Moving On

I have been quite terrible at keeping this blog running, and really only have myself to blame for that, but felt the need to comment about the life changes that are about to happen for me.
In a little over a week, my job as a kindergarten teacher will come to an end, it breaks my heart to leave these kids, because they've really become my kids over the last 12 months, but I must. The next chapter of my life is waiting to begin, and that chapter is looking to be amazing.

You see, after this I will finally have enough money saved up to volunteer full time in Japan and to also travel the world a little bit. So while I have to leave my children behind, I will finally give the disaster animals the time they deserve and the look at the world I've been dreaming of.


I promise that this blog will be becoming far more active as this new chapter starts.

Down with the Sickness

I have been rather ill for the last few days, at first I thought it was just because it is so incredibly cold in my school (they do not allow any heaters on unless it is less then 10C outside), but then it continued at home. I would get chills so bad that being under a mountain of blankets just a few inches from a heater felt like being out on the tundra, followed closely with heat waves so bad that even without any blankets on me I was drenching my bed in sweat. 

This was uncomfortable, but still tolerable. Then came the horrible waves of pain, I convulsed pathetically even while lying in bed and spent most of my time lying around moaning while David looked on helplessly, he tried to comfort me, but it is hard to make someone feel better when they feel as if their organs are trying to explode through their body (all I could think of when writing that was the stomach scene from Aliens).

Then come this morning, I am faced with the decision of if I should go to school or not. I did actually start to get ready, but then doubled over in pain and thought this might not be the best decision. I called my company and the Board of Education, they both told me that that was quite sad but to try and feel better as quickly as possible, which is fine, that’s what you would expect from an employer. Disappointment in the situation, but understanding that you cannot change the current circumstances.

Then, I get a call from my school, telling me I should come in anyways. I explained that I have a fever, am in pain, and that blood is literally coming out of multiple orifices (lovely, huh?), they followed this up with, “so are you sure you can’t come in and teach?”

I bit my toungue, said yes it is a rest day for me, and hung up. This was closely followed with a call from someone at my company, asking me the same damn thing, “so are you sure you can’t come in and teach?”

Did these people miss the part where I said the words fever and blood?

I know quite well that here in Japan, most people still go to school or work while ill, they just simply “tough it out” and wear a mask, which has always been something that angers me, but I try to ignore it since it is their culture and it is not my place to pass judgment on how they run their nation. It annoys me whenever a teacher comes in quite obviously under the weather, sometimes they have even gone to the hospital and then come in to teach now that they have medicine to get them through the day, but that is not me. That is NOT how we do things in America. If you are sick, you do not pass it on to an entire school filled with children, you fucking stay home.  You do not allow yourself pass out in the middle in the middle of class from sickness. And you do not, ever, tell a person who is sick to “suck it up.”

If they want to do that, that is their prerogative, but there is no way in Hell you are going to get me to suffer through a day of work and possibly get 700 people sick.

I apologize in advance if this entry is not entire logical or sounds overly angry, still feeling ill and emotions/logic are a tad bit out of whack.

Example: cried like a baby earlier cause the cats knocked over a glass of tea. Fully know that that is not the normal reaction, but currently my brain seems to be saying “fuck logic.”

School Time

*Note: this is just my personal experiences at one Junior High, and certainly should not be taken as what happens at every school in the country*

  As anyone who is looking at this should know by now, I am an English teacher in Japan (aka ALT), and as the day of classes has been cancelled for me, I thought this would be a good time to write a little bit about what happens here at a Japanese public school.

  An average day for me consists of getting in to school at 8:00am to get settled in for the daily staff meeting that happens at 8:10am, these can last anywhere from a minute, or until almost interfering with first period, which starts at 8:50am. Why exactly I have to be in attendance for these has remained a mystery, because I do not understand much Japanese, so none of it really makes any sense to me, and even if I ask the English speaking teachers afterwards what was covered, they will not tell me. During these meetings I have learned when to say “good morning” and “thanks” on cue, and when to bow at the right time (yes, we bow every morning), but beyond that, I do not understand a single thing that happens during these events. The most annoying part is that sometimes everyone will cheer and clap, and when I ask “what happened?” I typically just get a wave to be quiet or am told “oh it’s nothing,” it has gotten to the point where I do not even ask anymore, I just continue to check my e-mail, say the words on their cues, and just sort of zone out.

  Next up are classes, I teach a conversation class, so instead of focusing on grammar and such, my classes are mostly games, running around, and trying to get the students to practice as much English as possible. I feel lucky in this regard, because most ALTs I have spoken with simply parrot what the Japanese teacher tells them to and the children do not get to have a lot of fun, also, I am the only ALT I know of in the area that has an actual classroom. It’s pretty awesome to have a private room, especially because it allows me to display students work on the walls and make it feel welcoming with different decorations every month. It takes a lot of time and effort to decorate the place, but the students and teachers all seem to love it, it is fairly common for people to just stop in to admire the walls.

