Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Anxious morning

This morning was the morning when all the teacher's transfers were announced to the public via the newspaper. I'm sure I've written about this crazy system before, but I can't find it on my blog anywhere, so I'll revisit the topic and bore you again! Japan has this amazing system in which teachers are transferred around schools at an alarming rate. Yesterday the children finished school at 11:30am (don't even get me started on that) and yesterday afternoon a fax was sent to all the schools from the board of education informing them of all the transfers that were being made this year. No one was allowed to leak this information so for parents etc. it all came down to scouring the paper this morning to see who will be staying and who will be going. It looks like our school has got off pretty lightly this year with only one teacher (my son's... phew - won't get started on that one either) leaving. Having said that though it is possible that two other teachers have also changed but as they are not fully qualified teachers they are not part of any of the announcements to the public.
Anyway, what all this means is that on Thursday all the kids go back to school to farewell the teacher(s) and then the teacher will need to clean out his desk and make his way to his new school ready to start the school year 10 days later. The whole "abruptness" of this system makes absolutely no sense to me...
Fortunately our great principal and vice principal haven't changed so now we just need to wait till the first day of school to see which teachers the kids will get... finally my daughter's last teacher at primary school!

2 comments:

  1. This system is so monumentally annoying... I lost my three favorite teachers at my school... granted one was a part time teacher who simply wasn't being renewed since MEXT in all it's brilliance has cut all English communication classes in high school in favor of more science... don't get me started on that one. The other one has been requesting a transfer for the last six years so even though I am sad to see him go I guess it's what he really wanted. Still... arghhh!

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  2. Jo,

    It is strange how the school district likes to play musical chairs with the faculty. I was just getting used to doing English lesson plans with several of the teachers and now they are gone. Some of them have moved to the other schools that I teach at while others have gone to different prefectures. It's hard to make friends with the teachers and principals knowing that they may not be there the following year. As far as making any sense of the system...I guess it keeps everyone on their toes. I can only guess about the tremendous stress the teachers must be under. It's too bad they have to waste time thinking about their new postions instead of concentrating on teaching. George

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