This week, the weather has changed again. After a shaky start of intermittent and misleading warm days, it seems that spring has finally come to stay. Yesterday I was commuting to my weekly Japanese class downtown, and I was actually uncomfortably hot on the train, which was a nice change of pace. It means that the weather will be beautiful for about 2 weeks followed by hordes of giant mutant insects and what one of my friends likes to call "the death heat."
It's an emotional time of flux at work as well; yesterday marked the last day of classes and teacher transfers were announced, which is to say the Board of Education released the information about which teachers will transfer to a new school in the Spring and which will stay put. This process occurs entirely without input from the teachers concerned and they are informed of the decision with about 2 week's notice.
One by one throughout the afternoon, the principal called the teachers in question to his office for individual meetings. I was speaking with my supervisor at the end of the day when the vice principal excused himself for interrupting, and beckoned her to follow him into the hallway. She came back five minutes later--visibly shaken--and told me she will be transferring to a school near the city. That means in two weeks we will receive a new English teacher and I'll be assigned a different supervisor (most likely a teacher who is already here). My feelings on that topic are mixed and multifaceted, and a touch too delicate for the public domain, so if you're interested in the specifics, may I suggest that you contact me by email?
Today, after an Oo-soji (extended cleaning period) in which the floors were waxed, we have filed into the gymnasium, where the school closing ceremony is being delivered as I scribble this on sheets of B5 paper on a blue clipboard. Closing ceremonies consists of speeches, the singing of the school song, and the bestowment of award certificates. Are you noticing a pattern yet? There is one teacher who always gives speeches during these events and every other word out of his mouth is "ne" or "desune," which is sort of akin to the overuse of "like" during English speeches. I started noticing it a while back and now I just laugh every time he starts going. He doesn't say it when he speaks normally or to small groups. Only when addressing the whole school. desune?
One homeroom group of boys consipred to be really cool by wearing their summer uniforms instead of the winter ones that everyone else is still wearing. The students have their free choice as to which uniform to wear--between the short-sleeved light cotton summer uniforms or the woolen dark blue and black winter fare. One group of boys tends to deviate as a posse and show off by wearing the out-of-season uniform for formal events. It's a Japanese thing about the association between being cold and toughness.
I am so excited for next year and all of the changes! From this week, I will be reorganizing my desk and outlining a curriculum for the year. If that sounds boring to you, keep in mind that I joined this school mid-year. inheriting a job, desk and materials from various predecessors, and largely had to plan my class week by week on the fly because of being thrown into a poorly organized deep-end. The notion of having the chance to take ownership of my classes for the first time, organize my own accumulating teaching materials, and implement my own teaching policies is very, very exciting.
Showing posts with label closing ceremonies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label closing ceremonies. Show all posts
"ne" sensei
copied from my IRL notepad journal:
closing ceremonies
Well that was interesting. My school just had our closing ceremonies for winter vacation. It's called closing ceremonies and treated like an end of the year thing, yet the students will come back for one more trimester and the school year actually ends in April. Strange then that they have all of these award ceremonies and formalities for just a 2 week break. I mean most of the kids going to keep coming to school for club sports anyway. Here's what my day has been like so far:
8:30: morning meeting. This happens every day, but the teachers were acting extra formal and excited this morning, and there seemed to be more information than usual. While often only the vice principal talks, this time many teachers stood up to make announcements
8:50: Big clean-up time. Usually the students clean up the school for 15 minutes at the end of the day. Students are broken into cleaning posse's of 10-15 and assigned a location to clean, which periodically changes. Each teacher, also is assigned to supervise a location, and help clean, depending on the individual. I supervise the staff room and i help the students sweep up dust and chat with them in english. So today cleaning time was in the morning and lasted 40 minutes. After the regular cleanup of sweeping the dust around, we waxed the floors. Yeah. Waxed. That was interesting. We didnt have enough mops to spread the wax around so a few other students and I worked it into the floor by hand. My boss was impressed to see me working hard on my hands and knees, but was concerned about my pants getting dirty, lol. After we waxed for a while, I told the students they did an awesome job this year and that i'll miss them next year! (theyll probably get rotated to a new location). I had told them earlier this week that they could give me a letter to bring to America and i would have someone write back to them. And one girl who used to be in my crew but got moved wrote a letter to me!
awwwwwww.
