I taught at a private high school, the high school attached to Beppu Women's Junior College. In our school, (and I supposed all Japanese schools), the students, not the teachers had a classroom, that is, a homeroom. My school had three grades of students: ichi-nen-sei (first-year students, HS sophomores); ni-nen-sei (second-year students, HS juniors); and san-nen-sei (third-year students, HS seniors). Each grade was divided into four classes. Each class had its own homeroom and homeroom teacher and class schedule.
Rather than the students changing classes, teachers were visiting lecturers to each class. There were no individual class schedules. The class schedule was designed for each class, although there were some differences within a class depending upon the course of study a student was pursuing. (My school had a sewing course, a nursing course, a cooking course, and a fledgling English language course.) To my knowledge, there were no elective courses. Non-academic courses were after-school club activities.
(I was explaining this to my husband, who grew up in England. He couldn't believe that in American schools, each student has a different schedule. He said the English system was closer to the Japanese system; his entire class took the same required courses together.)
Teachers didn't have their own rooms; their desks were in the staff room. Along the front of the staff room were four desks overlooking the room. There sat our bosses, the principle, the two vice-principles, and on special occasions, the director of our school complex.
The teachers' desks were arranged in four groups of eight, one group for each grade and the fourth group for any part-time teachers. Our desks were quite small and we stacked our books on top and all around the desks. In 1990, before laptops, it was easy to see why the personal computer revolution hadn't taken off. There was simply no space for the huge PCs of the day on anyone's desk.
The staff room was in the new building and was quite clean and attractive. The two long walls of the room had windows which opened. It was hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It turned out that the staff room was actually air-conditioned. I discovered this working late one day, when the staff turned on the air-conditioning after the principle had gone home.
At the back of the room was a small kitchen, where there was always tea and a thermos of hot water.
Students could and would come into the staff room constantly. They'd come to talk with their homeroom teacher or club advisor or just to hang around. In the winter, they'd come to the staff room on the pretense of talking to a teacher, just so they could stand next to the huge kerosene heaters and warm up between classes.
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Click photo to enlarge.
- Upper left: ni-nen-sei teachers grading end-of-term tests. Notice the big chalkboard with the class schedules.
- Upper right: Sato-sensei, the head science teacher, shows that the only way to get through test and reports week is to imbibe energy drinks. This is the normal view from my desk.
- Lower left: Murakami-sensei, the head English teacher, is teased by two of her homeroom students who are trying to sneak a peak at their grades.
- Lower right: Matsuo-sensei, the third year science teacher, makes out reports. The box contains rubber stamps of all the students's names for one homeroom. This was to make it simpler to write reports by hand.
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens
October 30, 2002
Comments
Now that is a detailed post! In my defence I will try to cover these points in different posts.
Comment by: Darren Cheng. Posted October 30, 2002 06:18 PM.
Hello, but believe this or not, my name is Darren Cheng too, so Hi! and it's so cool to accidentally cross your path while browsing for my own name over the internet. :o)
Comment by: dar:c. Posted February 19, 2003 02:20 PM.
Share Your Thoughts
Darren Cheng's post on the teachers staff room got me in a remembering mood.