sayonnara

Friday marked the end of the school, I now have two weeks of spring vacation. What that translates to me is two weeks of sitting at my desk with no work to do, no classes to teach and no job expectations. When the students come back, they will be one grade higher.

This also means to me a whole new work environment. In Japan, teachers move around from school to school for most of their career. Many of us believe this is so that any one school will not have an overflow of talented, dedicated and passionate teachers. On 1:00pm on Friday, every school in the country announces to the teachers who is staying at the school and who will be moving on to their next work environment. The teachers are informed privately ahead of time but are expected to keep it a secret from everyone. They are not able to decide if they stay, leave, or where they are going to go next. The prefecture decides all these details.

1:00 on Friday, we all sat in the teacher's office. The principal of the school announces the teacher's name of who will be leaving; that teacher stands and the principal continues to inform everyone of which school they will be going to. This is the first time all the teacher's know who won't be around anymore. After the 10 minute announcement, all the teachers stand and bow to one another and walk around the room, saying their goodbye's.

Basically, if you're a young teacher - I think your first 3 or 4 years, a teacher is guaranteed to be moved around after their year completed at one school. Usually after 3 or 4 years, a teacher is able to stick around the same school for a while. I think the cap of those years is 7 or 8 years and then they will be moved to their next school as well.

My school is having a major turnover this year, 10 teachers are leaving. 10 teachers that I have worked hard with to establish comfortable relationships with. I'm pretty dissapointed with who will be leaving, honestly all 10 of them I have created decent relationships with. It was a huge blow to me, to see them all go. One of them including, Mitsue my young Japanese teacher.

On Friday night, we had a "farewell party" for all the teacher's that will head out. It was really emotional, everyone crying. Myself included feeling really emotional, I was trying not to cry. We had dinner; following dinner speeches began. One teacher that is staying presents one teacher that is leaving with flowers and gives a small speech about how they will be missed or inside jokes. Tears were shed. Then, everyone chats for a little while, taking turns going from person to person saying goodbye. After that, each teacher that is leaving gives a speech about their time spent at the school, more crying involved. Afterwards, we all went to Karaoke.

My opinion, as an outsider evaluating my life around me, is it seems so destructive to the lives of these people. Some have to move hundreds of miles in under two weeks, now bringing them even further away from their family. Then, having to re-establish yourself in a new work environment with a new town, new students, everything. Everyone was clearly upset to be leaving, I just feel the negative points to moving teachers around outdoes the positive aspects. Maybe, just because I am sad to see alot of people go, and am disappointed in how hard I worked to create relationships with them. On a positive note, I hope that my other school has a better work environment. I didn't develop relationships with any of the teacher's - so I hope that I will be able to make some with the new batch of teachers.