I showed up at school right on time this morning, and I was particularly sleepy. I made some coffee (something I don’t usually do at work), and settled into my chair. I was happy to see that my schedule was free for the first period, so I didn’t have anything to do for almost two hours.
Suddenly, Harada sensei, the slightly batty English teacher, came running into the staff room and told me to come down to her classroom and help a student there. I wasn’t too thrilled about that given my condition, but I walked down to the classroom, walking along the hallway with my steaming mug of coffee. I walked by several teachers and the vice-principal who looked at me strangely for carrying the coffee. There’s a little bit of a culture problem with walking around with food, and it’s a little unprofessional to be drinking (even coffee) in front of students. I was too sleepy to care, and a little peeved with being summoned to a classroom.
The students in the classroom were pretty surprised, but they got over it. I drank the coffee while helping the students, and it was pretty non-intrusive. After about 20 minutes of helping students we wrapped things up and I went back to the staff room for the morning meeting. I always like helping the students, but I really prefer when they ask me, rather than having a teacher demand my time. Maybe I was just grouchy this morning.
I had a wide variety of students today, including two classes with the deaf students. Those were really fun, and the students really responded well to the lesson. I had a sick kid come in who wanted to practice pronunciation, but I couldn’t hear him through the doctor’s mask he was wearing, and he kept having coughing fits. I sent him back saying that it was better to get healthy first. Besides, I didn’t want to catch his disease.
Another student in one of my classes pulled me aside and gave me some “special Valentine candy”, which was a piece of chocolate attached to a Domo-kun postcard. On the back she wrote some nice comments in English, and her address in Japanese. She asked me to write to her in the future, but I’m not sure whether that’s a good idea or not. I don’t think I’d like my daughter exchanging letters with some old foreign guy I don’t know. Thanks for the chocolate, though!
At the end of the day I got wind of a teacher’s meeting. At this school there is not a big meeting room like my old high school in Takasago, so the teachers sit as is in the staff room and hold the meeting. Usually I sit in there until the end of my day at four, and then sneak out the door, trying to be as quiet as possible. Today at 3:00 I was talking with the vice-principal, and he said that I could leave early.
Actually, he never said that. Part of living in Japan is understanding the unsaid. The conversation went like this:
Me: I hear there’s a teacher’s meeting today. What time is the meeting?
VP: It starts around 3:45. But really, it doesn’t matter.
Me: I see. Thanks.
From that conversation, I left at 3:30, and there wasn’t a problem. The VP was saying that it doesn’t matter if I leave early – in fact, I could leave anytime. But he never officially said that, so nobody could pin it on him later. Very interesting.
I used my extra time to buy a manga that a student of mine had recommended. I’m not a big fan of manga, mainly because they can be a little weird, and there’s a real dork vibe that goes along with reading them. They are cheap, though, and I thought it would be worth giving it a read-through to see how it is.
I also bought some supplies for Kuniko’s baking habit, and then came home and made some rice and prepared a stir fry for dinner. Kuniko got home really early, and so we had the stir fry donburi style, and now she’s in the kitchen making some more peanut butter bars. We gave away lots of them around Valentine’s Day, and now we’re craving peanut butter again. We’ve got some friends coming over this weekend, so they might like to try them, too.
Tomorrow I have another full schedule at school, but things will start to taper off, and Friday, Monday and Tuesday I have no classes because of exams. Then I have four classes next Wednesday, my last day at Hamawaki Junior High. I’m going to miss my school!
