School in Japan.

What you're about to read started out as a bulleted list in Notepad several months ago and eventually became the wall of text you see before you. I'm thinking in the future I'll switch to a more vignette style in my blog entries, and thus (hopefully) be able to post more often. But hopefully this will give you some background on what my work environment during the week is like.

Luther High School, established 1926.

The Japanese school system is incredibly different from America in almost every way. To start, it's year-round, so it ends in March and begins in April. Elementary, middle, and high school last six years, three years, and three years, respectively. This applies nationwide, even to private schools. And grade levels aren't K-12. A student in their ninth year of post-kindergarten education wouldn't be in "ninth grade," they'de be in "middle school third year." It took me way too long to realize why people looked so confused when I told them I first came to Japan when I was in "high school fourth year." There is no high school fourth year here.

Students stay with the same classmates all day (their "homeroom"), and in the same classroom, too; it's the teachers who move around. (The only exceptions are classes that require special equipment, like science.) Homerooms' schedules are different on every day of the week. One homeroom I teach has English first hour on Monday, but fifth hour on Wednesday. (The hope is that they will be more alert at one of those times. The consequence is that it's been three months and I still don't have my weekly schedule completely memorized.) Each homeroom is made up of about forty kids and has an assigned homeroom teacher that's almost like a third parent in how much responsibility they take for their students. They do a lot of disciplining and counseling, and also spend long hours on the phone with parents.

My sweet ride, a standard Japanese commuter bike (foreground).

Japanese students in general are much less independent than their American counterparts. Forget driving to high school; you can't get a license here until you're 18. Plus the parking lots are tiny and many people commute to work and school on bicycles anyway. (I'm one of them!) Japanese students' lives revolve almost entirely around school, with very little spare time. They're often at school on weekends and/or before the crack of dawn and/or long after it gets dark for club activities, sports practice, required extra classes, or discipline. (One girl in my junior high class got into trouble and now has to help clean campus every morning for a while.) Every junior high and high school, public or private, requires its students to wear uniforms not just in school but when they're in public, too. This technically includes weekends and vacation. Every school's uniform is distinct, so if a student misbehaves in public, everyone knows which school to call for discipline (usually dealt by the homeroom teacher). Luther even has embroidered uniform socks and uniform book bags.

Speaking of which, the dress code at Luther would make most American high school students squirm. Students are not allowed to wear piercings, makeup, nail polish, or colored contact lenses, and if girls' hair is longer than shoulder-length they have to tie it up. (Boys aren't allowed to grow it out that long.) Students are also not allowed to dye their hair. If they dye their hair they must go to a salon and get it dyed back to black. (They're also supposed to save the receipt and submit it to the school to prove that they didn't just apply temporary spray-on dye.) If students actually, genetically, have lighter hair, they have to submit documentation of their family history for it. In addition, students aren't allowed to pluck their eyebrows, shave their heads, or grow their nails too long. Boys can't have facial hair, either.

Sometimes the girls will try to sneak in makeup or colored contacts, or shorten their skirts (they're supposed to fall low enough that the hem touches the floor if the girls kneel) by tying them up with long elastic strings under their shirts. It's usually pretty easy to spot which girls have done this. In a delicious cycle, Katie confiscates the strings and then cuts them up to make hair ties to hand out to the girls whose hair isn't tied back.

View from my desk in the teachers' office.

The social structure of a Japanese school is much more vertical than in the States. I was having lunch with one teacher the other day who had gone to the same high school and college as his friend, another Luther teacher, who was a grade level above him. "Were you two friends in high school, too?" I asked. He seemed surprised, and then replied, "Not friends. He was my senior." Students are very attached to their homerooms and peers in the same grade--so much so that their juniors use a title--senpai--instead of their actual name to address them, even if they are friends. And the teachers are ranked even higher. When students enter the teachers' office, they must recite their name, grade level, homeroom number, and attendance number before announcing which teacher they are there to see. Then they have to ask, in the most polite Japanese possible, if it might possibly be all right if they entered. Then, as they leave, they always bow and say a formal apology that in practice is used for "goodbye." This form is all printed on a laminated placard on the door so the students remember, right under a chart that shows which teachers are at which desks.

