointment, but i really can't. i didn't have less than a week's notice to move. i'm not committed to 3-6 years of my life at a single school in the middle of nowhere. and i'm not the homeroom teacher for who knows how many students. very different indeed.
i'm still torn as to whether i think the japanese system of rotating around schools is good or bad. i can definitely see pros and cons to their system compared to the states. in japanese, you guarantee that teachers are always challenging themselves, and that they're reforming the way they do things. in the states, if a teacher has been teaching the same class for 30 years, they tend to be out of date, and inflexible when it comes to how they teach. then again, i think it's charming how in the states, the same teacher can teacher a whole family over the years, and even multiple generations of a family. i also like the thought that teachers can create a new class, and be the one who nurtures it for years and years. in japan, you can't do that because you have to move in 6 years anyway.
the one thing i definitely disagree with in japan (at least in nagasaki) is the amount of time you give a teacher to move. they're professionals teaching us and our kids how to think. you'd think they deserve the respect of at least, i dunno, 2 weeks to prepare for their departure. we're talking about 5 days to get your life sorted, and start all over again. ridiculous.
i have yet to find out about how my other schools are going to look next year teacher-wise, but here's hoping the new bunch are a group of cool people [like my kyoto-sensei =P].
--evelyn
ps. i appeared on prefectural television with my bf on the evening news and didn't even know it. what are the chances??
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