So our week of curriculum planning ends tomorrow. I think we got some stuff done. I wish I could say more than that, but I'm of kinda mixed opinions about the school right now.
This is our vacation time. We get 2 weeks off in summer, and two weeks off in winter, plus an additional week off at the end of April (for curriculum planning). That is it. Because we really needed more material and to get things organized, I asked the other teachers to come in and do planning and preparation. And we have in fact created some new materials, edited some old ones so that they better fit the levels of our current students, and planned class schedules out for the next several weeks.
But our boss has also taken up several hours each day with rants that I don't really understand. One day the rant will seem to conclude with X as our best option, and the next day's rant will conclude with Y as our best option (where X and Y are impossible to do at the same time). And half of the rants just don't seem to make sense. It seems like it has been several years since teachers have done the kind of preparation that we volunteered to do, and we have to put up with these rants? Along with complaints that our boss was tired of doing all the preparation work? The teachers have 4 solid hours of classes in the mornings, and then various private and groups lessons from 1:40 until 7PM. When are we supposed to do preparation? After 7PM at home? When we aren't being paid? At best the rants accomplish nothing, and at worst they are a waste of time, confusing, and serve to alienate and frustrate our teachers, myself included.
I'm a bit stressed out about the move, and the situation at work doesn't help. At the same time, I feel like I've created some cool things, like the image below. If you follow the directions, you will have colored in a map showing ancient Egyptian civilization, complete with Red and Mediterranean Seas and the Nile River.
Still, my 5-year plan might be pushing it a little bit too far. That is, around 2015 changing jobs and/or careers. I guess it depends on how the next few years go here, what my financial situation is like, whether the teaching/preparing ratio changes for the better, and whether I can tolerate these rants. By this time next year, I should have completed the certificate for curriculum planning, and if I have time, I'd like to take up my Japanese study again. I've seen several translation job offerings recently, but each of them requires the JLPT level 1 or 2, and I've only got the level 3. If translation doesn't seem like a viable option, then it would probably be best not to waste the curriculum planning certificate, and go into that field.
If the situation at the school worsens, or at least doesn't improve between now and 2015, then I might decide to leave before then. Still, we'll see.
Tomorrow is our last day of planning and preparation. Friday I have to clean my room, do several loads of laundry, go to the city hall to tell them that another dangerous and not to be trusted foreigner will be moving in, head over to the bank and phone company and tell them about the move, and also go to the realtor for the contract signing and to pick up the key. Saturday will be the actual move.
Last item is the phrase kamikaze. Most of you will know it from the suicide bombers during WWII, but in fact the term comes from the attempted and unsuccessful Mongolian invasion of Japan back in the 1300's, when a freak storm destroyed most of the Mongolian fleet. The only reason I know that is because of playing RTS games like Shogun: Total War. In any case, I probably haven't mentioned that the temperature has been about 10-15 degrees C cooler than just a few weeks earlier. This is all thanks to the typhoons, which Michi has been referring to as kamikaze, the wind of god or the divine wind. Why? Because it has saved Japan's butt yet again. Only last year old and young people were dropping like flies in the hottest summer that Japan had seen in decades, and now that we have a power crunch, it has surely let us survive without turning the air conditioners on too high.
Cheers,
