April

It has been a few days since I finished Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West .” The characters, the desert setting, the brutality of humankind but also the great lengths one goes for money and notoreity. Afterwards, I wasn’t sure what to ead. I certainly had no inquiry strong enough or fascination to read more of Cormac’s books. I think the contents of the book has made me veer more towards something benevolent and kind-hearted. Which is why I have made attempts to read Shantideva’s “The Way of the Boddhisattva” by Shambala publications. I think this in a way mirror’s my inner thoughts. I can talk about compassion, inner struggles, and international relations to people but I can also be exposed to depolorable, sickening, and antagonizing acts of depravity.People generally want something stable, a stable income, a stable moral support, and a stable personality. But stability brings repetition more often than not. And repetition brings conformity or boredom as all the neuron receptors think and do the same resulting in time going really fast. Going from age ten to twenty feels like decades but going from thirty to forty feels like a flash of lightning.

It is fair to say March is truly March Madness in the eyes of basketball fans but also for Japanese schools. March is the month of finality. The end for educators and students and all in between, from special needs specialists to the custodians to the administrators like the principal and the higher ups. The best I can describe is it is a slow somber series of farewells both temporary and permanently. When March hit off, I did not treat it like an unique month. But things slowly changed. Instead of the usual five to six classes that I co-teach daily at the elementary schools and the single junior high school, it slowly went to four then three and sometimes just one or two, especially in the final weeks of March. The tounger students showed continuous interest and participation as usual but the sixth graders, the graduating class, slowly unveiled disinterest. The sixth graders are mentally preparing for middle school and the graduating middle schoolers are preparing for high school or college, whichever they end up choosing to go to. Before going further, I would like to further explain the Japanese education system to get a better understanding.

Teachers in Japan are viewed as public servants. It is a respected profession and generally it is hard to let go a teacher unless something egrigious was done by the teacher. Once completing the required exams, they are decided by the prefectural board of education (BoE). For example, if the teacher is in Hiroshima prefecture, the Hiroshima BoE decides. You may be placed in the most remote regions of the north where the student population for the school may be in the double digits or you may be put in a major city where busses, trolleys, and foreigners take over the commuting space. Of course personal preferences with appropriate mreasonings like the distance of commute or the locality of their family or significant other is taken into consideration, but ultimately,your early career stage trajectory is in the hands of the high ups who themselves have been educators for twenty, thirty years or more. Just like being a cabin crew member for an airline, when you first start out, you are on call have to work the irregular shifts that cause baggy eyes and inconsistent sleep schedules. But through the years of service and allegiance, you gain doses of seniority and preferential treatment. Teachers in Japan, regardless if you are a first year or entering your fifteenth year into the career, get reshuffled every three to five years, because after all you are a public servant. You are going where you are needed the most. Though there are exceptions. A homeroom teacher I work with at an elementary school around the same age as me has been reshuffled a few times, though I am not sure of the precise reason(s). Or for example, a teacher with thirty years of experience and is one or two years shy of retirement will more than likely wan to finish out their reamining teacher years at the same school so perhaps the teacher will stay for more than five years. It all depends case by case but generally speaking, teachers stay for few years at one school before repeating the same cycle again at a different school. But why? At the core, it goes to the collective mindset. If school A has been performing low on the subject of math either due to poor execution of the curriculum or lack of enthusiasm from the math teacher and school B has amazing results, then during the reshuffling period (end of March), there is a plausibility that the teacher from school B will be at school A for the start of the school year in April. It appears that Japan wants schools to have fairness and equitability. New teachers bring in fresh pedagogy and different work styles. It strays away from repetition and redudancy while bringing the best quality education possible for the students.

The graduation ceremony I participated on was a sunny Saturday morning for one of the elementary schools. Everyone brought their A game of suits and professional clothes. Ladies had the embroidery on their pockets while men had modest suits and stylish ties, albeit, it had to be white. Oh yes! You heard that right. White ties are specifically worn for graduation ceremonies and others. Black ties on the other hand are worn for funerals. My western mindset couldn’t fathom wearing a white tie on a white shirt. It was held in the gymnasium and the teachers and students up until this point, had done rehearsels religiously. They have mastered every movement and tone and breath. Watching from the sidelines shoulder-to-shoulder with other teachers, it was like watching a wave of people from the result of standing up, sitting down, and bowing down. And after an hour or so of honorary speeches from the higher ups, the graduating students with their respective teachers walked one by one through the gym. Equally spaced out about five feet apart, walking in a miltary manner, everything was orchestrated in perfection. I am not exactly going into the specifics of the ceremony but in general, the mood was somber and emotionally melancholy. It was only after everyone exited the gymnasium and retreated back to the school, that everything changed like the city street lights turning on once the sun had settled.

Students and teachers were standing along the hallway like we were recording for a rap music video. Not too long after, the sixth graders, now in seventh, walked down the stairs and were cheered, applauded, and supported from classmates, former teachers, and advisors. The music, the confetti thrown up in the air, the young students trying to hide their tears, it was a melting pot of emotion that had been held in for too long and was finally cascading after months. In my K-12 school experience in America, nothing like this remotely happened. The only graduation I went to was for the high school, but no amount of rehearsals, preparations, and collective understanding of what was to be done came close. I ould see many of the students at the junior high school that I work at, so it wasn’t an eternal good bye… yet. As for the teachers, the same emotional roller coaster experience would start again the following week.

We went back to the gymnasium. A lot less people compared to the student graduation ceremony, understandably so. The same procedure happened. In this school, close to fifty percent of the school staff, including a mixture of classroom teachers and teacher aids had quit, reshuffled, or retired. The eleven teachers gave their own personal speeches, received their boquet of flowers, said their goodbyes to the students and would say their final good byes before their next adventure. A teacher aid told me she was going to be a saty-at-home mom and take care of her two children. Another said that her husband is locating to a new city for work reasons and she will have to quit to reside with him for the next couple of hours. A classroom teacher, a respected one, after years, perhaps over two decades, informed me that they will be the vice principal at a school on a small island inside the prefecture of Hiroshima.

What I got out of this is that though, deep down, teachers may not necessarily agree with the system that is in place, with the constant reshuffling or the bureacracy or the curriculum, they go with it. April is the start of the new school year, which means new students, new teachers, and new experiences which I am very excited for as I close my chapter of Japan in less than four months.