Here’s a pic of me and Kocho-sensei (Mr. Monden). He is a warm, respectful person and a great leader for the school.

School Life:
Ichihasama Junior High School has a positive feeling about it. The teachers get along well, and to me, a measure that there’s something good going on is that there is a lot of laughter happening in the staff room. The relationships between the students and the teachers seem to be very positive, with the teachers respecting the students, and the students giving a lot of respect back. This is great to see.

The school has a great leader. Kocho-sensei is a wonderful man who is very warm and welcoming. I love listening in when people knock on his office door to talk to him about something, and you can hear him welcome the visitor loudly, “Hai! Dozo, dozo! (Yes! Please come in! Please!) He welcomes everyone like it’s his first time meeting them, even his own staff who he was just talking to a few minutes before. It creates a great atmosphere in the staff room. The super bonus about Kocho-sensei for me, personally, is that his English is absolutely exemplar. I mean, he is one of the best English speakers I have heard in Japan. I think he used to be an English teacher, but I still want to know how he became so skilled in my native tongue!

Personally, I’ve been a little bit frustrated at school- not because the school is doing anything wrong, but because it’s so different than what I’m used to at home and I am having difficulty adjusting. For one, this is just a different role for me. I play an assistant role here, I’m basically an outside resource that they have hired to use when needed, and to be honest they haven’t needed me too much at the beginning here because there has been some special events like Ekiden (marathon relay competition), testing (basically took the whole week this week), and School Sports Day (coming up this Sunday, weather permitting). Classes have been canceled at one time or another for each of these events and the teachers are so busy that sometimes they forget to inform me. Thus, I’m left wondering, “Are we following the schedule today?” Being in an assistant, or adjunct role is also difficult because at Sunset, where I have worked for the past 7 years, I was just beginning to step into a leadership role. I had finally gained enough confidence in myself and in my teaching to take on more responsibility in my building and I was really enjoying that feeling. Coming here has been a step backwards in my workload and responsibility and it’s been tough for me. I want to help, I want to contribute in any way that I can. Certainly I have the skills and experience required to make big contributions, but the big wall preventing me from doing this is the language barrier- which makes me want to learn Japanese more and more.

Another challenge is that the teachers are so ridiculously busy that I’m afraid to talk to them or ask them a question so as not to interfere with whatever they are doing. Consequently, there are days where I maybe say 5-10 words during the whole day (hello, goodbye, what’s this? Etc.) This is hard for me! I like to chat, visit, and hear the latest gossip and think about students who are having problems. This is all part of being in a workplace, is it not. Again, I want to stress that no one is to blame here, it’s just the nature of being in a workplace without knowing the language. There is nothing anyone could do to help. The only real solution I see is me studying the language as hard as I can and trying to speak a little more each day. The Japanese love when you try to speak their language and you can gain a lot of respect that way.

I’ve spoken with my predecessor, Jae, about the aforementioned issues and she sympathetically she felt the exact same way and often was in tears at the end of the day wondering why she made the decision to participate in the JET Program. But gratefully, she has told me that this is the feeling that everyone has in the beginning, and that by November, she was starting to take on a bigger role in school, had gained a good rapport with the students, had gained respect from the staff, and had started to feel like an actual staff member at the school, and not just some strange gaijin. So I know there is hope, and certainly I’m not giving up. I just need to put myself out there, take some risks with talking to people, continue asking my supervising teachers how I can help, and find some ways that I can contribute my time and skills. Studying the language regularly will certainly help and will be a key to other areas of school and social life. As a matter of fact, that’s what I’m going to do right now! Yoroshiku onegai-shimasu!