9:30 Students and teachers meet in the gymnasium
We all met up in the gym. The teachers all sat on pre-arranged folding chairs that were set up on tarps so that we could wear our regular shoes inside. Then the students all lined up according to year, homeroom and gender, as they always do. This one group of boys seated near me were all wearing their summer uniforms, which are white, short-sleeved button-down shirts instead of their winter uniforms (a black coat with a stand-up collar). I asked them later what the heck they were thinking and they were like "We wanted to do it together! We are HARDCORE" haha a lot of the guy students like showing off by wearing their shortsleeved uniforms or shortsleeved gym shorts to outdoor PE classes. They have to wear uniforms but the school doesn't enforce which type they wear when. Haha there was also one girl who was wearing her summer uniform until a few weeks ago.
Everyone was then instructed to stand up, attention, bow, then sit down. The teachers do it too.
Then the school song was played on piano and sung by everyone.
Next the principal was introduced by vice principal
Principal climbs up to the stage, stops, bows to the Japanese flag, goes to the podium, bows the audience (audience bows back) and then begins his speech. Our principal... uh... isn't the best orator. He tends to ramble on past everyone's attention span. It's funny how I can notice that rapport between him and the audience even without understanding the speech. Same thing happened at the morning meeting. He kept rambling past the bell. Anyway he began his speech by talking about the "Sub Prime Loan problem" and was talking about other high schools for some reason. Then he suddenly started talking about difficult kanji and japanese words. He had the whole audience repeat difficult words and phrases after him. i had no idea what was going on.
During the speech one kid wearing a sick mask had to leave due to exhaustion, and was ushered out by his homeroom teacher. Another teacher standing next to me had some kind of panic attack while we were singing the school song and had to sit down (we were all standing for the song and the principal's speech). He started rocking back and forth with his head in his hands and sat there for the rest of the time, eventually leaving the room before the end of the ceremony. The same guy had an emotional/stress breakdown last week too and was taken away on a gurney in an ambulance. Of course these kinds of issues don't warrant psychological help or time off from work. One teacher was "helping him" by standing behind him, as if supervising, like he would step in if the guy started flipping out and screaming or something, which only drew everyone's attention to the situation. Awkward.
Next the head-teacher gave a speech. He is pretty cool and somehow, this will sound weird, has a voice appropriate for an english speaking dog character in a cartoon. Also, like, he would, like, use the phrase "desu ne" after, like, every few words, which is the equivalant of saying like...like...like over and over again in English. But he cracked some awesome jokes and it got the audience laughing and a little loosened up. He's cool.
Then the hardass discipline teacher gave a speech. He started with a joke, which made students laugh, but then got really serious and was talking about the difficulties of something or another. It's interesting to notice different individual speaking styles even (especially?) in a language you don't understand. Has anyone else ever notice this? It makes me wonder what the overall impression of my speaking style would be for a Japanese person. Probable "not confident enough"
The procedure for each speaker was the same: they climbed the stairs to the stage, then bowed to the Japanese flag, then went to the podium, then bowed again. I love the formality of it all.
Finally there was an awards ceremony for student achievements. The students ran from various places in the audience to line up offstage, where one teacher put them in the order they would be called on. They all took off their inside shoes and stood at attention while someone gave a speech about the award ceremony that was about to happen. Then they were called up in 2 groups of 8. First the whole group bowed to the principal who was at the podium, then he acknowledged each student for his or her achievement, gave em a certificate and stated the date, then they bowed to each other and everyone clapped. after all of them had recieved their certificate, the group would turn to face the audience and bow. We bow back.
Lastly there was one more too-damn-long speech by the principal, then everyone left. I chatted with some of my student pals and thanked Yuka for her letter. Now it's lunch time!
8:30: morning meeting. This happens every day, but the teachers were acting extra formal and excited this morning, and there seemed to be more information than usual. While often only the vice principal talks, this time many teachers stood up to make announcements
8:50: Big clean-up time. Usually the students clean up the school for 15 minutes at the end of the day. Students are broken into cleaning posse's of 10-15 and assigned a location to clean, which periodically changes. Each teacher, also is assigned to supervise a location, and help clean, depending on the individual. I supervise the staff room and i help the students sweep up dust and chat with them in english. So today cleaning time was in the morning and lasted 40 minutes. After the regular cleanup of sweeping the dust around, we waxed the floors. Yeah. Waxed. That was interesting. We didnt have enough mops to spread the wax around so a few other students and I worked it into the floor by hand. My boss was impressed to see me working hard on my hands and knees, but was concerned about my pants getting dirty, lol. After we waxed for a while, I told the students they did an awesome job this year and that i'll miss them next year! (theyll probably get rotated to a new location). I had told them earlier this week that they could give me a letter to bring to America and i would have someone write back to them. And one girl who used to be in my crew but got moved wrote a letter to me!
