new school year, new assignment

it kind of feels like that one time my older brother sat on my head with a couch cushion. there's this not-quite-painful pressure and it's a little hard to breath.

yesterday, they announced the new "placements" for teachers. i wasn't at school yesterday, so i got the news this morning.

last april, i became a "7th grade teacher." i had expressed an interest in wanting to get more involved with the kids and while i teach a bunch of different grades, for overnights or field trips, i became technically "attached" to the 7th grade.

now, i don't know how other schools in japan do it, but at my school, teachers stay with "their" kids and move up as the kids do until the teachers see their kids graduate. at which point, the teacher returns back down to the bottom, gets "attached" to that grade of kids and does the whole thing over again. so for a year now, i've been a gakunen zuki which literally translates to "year attachment" or something. there are 4 classes in the 7th grade (each with a homeroom teacher) plus 3 of us gakunen zukis.

with the new year starting in april, the rumors have been flying. rumors about who is going to be what grade. mostly for the gakunen zukis because they are seemingly "free to move" and in a more unstable position than others. they can get reassigned to another year and given a homeroom, or they can continue to be a gakunen zuki. apparently there are usually very few changes to the "main" homeroom teachers, who just move up with their kids and no one's feathers are ruffled.

for me, as a foreigner, my position is a little vague because i don't have a japanese teaching license and i can't do exactly everything a japanese teacher does because of my japanese level. but because of that, there's no chance i will be moved into having my own homeroom; i know i will always be just a gakunen zuki. and i'm just fine with that.

so today i asked Mr. Math (who sits across from me) how the announcement went yesterday. (he is also a 7th grade gakunen zuki but the rumor was that he wouldn't move up to 8th grade with all of us and instead stay and be a homeroom teacher for the new 7th graders. so i was curious for him, as well as another 9th grade gakunen zuki, rumored to move down with Mr. Math.) i glanced at the sheet and...

...wait...

i'm not in the 8th grade.

wait.

wha...?!

yeah. i'm "skipping" 8th grade. (boy wouldn't that have been nice in real life!) i didn't even IMAGINE that i would be moved. i just assumed that i'd move up to 8th grade.

i'm so full of mixed feelings. i LOVE my current grade year teachers. they are all pretty young (the oldest is 33 or so with the average probably somewhere around 28) and fun and easy to talk to. they make my job enjoyable. i like work BECAUSE OF them.

as would be with any office or job, there are people that i...don't get along with so well. (there, i said it, ok?) i find them hard to talk to (and i'm not talking about personal life talking. i'm strictly talking about work related talk.) i don't feel like i'm seen anywhere NEAR an equal to them in the workplace. maybe it's that i'm a foreigner. maybe it's that i'm female. maybe it's that i'm young. maybe it's that i am too this or too that, or not enough of some other thing. but regardless, i don't feel like they respect me. i don't need or want to be seen as "equal" per se, but i do think i deserve to be treated with respect, as a colleague.

the 2 people that i find the most challenging are both in the same grade. and it just happens to be the same grade i've been assigned to.

starting in april, i'm the lone female teacher in the 9th grade.

it's going to be a...ahem, learning...year.



(more to come...)