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My third-year junior high school students display their Easter eggs. Hm. I’m posting this blog at least a couple of weeks after these events happened. I try not to do that because all of the details become jumbled up and faded in my mind (I have a horrid memory), but I’ll try to put the pieces back together and tell you about the last few weeks.
Starting from Easter: After spring break everyone came back to school, and in Japan it is the start of the new school year. This was a bit stressful, but exciting because there are lots of new faces, not only among students, but teachers too. The teaching system in Japan is quite different (and a bit hard to understand) from the U.S. system. At the start of every new school year teachers have to pack up there belongings and move to a different town and a different school within the prefecture. Not all teachers are transferred, but usually if a teacher has been working at the same school for at least three years, she or he will be moved. Teachers get their new school assignment during the last week before spring break, and have only one week to pack everything and move. This is
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Close-up of my kids' Easter eggs an extremely stressful time for everyone, so I felt lucky to be staying put in good old Yuge.
Before the spring break I watched my fellow teachers at the elementary school get called in to the principal’s office one-by-one (like a doctor’s visit or something), and get their new assignment. When the teacher would emerge out of the principal’s office again, some would sigh in relief, but some even started to cry they were so upset with their new assignment.
Why does the Japanese education system work like this? It seems horrible, just when a teacher starts to feel comfortable where they live and work, just when they start to really get to know their students and coworkers, they have to say good bye and start the process all over again. Well, I’ve heard a couple of reasons why they like to mix teachers up like this: One, is that it is not considered a good thing for coworkers to develop too close of a relationship with each other. I guess they think this will distract them from their teacherly duties or something. Well that’s ridiculous. How is a person ever supposed to make friends and not be
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While biking around the island, Missy poses beneath one of the many cherry trees a complete loner moving from one town to the next? Furthermore, how is a person able to settle down, get married, and have a family with all this moving going on? Well, the other reason for this teacher mixing is to rotate teachers so that if there is a particularly bad teacher at one school, at least they will be moved to another school in time. Also, if there is a particularly good teacher at one school, they will be moved around and many students will get to experience her or his teaching. This reason makes some sense to me. Thankfully, not many of my favorite teachers got moved, and some new, very interesting teachers have come to Yuge. Of course it will take me a while to memorize all of their names, but I’ve made my seating charts to help.
Other than the switch-up of teachers, the students, of course, have changed. I have new, super energetic and screaming kids at my preschool. They seem to be way more out-of-control than the youngest kids from last year, but I’ll make do. My cute oldest preschool students are now my first-year elementary students. Now I finally have the chance
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A funny sight we came upon while walking through the neighborhood. All of these cats (and I think there are more) live at this lady's house! It looked like they were just sitting there, waiting to get their picture taken. to teach them a real English lesson without the continuous screaming that goes on at the preschool. My sixth-year elementary students are now my first year junior high school students. They are a big class, but have lots of energy and love to talk…perfect for English classes. Now I am finally able to teach them some real grammar and start some much-needed phonics exercises. The teacher I work with at the junior high school was surprised how much English they were able to comprehend already when I talked to them. I guess I must be doing something right at the elementary school? My third-year junior high students have gone to high schools all over the place, which is the way things work in Japan. But, many of them have moved on to the high school on Yuge, so I will still be able to teach them. As for my third-year high school students…they have moved on to whatever is next in life for them. Some of them might be going straight on to jobs, some to junior colleges, and some to universities. Oh, and my evening English conversation class has gotten a few new members as well. Four new international
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Picnic on the beach students have come to the merchant ship school on Yuge, so they have been coming to my English class. Two are from Malaysia, one is from Indonesia, and one is from Vietnam. That should make for some good conversations I hope.
Anyway, I started the first week back from Spring break with Easter lessons for all! I taught about Easter all the way from preschool to my adult classes. And of course, like many other American holidays, Easter includes weird traditions like coloring eggs….so I had to do this with my classes as well. My mom had sent me ten Easter egg coloring kits which ended up being really fun for everybody. My junior high school students especially got in to it and even tried their hands at poking a hole in the eggs and blowing out the inside so that they would be able to save their colored egg for a long time. I didn’t even know how to do that.
Other than school, I’ve been busy spending time with Missy. These were her last weeks on Yuge before we went on a trip together up north. While still on Yuge, though, we spent weekends and time
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An overcast sky above the islands of Kamijima. The building at the bottom of the picture is my junior high school. Missy and I took this picture at the top of a hill behind my apartment building. after school enjoying the first signs of spring on the island. We rode around the island on our bikes a lot admiring the cherry blossoms; we had a picnic on my favorite beach; we also did a little hiking on the mountains behind my apartment.
One weekend, Tabusa-san, one of the ladies who is an expert on Yuge (her family has been here for many generations) took Missy and me takenoko digging. Takenoko are baby bamboo shoots that have just barely popped out of the ground. The beginning of April is the best time to dig them out before they grow too tall and tough for eating. You have to act fast to dig them up as soon as the tip is first seen popping out of the ground, because some bamboo can grow up to one meter every day! We went searching for the little takenoko in a bamboo grove on a hillside belonging to Tabusa-san’s family. We didn’t have to search far. Little takenoko were poking there way out of the spring soil everywhere we looked. We didn’t spend much time digging, but ended up with more takenoko than any of us could eat. To dig up
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signs of Spring! the takenoko, you have to dig around it first, and then slice it off right at its roots. The outside skin which the takenoko eventually sheds is brown and furry, but the inside is tender and delicious. Missy and I were stuffing ourselves with takenoko everyday after that.
On the last week before Missy and I took our trip up north, Missy came with me to my preschool class. I think the kids were really excited to see another white face on Yuge. We played a red light, green light game with them. When Missy held up the green light and yelled, “green light!” all the kids came charging full speed at Missy. It was a pretty funny sight. I now have almost sixty kids in my preschool, so they are definitely a handful. The great thing about Missy coming to visit my preschool is that she was able to take some pictures, which I usually am too busy to think about. (Thank you Missy!)
And last but not least, the last day before Missy’s and my trip, I went on a field trip with my junior high school to a port town called Kure about a two-hour
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We went to the top of a mountain that has a good view of the whole island of Yuge. ferry ride from Yuge. It is (I think) the biggest military ship yard in Japan. So there were all kinds of hi-tech military ships and submarines around the port area. We visited a museum there that exhibited artifacts from a suicide-mission ship that is still below the sea from WWII. It was pretty creepy looking at all the letters the crew sent home to notify their families that they had been ordered to sink the ship and go down with it. I didn’t think it was the most cheerful field trip for the junior high school to take, but the purpose was supposedly to teach the kids about peace (although I don’t know if much of that was accomplished).
Well, sorry for the hodgepodge blog, but a lot has happened in the past month. I’ll be posting my next blog about Missy’s and my trip shortly, so please check back for some beautiful pictures from the mountains.
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