A New School Year

April 25, 2008

First and foremost, the beginning of the new school year has hit me hard. In Japan, school ends in March and begins again in April, with two weeks of break in between. The beginning of a new year means that my classes get jumbled around. New first year students enter, and I’m forced to do my self-introduction all over again.

But it’s not just the students that are new. The teachers are different too. Apparently, in Japan, teachers are forced to switch schools every few years, seemingly at random. And it’s not just going from Kogyo high school to Nogyo; this shuffle is widespread and can be anywhere in the prefecture. From Kanoya to Kagoshima City, from Kagoshima city to one of the islands.

I’ll give you an example. One of my new English teachers in Nogyo, Dai Uetani, worked in Shibushi high school, maybe an hour from Kanoya. Shibushi High School is an academic high school. Now he has to get used to Nogyo, my agricultural school, and most definitely not an academic high school. He’s still adjusting.

I think that this shuffle can be good for the schools, as it injects new blood and insures that students get teachers with a wide variety of experiences; at the same time, this April shuffle is very hard on the actual teachers. Another teacher from Nogyo, Nakamura-sensei, stayed at the same school, but her husband (who’s a teacher) was transferred to Kagoshima City, some three hours away. They set up separate households: he lives with their oldest son in the city, while she lives with her daughter and younger son in Kanoya. And this splitting up of households is a common occurrence. I really don’t understand why schools intentionally put strain on families like this. I don’t think we’d stand for it in America.

I was fortunate in that my schools stayed the same. I still go to Kogyo, Nogyo, and Kushira Shogyo. (The person who can tell me which school is which gets a cookie.) However, I’m not entirely unaffected by the April shuffle. I have three new English teachers: 1 in Nogyo (Uentani-sensei) and 2 in Kogyo. Kushira Shogyo had no change in JTEs and remains my most stable school. Incidentally, it’s also my least busy school. I’ve had four classes in all of April and I’ve only done my self-introduction once.

In contrast, Kogyo underwent a dramatic change. Last (school) year, it was my least busy school. Two of the 4 English teachers never took me to class and 1 only rarely. That left pretty much 1 teacher who took me to class at all. Now, however, I have two new teachers who are willing to use me, and the teacher who took me to class last year is still here. I’ve had 12 classes and done my self-introduction 8 times. In fact, it’s because my old JTEs never took me to class that I’m doing so many self-introductions now. I’ve been primarily introducing myself to second and third year students.

Well, that’s my school life. Compared to March, I find myself rather busy.