Part San - Sorry, this is a long post.
So lucky me, I had a ton of teacher changes this year. And they weren’t all for the better. You saw the line-up of old teachers.
At the end of the first week, the schools officially announce which teachers will be staying and which teachers will be leaving. I missed one change, much to my chagrin. Freddy, my beloved Freddy, was leaving Cromartie. Due to my mis-reading his name (his name was written in kanji, and when I was reading it, I accidentally switched the characters in my head, and thus thought a teacher I had never heard of didn’t care about, was leaving. I was wrong), I didn’t realize that he was leaving and thus never had time to say a proper goodbye to him. This lack of closure led to a bizarre, and in retrospect slightly troubling, incident wherein I almost started crying in another class because Freddy was gone. Freddy used to bring his guitar in and sing Beatles songs with his students; one of my other teachers did this one day, and my eyes started tearing up. I didn’t even know I was that attached to Freddy until then.
Also creating much sadness and despair, Oneesan was leaving Cromartie as well. The two best English teachers in Cromartie, and maybe the two best English teachers I ever worked with, were gone. Great. But I had decided that my theme for this year would be: Stay Positive. In my second year here, I had quite a long bit of culture shock that resulted in me being very negative and angry. So for this new school year, I decided to keep a positive mindset and always see the good in things.
In that line of thought, PD sensei from my Base school was leaving. Yea! No more hovering and over-translating and bad coffee/tea breath! No more randomly grabbing my arm in a vice-like grip. No more hand-shaped bruises on my arms! See? Something positive came out of this. Every thing is sunny and smelling of roses!
In other news, Svelt and Dependent sensei left the Ghetto school. Can’t say I was really sad to see Dependent sensei go. But Svelt, well, Svelt I would miss. He had really made my life more bearable at the Ghetto school. Now I could only hope that some new and great people were moving in.
Hahahaha…
Staying positive. Staying positive. I’m sure loads of handsome, young, smart, English-speaking teachers were going to come pouring into my schools. Yup. And I’m going to start losing weight every time I eat ice cream.
I found out that both Dependent sensei and Svelt were being transferred to Cromartie. That worried me slightly. I was sure that Dependent sensei would keep relying on Svelt sensei and that he would never be able to figure out how to teach because he would always be teaching with her. Luckily, the principal of that school decided to give them each separate grades to teach, so that worked out. It was good that Svelt was replacing Oneesan because I really needed a nice teacher who would talk to me at that school.
I can’t decide the order of the next announcements, so I’ll go with the school with the least amount of changes first. My Base school. Hurrah. So as I said PD sensei left, and was replaced by another part-time teacher. Can you guess who? Can you guess who? This is karma trying to slap me in the face. This is what happens when I try to think positive, happy thoughts. I thought I had gotten rid of him. He left for good. He went to teach at another school as a part-time teacher there. I gave him flowers at the going-away party. That means he wasn’t supposed to come back, dammit! He was wussy, he was girly, he was annoying. Yes, friends, witness the triumphant return of Mr. Passivity! Back in all his worrying, sniveling, whimpering wonder. Crap. At the welcome party for my Base school, he did his darndest to avoid me at all costs. He sat right across from me, and anytime I would turn to talk to him or ask to translate something for me, he would suddenly turn in the opposite direction and offer to pour someone a drink. Nice to see that some things never change.
My last school. My worst school. The only school where I had almost lost it in a class and started yelling. The Ghetto school. There were 2 vacancies at the Ghetto school now, and I was worried about who would come in. The only teacher there was Rabbit sensei, and I had seen how her lack of classroom management had ruined the English of 2 years of students. So imagine how surprised I was when I talked to her and found out that she was only going to teach one elective English class (and a part-time special needs class) and that the other 2 teachers were going to teach all 3 grades of English (why does the Ghetto school do this? Their students’ English is worse than any other school, and I can only think that it has something to do with their being the only school to assign teachers multiple grades to teach. It seems like easy math to me: 3 English teachers + 3 grades = 1 teacher per grade). I was even more confused when I found out that a teacher from Cromartie would be teaching English at the Ghetto school. The reason for my confusion was that he was a gijutsu teacher – the equivalent to the Industrial Tech. teacher. Now riddle me this, riddle me that. When you have a certified English teacher in your school, why then would you choose to make the Industrial Tech. teacher be the English teacher and the English teacher be the Special Needs teacher? Why? Whywhywhy? Who, in their infinite stupidity, decided that this sounded like a good idea? The only person to whom this would make sense would be someone under the influence of alcohol. Way, WAY under the influence of alcohol. And I mean to the point of alcohol poisoning. But, in my newfound positive mindset, I decided not to make judgments ahead of time. Maybe he would turn out to be an absolutely amazing English teacher. Maybe he would have hidden depths. Maybe he couldn’t find an English teaching job and so had to settle for teaching Industrial tech all these years. Maybe I will lose weight every time I just look at my treadmill.
