We had a little excitement at the Junior High School today. It seems one of the mothers of an 8th grade student was upset at the treatment her daughter was receiving from some classmates. So in the middle of the afternoon she showed up at school, marched into the class room, and started yelling at the students in question. The teacher in the class ran into the staff room (where I was) to get the help of the Vice Principle. There was a lot of confusion and a lot of people running back and forth for a while, but eventually the mother was persuaded to go into the staff room and talk about her grievances rather there, than in the classroom. They moved into the small meeting room adjacent to the staff room, and the vice principal and other senior teachers did their best to keep things professional, but the other teachers were very interested in what was going on. Every time a new teacher would come into the staff room the story would be repeated, and sometimes people had to be reminded to keep their voices down so the mother in the adjacent room wouldn’t hear everyone gossiping about her.
The whole thing got me thinking about some of the other little dramas that have happened this year. Of course being in a school setting is filled with little dramas. Every week there is some in kid who gets in trouble, or gets in a fight, or something like that. But here are a few things that stick out in my memory:
About a month ago a junior high school student was hit by a car while he was leaving school on his bike. No one was injured, but because it was a traffic accident it required that the police get involved and the all the wheels of the bureaucracy were set in motion. The old man who hit the student was in the school for a long time talking to the teacher. The police were in the area taking pictures and writing reports.
I didn’t personally see the accident, so I really shouldn’t comment, but to my mind there is no excuse for hitting a student right outside of the school. If it was down the road a ways that would have been one thing, but it is just common sense to drive carefully around a school zone. Especially when the students are leaving, and since the students all leave at the same time, it is pretty easy to tell when school is out. I’ve noticed, however, that the driving up here tends to be a lot more aggressive than the driving in Kyushu. Occasionally I’ve even had the driver behind me get upset because I slowed down at a school zone. Anyway, moving on to the next story….
A couple weeks ago we were practicing for graduation. As I’ve noted a couple entries back, graduation in Japan is a bit odd. Since it is something the whole school attends, practices are for the whole school as well, not just the graduating 9th graders. One of the 7th grade girls decided she was sick of all the standing up and sitting down, and began pleading with her home room teacher to let her stop. He told her to tough it out. She actually made a run for the door. He caught her and restrained her, and she pretended to give up and started back to her seat. But as soon as he let go of her she ran again and this time dodged him. A couple other teachers tried to intercept her as she ran across the gym, but she was able to out maneuver them all and escape.
Some of the teachers later told me that the girl in question has emotional problems. Personally I think she’s the sanest person in the school.
Maybe 3 months ago or so, one of the teachers actually collapsed in the classroom. He’s a young guy, about my age I think although I haven’t actually asked him his age. He’s slightly overweight by Japanese standards, but I’d never call him fat back in America. He looks like that guy you knew who was real skinny in high school, but when he got to University his metabolism slowed down, and he started to round out just a little bit because he ate a lot of pizza and drank a lot of beer and never exercised. That kind of guy. I’ve always liked those kind of people because they seem to be a lot of fun to be around. This guy as well seems really fun, although unfortunately I haven’t had a chance to get to know him really well.
Anyway, apparently he was teaching a 9th grade class when he suddenly collapsed on the floor and started foaming at the mouth. The students ran to the next classroom, and the teacher in the next classroom ran to the staff room where I was. They called an ambulance, and got the stretcher from the nurse’s room and carried him downstairs to the door to wait for the ambulance.
I insisted on helping even though they had more than enough people to carry the stretcher, just because I thought it would look really bad if I stayed at my desk and kept studying Japanese as if I didn’t care. Actually I think everyone must have been thinking along those lines, because we had way to many people carrying the stretcher, and then afterwards everyone was tripping over each other trying to help him.
He looked really bad. He was awake, but his eyes were glazed over and he didn’t seem aware of what was going on. I thought it was pretty serious. But that afternoon I saw him working away on his computer in the staff room as if nothing had happened. “I can’t believe they didn’t give you the rest of day off,” I said to him. “In America, if you have to ride in an ambulance in the morning, they usually give you the afternoon off.”
He answered, “I’d like to take the day off, but…” He left the “but” hanging as is a common way of ending sentences in Japanese, and I didn’t push it anymore than that, although I was appalled that he didn’t get the rest of the day off.
I found out later from the other teachers that this wasn’t the first time this has happened to him. The doctors can’t find anything wrong though, so they just let him go back to school when he seemed to be feeling better.
Because the teacher in question always gets his food out of convenience stores, some of the other teachers suspect the problems might be diet related. Apparently one of the older teachers keeps trying to get him to drink more vegetable juice, and they are always arguing about it.
I’m no doctor, but I have a hard time believing this kind of thing is caused by a poor diet. If it is, I’m really in trouble.
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