Dear. Mr Michael
Hello! I am Yuka Ikenono.
I enjoyed talking with you. I was looking forward to going to a staff room to clean.
I think that English is very difficult.
But, it is fun for me to talk it.
I want to develop myself English and whisk through books in English in no time.
By the way, what is a look during Christmas in America? I am sure of lively town.
Do you eat a cake on Christmas?
Thank you for reading a letter. See you again.
from Yuka
awwwwwww.
9:30 Students and teachers meet in the gymnasium
We all met up in the gym. The teachers all sat on pre-arranged folding chairs that were set up on tarps so that we could wear our regular shoes inside. Then the students all lined up according to year, homeroom and gender, as they always do. This one group of boys seated near me were all wearing their summer uniforms, which are white, short-sleeved button-down shirts instead of their winter uniforms (a black coat with a stand-up collar). I asked them later what the heck they were thinking and they were like "We wanted to do it together! We are HARDCORE" haha a lot of the guy students like showing off by wearing their shortsleeved uniforms or shortsleeved gym shorts to outdoor PE classes. They have to wear uniforms but the school doesn't enforce which type they wear when. Haha there was also one girl who was wearing her summer uniform until a few weeks ago.
Everyone was then instructed to stand up, attention, bow, then sit down. The teachers do it too.
Then the school song was played on piano and sung by everyone.
Next the principal was introduced by vice principal
Principal climbs up to the stage, stops, bows to the Japanese flag, goes to the podium, bows the audience (audience bows back) and then begins his speech. Our principal... uh... isn't the best orator. He tends to ramble on past everyone's attention span. It's funny how I can notice that rapport between him and the audience even without understanding the speech. Same thing happened at the morning meeting. He kept rambling past the bell. Anyway he began his speech by talking about the "Sub Prime Loan problem" and was talking about other high schools for some reason. Then he suddenly started talking about difficult kanji and japanese words. He had the whole audience repeat difficult words and phrases after him. i had no idea what was going on.
During the speech one kid wearing a sick mask had to leave due to exhaustion, and was ushered out by his homeroom teacher. Another teacher standing next to me had some kind of panic attack while we were singing the school song and had to sit down (we were all standing for the song and the principal's speech). He started rocking back and forth with his head in his hands and sat there for the rest of the time, eventually leaving the room before the end of the ceremony. The same guy had an emotional/stress breakdown last week too and was taken away on a gurney in an ambulance. Of course these kinds of issues don't warrant psychological help or time off from work. One teacher was "helping him" by standing behind him, as if supervising, like he would step in if the guy started flipping out and screaming or something, which only drew everyone's attention to the situation. Awkward.
Next the head-teacher gave a speech. He is pretty cool and somehow, this will sound weird, has a voice appropriate for an english speaking dog character in a cartoon. Also, like, he would, like, use the phrase "desu ne" after, like, every few words, which is the equivalant of saying like...like...like over and over again in English. But he cracked some awesome jokes and it got the audience laughing and a little loosened up. He's cool.
Then the hardass discipline teacher gave a speech. He started with a joke, which made students laugh, but then got really serious and was talking about the difficulties of something or another. It's interesting to notice different individual speaking styles even (especially?) in a language you don't understand. Has anyone else ever notice this? It makes me wonder what the overall impression of my speaking style would be for a Japanese person. Probable "not confident enough"
The procedure for each speaker was the same: they climbed the stairs to the stage, then bowed to the Japanese flag, then went to the podium, then bowed again. I love the formality of it all.
Finally there was an awards ceremony for student achievements. The students ran from various places in the audience to line up offstage, where one teacher put them in the order they would be called on. They all took off their inside shoes and stood at attention while someone gave a speech about the award ceremony that was about to happen. Then they were called up in 2 groups of 8. First the whole group bowed to the principal who was at the podium, then he acknowledged each student for his or her achievement, gave em a certificate and stated the date, then they bowed to each other and everyone clapped. after all of them had recieved their certificate, the group would turn to face the audience and bow. We bow back.
Lastly there was one more too-damn-long speech by the principal, then everyone left. I chatted with some of my student pals and thanked Yuka for her letter. Now it's lunch time!
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