So staying positive, I sent an email to Oneesan to see what her opinion of this guy was. Her response?
“He is a little strange teacher. Good luck, Jessica.” And here she inserted the most evil smiley face that I’ve ever seen, but it unfortunately can’t be reproduced on the computer. Needless to say, I was very encouraged. (She later told me that he had quite the reputation for being “difficult to work with”, which doesn’t sound TOO bad until you run that through a Japanese/English translator and realize that she was saying, “He’s a &^*#^$@ and he’s crazy and absolutely NO ONE likes working with him.”).
And now, after teaching quite a few classes with this teacher, I realize that it’s worse than I originally thought. His English is horrendous. I can’t understand what he says in English. And his Japanese is strange. You’d really have to speak a bit of Japanese for me to explain it, but he just uses strange, strange words. When he speaks to me in class, he often uses Japanese. He’ll command me or order me to do something instead of asking, and he’ll often do it in Japanese. This makes the students then think it’s okay to address me in Japanese. One of the primary reasons that I’m in Japan is so that students can get to talk to a native English speaker in English. Using Japanese as our primary communicative language kind of shoots a hole in that. This teacher is just bad. Really, really bad. And he randomly yells at the students for no reason at all. During one activity, he felt that the boys and girls weren’t talking to each other enough (come on, dude, they’re 12 years old. They’re just starting to get over the whole cooties things), so he yelled at them to sit down, then yelled at them for 10 minutes. And I mean yelled. Spittle was flying (I considered handing students books or something to put up as spittle shields, but I figured that this might make him even angrier), his voice was cracking he was screaming so loud, and other teachers were opening their doors to see what was up. And the worst part was that he kept mentioning me, and I have no idea why or what he was saying. There would be a long, random, loud string of Japanese, followed by my name, followed by more Japanese. He was probably telling the students that I was angry with them or something (which I wasn’t. I was about to go smack him upside the head and tell him to let it go – just because no girls wanted to talk to him in junior high didn’t mean that he needed to yell at them now as a way of getting revenge). And every once in awhile, he’d turn for me and ask for confirmation in Japanese. About 3 minutes in, I stopped paying attention and just sat down, figuring he’d peter out eventually.
In my professional opinion, the man is an idiot - an unstable, bipolar, crazy idiot. You wouldn’t want to know my personal opinion. And I think that the best part of having him at this new school is that his desk sits right next to mine. Yes, joy beyond all joys, he sits next to me. Usually, I can ignore (Defense #1) the people next to me, but he refuses to be ignored. The first day I was there, he sat next to me during lunch and stared at me for literally 10 minutes. I tried not to make eye contact (Defense #2)– I hear this works when bears are attacking. However, apparently as he is not a bear (slight oversight on my part), he came out with the comment, “You use chopsticks very well. I am surprised you can use chopsticks.” Now, this comment sounds harmless, but try to realize that I have been at the same school as this man for 2 SOLID YEARS. How did he think I was getting nourishment if I couldn’t use chopsticks? I haven’t been getting fat on air alone. And the fact that it was preceded by 10 minutes of staring was someone off-putting as well. After that stunning starter, he started talking to me in some weird mix of Japanese and English. And still to this day, after replaying the conversation over and over and over in my head, I have absolutely NO IDEA what he was talking about. Something about how American school kids used to behave badly in the 1980’s but are getting better now (don’t know where he got this idea – maybe Brat Pack movies of the 80’s?), unlike Japanese students, who were good and are getting worse. Or something like that. I’m not entirely sure. Eventually, I just agreed with him to get him to stop talking to me (Defense #3). And ever since then, whenever I see that he’ll be eating lunch in the staffroom, I down my lunch in literally 2 minutes, bolt out of the staff room, drive to a nearby store, buy a coffee, and sit in peace and quiet for 20 mintues. And I hate coffee. But I’m willing to drink it if it lets me get away from him. I guess being around him drives me to drink.
