Takasu

In Nishinomiya, teachers have no choice but to move to a new posting at regular intervals. This starts with initial teachers. They move after their first five years at a school and it continues every seven years after that.

On Monday, March 24, all of the teachers were notified where their new schools or posts would be. It was also the day that all of the Assistant Language Teachers received our new posts. ALTs are reposted every semester or year. All new postings are revealed in March.

At Kawaragi, the art teacher, a PE teacher, and a Japanese teacher were reposted to different schools. The PE teacher actually may have been posted at the Board of Education Offices to take up some sort of leadership position. Principals are also relocated after so many years in one location.

It is very Buddhist and very Japanese. Teachers have no say on where they will work, they are simply notified where their new jobs will be located. Buddhists see there role is to fill the role that they are given and not to try to change their situation. “What will happen, will happen.” There is no changing what will happen. The Buddhists teach that each person or soul is like a light bulb. When a light burns out it is replaced with a new bulb, which will give off the same light. It doesn’t matter which bulb is there, the light is the same. This passivity in accepting what happens is reflected in many aspects of their lives, including their grammar and how they construct sentences. Most of their sentence construction is passive, not active.

I am not Buddhist. I believe that what will happen, may not happen unless I help it happen the way I want it to. I don’t like passive sentences.

I added a satellite view of the new school. Check it out on the links on the left side of the page. Look for “Takasu” among our Favorite Places. The school is just south of the intersection where the first major road intersects the quay. I attended a conference at Takasu back in November, so I didn’t need to go find this school.

When I was informed where my new school was, I sent a text-mail to Katsumoto. He wrote back, “I think that will be bad! But maybe ok. Small school. Very friendly and showy students.” Later, when I was talking to him he told me that the girls’ uniforms “have short skirts, but they are friendly.”

I don’t know what he meant by that.