A sad day

Today my supervisor told me that he is leaving the Board of Education - he is being transferred to another district to be a Principal. I mean, it's great for him, but not so good for the JETs.

Principals don't work so hard in Japan, the Vice Principals do most of the work! Also, at the BOE Tsucky works crazy hours (usually from 7am - 10 or 11pm) but at schools the latest he would have to stay is probably 7pm, or earlier. The Vice Principal stays the longest, then the teachers, and the Principal gets to go home pretty early, compared to everyone else that is!

Also, it means he has to move to that other area - he will get a small apartment and live there during the week, coming back to Hagi to see his family on the weekends. Understandably, his kids are a bit sad - actually over Tsucky's career he has spent a fair proportion living apart from them, or working so much that he never sees them. Finally he gets a job which would have him home for dinner at a reasonable hour and it is in a different city!

Our new Supervisor is an Elementary Teacher. She doesn't speak so much English, though she does try. I think that all of us at once (there are 6 of us assigned to this Board of Education) overwhelmed her earlier, and she couldn't keep up. It will be a real learning experience for us, having a supervisor who doesn't have fabulous English.

Also, my most important English Teacher (at my base school he is the guy who does everything for/with me) and a fabulous Office Lady from my base school who was helping me with my Japanese, are also going to new schools, which I won't visit. So though it's the end of the school year, and the kids are all super excited, the staff are less so as it means many changes, very quickly. Teachers get very little notice that they are being transferred, and are transferred on average every 3 years, and aren't allowed to tell people until about 5 days before they have to move! It's a crazy system...

So when I go back to my schools in about a week and a half I will most likely have new English teachers to work with, with no warning!