Time Change, Changing Teachers, School Lunch!

Hi There!

How has your week been?

Most of you probably experienced the clock change in USA - Japan does not do anything related to daylight savings time or changing of clocks, so there is no losing or gaining of an hour here! But, because much of the US changes its clocks, Japan and the US are now closer in time than before. 10pm Japan time is now 9am New York time (whereas it was 8am New York time before the time change).

It is the last week of classes here! Our 6th grade class will soon be graduating and will be off to junior high school. A graduation ceremony occurs next Thursday and then there is a "closing ceremony" the following day.

The graduating class has spent a lot of time practicing for its graduation - part of it will include singing a song, so 6th grade is often in the school yard reviewing the song with the music teacher.

I found out that the song is called "tabidachi no hi ni" or "On the Day of Departure" - it is a famous graduation song in Japan. You can listen to it here.

Students and teachers will have almost 2 weeks off from class until they resume again around April 11th. Despite the break from class, it is a very busy time for teachers - they will still come to school during that time to prepare for the new school year. Some teachers will be changing schools and new teachers will come in.

At both of my elementary schools, it seems that teachers found out about their new school placement on or around March 11th. They were to keep the news to themselves until the vice principal formally announced the changes on March 18th (this past Friday).

Some teachers have told me what they hope will happen for next year and what grade they want to teach. The 5th grade at my main school is rather tough, so I think a lot of the older grade teachers are hoping to not have to teach that grade.

On Fridays at 4pm, there is normally a 15 minute staff meeting in the teachers room. The meeting for this past Friday was focused on discussing new teacher assignments. The school vice principal went through all the major changes - mainly talking about current teachers who would be moving onto different schools. He also talked about new teachers that would be entering the school.

I could not understand most of the meeting, so I will have to catch up sometime next week to hear all the news and figure out which teachers are leaving. The main news that I am aware of, though, is that the 3rd grade teacher, who speaks mostly fluent English, will be leaving the school. Also, the school librarian, who is at a similar English level, is moving to another school.

Consequently, I will be losing most of my English resources!

From what I have heard, teachers will move to their new schools on April 1st. Also, new desks have been added to our staff rooms to accommodate incoming teachers. It is becoming more crowded!

Staff shuffling aside, one thing that I have noticed is that the Japanese students at my school seem to have a pretty strong sense of rules and what is right and wrong. If I happen to go to the wrong classroom for a lesson, the students will right away let me know that I am in the wrong place.

This sometimes happens with 5th grade, as I teach three different classes of that grade in a day, so I can sometimes get confused about what class I am supposed to be at.

As I mentioned earlier, the students are also self sufficient about cleaning the school. School cleaning happens 4 days a week (does not occur on Wednesdays). The students are broken up into different tasks - some students clean the windows, others sweep the floors of their classroom, while others will sweep school common areas or straighten up the playground area. The students all do this with minimal supervision.

There are two recess times during the day that last 20 minutes each - one in the morning and another in the afternoon. Like clockwork, after about 15 minutes of play time, the students start heading back in to their classrooms on their own.

Also, if I am talking to students between classes, either within a classroom or in a hallway, the school bell acts like an immediate cause to cut the conversation short. Once it rings, any students not in their seat suddenly dart off to get to their desk.

This all happens without teachers having to chase students back to class. Also, regarding teachers, I noticed that in addition to cleaning during the regular school cleaning time, they also do extra cleaning of the school on Friday evenings - cleaning the school entrance, the staff bathrooms and the teachers room.

The teachers will also play with the kids during the breaks. Common playground activities that teachers are roped into include tag, jump rope, dodgeball and volleyball. Students can "sign out" a dodgeball or volleyball by writing down their name on a clip board next to the rolling ball basket.

Also, the Japanese classroom teachers also serve as the gym teacher for their students. There are no separate "gym" teachers at my school. Teachers will usually take the students outside - each student will put on a colored uniform with a number on the back of it (usually an orange, green, yellow, blue or black jersey). While in gym class, I have watched the students play different kinds of sports, relay running events or obstacle courses.

I mentioned jumping role earlier - this plays a constant role in student life. You will often see a big jumping rope group going on - either run by a teacher or the students. Usually two students will run a long rope and the classroom of students will take turns running through it.

I will close this week's update with something I happened to catch late on Friday afternoon.

Usually when I am in the teachers room at the end of the day, I will listen for the sound of students in the hallway. To exit the school, they have to pass by that room to get to the school doors.

We have what we call "sayonara jikan" (in Japanese) which translates to "Good Bye Time," during which a few teachers and I say good bye to students as they leave school. Soyonara (さよなら, or pronounced sigh-yo-nah-la in English) means "goodbye" and jikan (じかん, gee-kahn) roughly means "time" or "hour" depending on context.

Students will usually leave the school in different groups - younger age groups finish school earlier more often than not during the week, while 4th/5th/6th grade usually stay at school until 3:25 or so most days of the week. I think there is one day in which all grades leave the school at the same time.

Anyways, on Friday, it was a day for 6th grade to leave late. I could hear them in the hallway. When I went into the hallway, I saw them far down the hall towards the lunch preparation area. This is where the lunch staff works to prepare lunch each day (about 5-6 staff members in total).

To quickly explain, how school lunch works in Japanese elementary schools is that a teacher will take most of his/her class down to the lunch preparation area and they will grab pots of food, plates and utensils and take all of it back to their classroom. In their classroom, students will serve each other and eat lunch. There is no common "lunch room" in the elementary school.

But, back to Friday. Friday was the last day for school lunch. It was the last time the 6th grade would have it.

So, before they left school for the day, the whole 6th grade (about 90 students, maybe?) were standing in front of the lunch room staff. Some words were said from the 6th grade students followed by a bow and "arigatou gozaimasu" (thank you!). They were taking the time to thank the staff for preparing 6 years worth of lunch for them.

That's it for this week - catch some photos below. You will see some photos from walking around Kobe and its Chinatown (one of the largest ones in Japan). Some students also wrote me end of year notes, I included photos of a few funny ones.

Also Spring Koshien started this week - it is a high school baseball tournament similar to Summer Koshien, but less famous. I will be attending some spring Koshien games this week and will update you on that in the next newsletter.

Until next time,

PS - If you just recently subscribed and want to catch up on past newsletters, you can read them all by clicking this link! Updates go back to October, starting with my two week hotel quarantine!

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Photos from this week!

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