Greetings are always interesting at my school. From the start, our students are subjected to their teachers telling them over and over, “Greet the people you meet!” In the hallways they are expected to say good morning or good day in Japanese to other people that they walk by, especially the teachers. I think my school sees it as a way to make the students grow up being courteous and polite. Because the students are being forced to greet, their greetings tend to be forced as well. There is no real meaning behind their greeting, they are just doing it to avoid being punished.
My situation is, of course, completely different. I try to get the students to greet me in English, and I have got about 80% of them doing it now. Because I have a big smile on my face when I say hello, they tend to smile back, and it feels like they mean it when they say “Good morning!” Some students are still a little wary, and will just say good morning in Japanese without expression and move on – they are the shy ones and over time eventually they’ll get comfortable.
As you might expect, the teachers at my school want to set a good example, so they greet everyone they meet, including other teachers. A very polite “Ohayo gozaimasu” serves as the standard morning greeting. Even though everyone says good morning, I would guess that maybe only 20% of my teachers put any emotion into it or even realize they are doing it. In my school it has become kind of a rote phrase that must be said, rather than a way to show that you care about the people around you.
When I first arrived at my school I was surprised that some teachers didn’t greet me at all, and still there are some that find something else to look at when we walk by each other. I admit, maybe I am a lot to handle first thing in the morning. Over time I’ve won over more and more people, and I use that as a measure of my progress in the staffroom.
It is small steps like this that I hope will gradually build up momentum. I want these people to remember how I greeted them and how they felt afterwards. If that can change a few people, I’ll consider my stay at this school a complete success.