   Prior to summer vacation, I had 18 classes a week that I made all the lesson plans, materials for and taught them mostly solo, then, without even warning me, the 1^st year students stopped getting lessons from me. The teachers have never explained why the classes were suddenly switched to grammar instead of conversation, but now 3 of my classes are parroting and the other 3 the teacher does not even want me there… and with not so much as a word.

  The other 12 classes are still completely run by me though, and it can get tough, especially when my JTEs rarely offer me advice on how to tweak lesson plans and, even though I give them plans a week in advance, they often will stop a class to ask questions about what is happening. It is not horrible, but it can get frustrating. The wonderful thing though is that all of these classes have really helped me to get over my fears of speaking in front of groups and I am certainly becoming more confident in my teaching skills as the months progress.

  Once a day, typically directly following the last class period, all of the students go to designated areas of the school to clean. You see, in Japan, schools do not have janitors, they have a workforce of students to do the chores, they do everything from sweeping the floors and window washing, to scrubbings toilets and picking up leaves. It is nice because it teaches the children a bit about responsibility, and all of them will know that if the school does not look good, they will only have themselves to blame for it, the only problem is that most students, after years of doing it every day, seem to simply not give a damn anymore. At my school, students barely clean anything, and instead tend to have sword battles with the brooms or try to shove dirty washcloths in each others mouths, the end result is a lot of teachers yelling, and my schools floors being slightly sticky and off color. I have been told by other ALTs that my school sounds much worse than theirs though, so perhaps just my students do not give a damn about how their school looks anymore.

  It is not all bad here though, I would say that roughly 99% of the 650 students that attend my Junior High School are wonderful, funny and absolutely adorable. It is rare to go through a single day without being told by a few students that I am “kawaii” (cute) or have a boy awkwardly try to hit on me or stare at my boobs. The majority of the kids love to come up to me outside of class and attempt to hold conversations, most of their questions are usually grammar points they recently learned (i.e. “how many ~ do you have?” or “do you like ~?”), but at least they are trying.

  The cutest conversation this week was a 1^st year student who, after being pushed forward by his friends, blushed and told me “tea teacher, you are good English teacher and very cute. I love you.” He then promptly ran away.

  Love it.

  By the way, the students call me tea teacher, because my last name is Koca, which is pronounced very similarly to “koucha,” or black tea. 　

  Throughout the day, there is a woman that all ALTs call “the tea lady,” because, well, she is in charge of tea and snacks for the staff room, I have heard tales of every tea lady ever being sweet old ladies who just love to talk to you, make wonderful snacks and remember everyone’s favorite drinks….. that is not my lady.

My tea lady tends to spend most of her day zoned out on her keitai (phone), only brings in prepackaged snacks and sucks at making tea. Yes, my tea lady cannot make good tea. Every day I cringe a little bit when she smiles and sets the over steeped green brew in front of me and then later try to sneak into the lounge room without her noticing that most days I simply dump it out.

  Well, without going into the politics of how the actual school is run, and what they do ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ here, that is pretty much my average day in a quite large nutshell.

First Hanami and First Class

 

The petals rain down as we celebrate

Last weekend I got to experience my first ever Hanami (the Japanese tradition of enjoying the beauty of the blossoms) at the lovely Kofu Castle, where there were dozens of cherry trees in bloom and many groups picnicking with their loved ones. We met with the other English teachers that work with our company in the area, and then met up with the YETI group (Yamanshi English Teachers International), where we got a chance to meet about twenty other teachers that had come from around the world to teach here in the Yamanashi Prefecture. It was a great deal of fun to get to meet other new people, as well as people who had been living here for years, including a few Japanese locals who had joined in the group and brought homemade wine. The blossoms were gorgeous, the company was grand, and the alcohol seemed to be never ending.

The bottom level of Kofu Castle

The following week was not filled with quite the same levels of enjoyment though, because I found that there was only going to be one class for me the entire week and the head teacher at my school informed me that he did not think that anyone who did not know the Japanese language would be able to be a successful English teach and that ALTs are "nothing special" anymore, and other fun things that were basically the polite way of saying "you are going to fail." It did not help very much that the day before he said these things I had gotten bored and pieced together from all of the old lesson plans lying around that most teachers at this school have not even lasted 6 months, in fact, the last two ALTs were only there for about 2 months each. On top of that, one of the previous teachers accidentally left behind some notes to herself that said encouraging things about how she was bored every day, felt useless and never really enjoyed it there, and that was from one of the two that had managed to actually stay their full year!

The class I taught went... so-so. Due to it being the first time I had ever taught a 50min class, being nervous, and not having a great grasp on how much time each thing would take, we ended up having to make something up on the spot to fill in the last 10mins of class (shiritori ftw!), but on the plus side, the kids seemed to like me, they think Debu is magical and due to a wonderful mis-translation, they think I know the President. So all in all, it seems that all that is needed is practice and some more courage to make the class a success.

So yes, it should be interesting to see how I manage at this school in the coming months, and I am really hoping that I do not follow the previous teachers examples of leaving before the year is up.