It’s back to school time, but not really. I don’t have any classes until Thursday. The first few days of this week will be full of the ceremonies. Today we had the opening ceremony for the 2nd and 3rd year students, which was nothing too exciting. They told the students to work hard this year, to not pick on the new 1st year students, and to generally be nice.
One of the big problems today was that some girls had taken the two weeks off and very slightly dyed their hair brown. Some students can get away with it if they do it really, really subtly. Today there was a line of girls that had gone a little too far, and they were getting yelled at. When every student in your school has black hair, these kids really tend to stand out. Maybe there is a lesson in there somewhere about wanting to distinguish yourself. Maybe my school’s mission is to quash that desire.
After all the students went home the new first year students came to school with their parents for the entrance ceremony, which is essentially the same ceremony as the graduation except no applause at the end. There is so much standing and bowing and sitting – I couldn’t help but wonder who thought this all up. But a part of me knows that you can’t have an ending without a beginning in Japan, and everything that they do completes a circle – sometimes the circle is just hard to see at first.
In the afternoon I was free to study as I pleased. I prepared two lessons for later this week, and ate my free bento lunch that they gave us today. Outside it was raining continuously, so it was nice to stay in and stay dry.
There are lots of new faces around the staffroom nowadays, and none of them are really comfortable talking with the foreign guy. I know it is just a matter of time before I have them smiling and asking how my weekend was – right now they barely acknowledge my existence. They are the slab of marble that I will soon carve into an international-minded Japanese citizen. I’m really writing esoterically today.
Yamamoto sensei is now taking over all the duties that Hayashi sensei had before regarding managing me at work. He’s taking a very hands off approach and letting me do whatever I want, but it is nice to have a backup around since the vice principal has moved on to another school. We were joking around today about a huge subwoofer that he bought to watch movies. He was unaware how powerful it was until he hooked it up. Now he has to turn it to the lowest setting in order to avoid pissing off the neighbors.
I had a meeting to talk about my first year lesson coming up on Friday. All the teachers save one who are involved came to the meeting, and I had put together my lesson plan in advance so everyone could check it out. This was standard operating procedure the last two years, so I didn’t think anything of it. The plan was detailed, down to the last minute.
Everyone liked the plan and was ready to run with it, but one teacher, Mori sensei, wanted to do her own thing. This caused a big logjam and everyone was tiptoeing around each other’s pride for almost an hour. We ended up trying to merge the two plans. I’m not sure what concessions I made and what parts of my plan remain, but I made a power play at the end of the meeting and nominated Mori sensei to rewrite the plan as we had agreed.
Afterwards I was a little frustrated that the plan that I know will work got scrapped, but I can see where she wants to contribute something to the planning stages, whereas the previous teachers were happy to leave it all to me. In a way, it’s good practice for my next job, where I may face the same situation. I’m going to have to let Mori sensei see for herself what works and what doesn’t, but I’m a little bummed that it will be at the expense of my students’ learning time.
I’m really looking forward to teaching with Nozaki sensei – she seems so excited to be teaching with me and her English is top notch – I think probably the best at the school. She speaks smoother than Mr. Hayashi, who was the front runner since I arrived. The other teacher, Okamoto sensei, seems really shy and nervous to speak English. His strategy now is to be quiet and see what the lay of the land is.
He had only one contribution to the hour meeting. Mori sensei asked me to shake hands with the students when I meet them the first time. I said sure, and Okamoto sensei jokingly asked if it was OK to hug them. I’m all for humor and levity, but anytime anyone jokes about that kind of stuff I get uncomfortable. He’s a new guy, though, so we’ll see how he does in the classroom.
Now I’m home and getting dinner ready for Kuniko. It should be a pretty simple dinner tonight – lots of vegetables and a little bit of shrimp. Tomorrow I’ve got more ceremonies and meetings, so I hope I’ll have something interesting to write about tomorrow night…