Ministry-approved junior high English textbook
that made me a little homesick.

As for the curriculum, there's no control at the prefectural or local level, public or private; it's all managed by the Japanese Ministry of Education. With a few special excpetions, even private schools have to pick textbooks that are Ministry-approved--a practice not without controversy, especially when it comes to history books. The entire system seems to be made of tests--skill tests, entrance exams, standardized tests, college prep exams, English vocabulary tests, Chinese character tests. Classes are often taught lecture-style and with a focus on rote memorization. Not sure which one came first--the tests or the teaching style. The English classes I team-teach are much more American-style, with more focus on participation and discussion. Sometimes the students warm up to it, but often if a teacher asks a question to the whole class, the students respond with blank stares and a long silence. (Shiiiiiiiiin, in Japanese onomatopoeia.)

30% is considered a passing grade here. I was shocked to learn that when I first arrived, but as I started to teach, I realized that these students are busy as all get-out. It's not that the students aren't doing their best, it's that they don't have time to do their best, with all the clubs and extra classes and fifty kinds of standardized tests they have to study for almost every week. They have barely enough time to even sleep at night. Consequently, students falling asleep in class is the biggest disciplinary problem I encounter. On the plus side, they often don't have enough time to get into trouble in public, either.

Top-floor Dainishichōkakushitsu ("No. 2
Audiovisual Room," or "Heaven" to the
native English teachers) after cleaning.

Another responsibility Japanese students have is cleaning. At Luther there's no custodial staff, aside from an older lady who cleans the entrance and staff bathrooms every morning. There's a dedicated fifteen-minute period every afternoon where small groups of students report to their assigned areas of the school to clean, which is kind of a raw deal for the students who get stuck scrubbing the bathrooms. Other jobs including sweeping the outdoor walkways and cleaning the teachers' office (where they are watched carefully). I'm in charge of one of the two special audiovisual classrooms used for English classes on the top floor, where every afternoon students clean the desks, empty the garbage, and vacuum the carpet, which is generally pretty clean anyway, due to the fact that shoes aren't allowed. (Shoes are not allowed in the library, either. The students generally drop their shoes at the entrance and pad around in their socks, but there are a few pairs of slippers available for teachers and guests.)

This post may have been information overload, but it's reflective of just how different my work environment is from anywhere I've ever been before. It's hard to imagine myself or my classmates from high school in an environment like this, dressed in uniforms and standing and bowing to teachers at the beginning of class. When I was in high school, the only time I was ever regularly at school past 4:00 was the year I took Journalism on nights before the school paper was due--and even then my teacher would order pizza for all of us. (We had a sweet deal with a local pizzeria where we gave them free advertising in exchange for free pizza once a month.) It makes it hard to relate to my students sometimes, except that liking Taylor Swift and Harry Potter seem to be universal.

There are plenty of advantages and disadvantages to the Japanese school system, and with all the structure it's sometimes hard to remember that I'm here primarily as a missionary and not an English teacher... especially when I'm showing students a giant picture of a hamburger and explaining that it's like a paragraph (see, the the two slices of bun are the topic and concluding sentences, and... yeah). But regardless, it's the backdrop against which I do most of my work, and I'm glad I get to see firsthand what these kids go through in their daily lives. I'm hoping and praying for more opportunities to connect with them in and out of class, and really looking forward to the next 21 months here. It's gonna be a a busy, but I think rewarding, next couple of years.

Monthly Luther/KyuGaku English Conversation at a downtown Starbucks.
Luther students in the light blue, KyuGaku students in the gray.
Posted with permission.

Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.
Ecclesiastes 12:12b (NIV)