Positive thoughts. I’m thinking positive thoughts. I’m going to my happy place. Relax, relax… (when I’ve gotten stressed lately, M sensei has taken it upon herself to ask if I want her to run out and buy some aroma therapy candles. It’s getting easier to tell who’s worked with me based on their understanding of sarcasm). I guess on the positive side, I can still depend on the Ghetto school to make me not want to come to work. Everybody likes consistency, right?
Anywho, we’re calling this new teacher Patsy, and I’ll give a Japanese dollar to anyone who can figure out the word association that lead to that name.
The only bright point in my life right now is the other new teacher at the Ghetto school. He is possibly the best teacher I’ve ever observed, and that includes teachers in America. When I first came to the Ghetto school to just say hello to the new teachers, he sat down with me for 25 minutes to talk about team teaching and his experiences and what he expects, etc. He told me his background in education, and everything. This is incredibly rare. Most teacher can’t even find 25 seconds to talk to their ALT, and if they can, they say, “Here’s the lesson plan for next week” or “Can you plan the lesson for next week.” So I was blown away by his willingness to just sit and chat. His English wasn’t the best, but he was absolutely fearless using it. He’s not embarrassed at all. There’s a half-Japanese half-Canadian student in one of his classes. He loves it. He treats the kid as a half-teacher during English classes, and doesn’t mind at all if the kid corrects his English. And during this teacher’s self-introduction to his students, he used almost all English. And they paid attention. And they understood most of it. It was amazing. This class is the one that almost made me go insane and start yelling and throwing things. This class has never behaved before. Ever. I don’t think they know what it means to behave. Rabbit sensei couldn’t do anything to stop them from being little turd-muffins. And this guy came in, and right away got control of the class almost instantly. His classroom management skills are amazing. You can tell he loves to teach, he loves to use English, and he’s really, really great with junior high students. He instantly developed a relationship with them, and most of them really respect him and listen when he tells them to be quiet. He great and amazing and he’s married, dammit. And he has 2 kids.
Seriously, I have to stop myself from randomly hugging this guy. He teaches both the grades that Rabbit sensei did last year, and they have completely turned around. Students who ignored me last year or muttered “Ohayo” now say “Good morning!” when they see me (sometimes it’s in the afternoon when this happens, but hey, I’ll take it). I now no longer dread these classes. I just dread the other classes with Patsy. We’ll call this other new guy Metabo sensei, for lack of a better name (in his self-intro, he said that he loved fried foods, but he’s getting “chotto metabo” [a little fat], so he’s on a diet. He also told a cute story about his daughter who’s now in 1st grade and refuses to go to the bathroom at school because she was told that the girls toilets were haunted. So now the poor thing is terrified to go).
So there they are. My new teachers. The only great change was Metabo sensei. Everything else kept the status quo or just made things worse. I guess I shouldn’t complain. I know a lot of ALTs have horrible teaching experiences. (Patsy just walked in the room, making me feel that NO ONE in the HISTORY of BEING an ENGLISH TEACHER has EVER HAD TO DEAL with someone as STUPID and INCOMPETENT at teaching as HIM. Seriously, Rabbit was annoying and all, but I never had fantasies of smacking her upside the head). Staying positive! I’m positive this will be a great school year!
Base school
M Sensei
O Sensei
Mr. Passivity
Cromartie
Ice Queen
Dependent Sensei
Svelt
Ghetto
Patsy
Metabo
This was found at a 7-11 type store called Lawsons. In case you can't read, it says "Attention to all manly men!! Lawson proposes a fresh and new product category of mysterious, yet sexual supplements. They are the love magic for couples, the drive source for men, and the necessary elements for the world of today. We guarantee different d?????? Try them out!" I just loved this for the first line.
Mmmm...looks tasty, don't it? My first impression was that it was a brain in jello. It was actually the dessert at my welcome party in Japan 2 years ago. It's a jello/jelly substance with a pickled plum in the middle. Mmmm....
In Japan, there is a holiday in May that used to be called "Boy's Day" but is now, for PC reasons, called "Children's Day." For this holiday, people display toy models of ancient samurai armour. And it ain't cheap, either. Check out the price tag - $1,195. Granted, you only buy one or two of these in a life-time, but still...
I was shopping the other day and happened across this shirt. I just had to take a picture.
