Ceremony for Departing Teachers

Every March, 1/3rd of the faculty at any Japanese schools gets transferred around for various reasons. I’m told this custom originated with the civil servants to prevent bureaucrats who get entrenched in their little section and refuse to cooperate with anyone else. It was then extended to the school system, and applied to teachers as well. (I’ve written about all this before).

It has its good and bad points obviously. In a 3-year period, the faculty has almost completely changed over. Obviously the students are always changing every year as well. So there’s no sense of consistency or personality to the school. The school is just a building. There’s no one around who has a sense of the school history, no one can tell old stories, and there’s not really any point in alumni coming back to visit.

On the other hand, it does even out the educational system somewhat. The U.S. schools are too decentralized to implement this program, but if we could it would solve a lot of the controversy about education reform. You couldn’t blame the teachers for a consistently under-performing school district, because the teachers are always changing every year. And by the same token, under-performing teachers wouldn’t be able to simply blame their students.

Anyway…At the end of the year there is always a ceremony for departing teachers who are being transferred. Somehow I’ve made it almost 5 years in Japan without having to attend one of these things until this year. Last year I was baby-sitting the American students. When I was in Ajimu, I was at multiple schools so I wasn’t obligated to attend the ceremonies of any one school. My own departure from Ajimu was in August, not congruent with the Japanese school year, so I had my own separate farewell ceremonies.

So, this year was my first time attending, and this time I was one of the teachers who was leaving.

The assistant principal wrote down on the program where all the teachers were going next year. This was somewhat problematic in my case, because I didn’t know what I wanted to do for the next year. I had mentioned once in passing that I was thinking about graduate school someday, so he wrote that down on the program and asked me if it was okay.

“Um, It’s okay, but I’ve been telling all the students that I’m going to be vice-president,” I said. The assistant principal laughed, and made the appropriate corrections.

Before the ceremony, I waited outside the gym doors with all the other teachers. I was a bit nervous, but they were all really nervous also. Funny, you would think teachers would be used to standing in front of students and making speeches. But everyone was talking about how nervous they were. I guess maybe the formality of the ceremony adds a bit of extra weight.

“Why are you so nervous,” I asked the teacher next to me. “What do we have to do?”

“We have to go up to the front of the gym and receive flowers from the students,” she answered.

“That’s all?”

“And we have to make a short speech.”

“What do we have to say?” I asked.

“Just say Sayonara to the students for about one minute.”

“SaaaaaaaYooooooNaaaaaRaaaa,” I said.

That got a good laugh from the other teachers in the hallway, so I thought about recycling it for my actual speech. Something like, “So I was just standing outside a minute ago, and I asked Sudo Sensei what I should say for my speech, and she told me to just say Sayonara for one minute.” Clear throat. “SaaaaaYoooooNaaaaRaaaa.” Turn to the other teachers on stage. “Do I still have time left? I do? Well, it’s been a really great year, I’ve really enjoyed myself, etc, etc.”

Like all the other pointless ceremonies that go on in a Japanese school, they really take these things seriously, and humor isn’t often used in Japanese official speeches the way it would be in the West. So I figured either a bit of humor would come in like an unexpected relief, and I’d be a hero, or the thing would fall flat on its face. I debated for sometime whether to do it or not when I watched the other teachers up on the stage, and then finally decided to give it a try when my turn came.

Junior high school kids are usually a pretty easy audience, and it’s easy to make them laugh. This time though, the joke fell flat. Aside from all the cultural issues regarding humor, I think what really killed the joke was that it didn’t have the spontaneity it had out in the hallway. I had to set it up first, and that always kills a joke if you don’t know what you’re doing.

(Shoko thinks the whole joke was pretty lame to begin with, even with the set-up. "If a Japanese person just said GOOOOOOOOOOOODBYYYYYYYYEEEEE for one minute during their speech, would you think that was funny?" she asked. Actually I would, but maybe thats just me.)

So, anyway, it was a bit embarrassing. But fortunately I got a big laugh at the conclusion of the speech when I said I was going to become Vice-President of the United States.

Link of the Day
Phil has a post on the new immigration bill before congress. I know I link to a lot of crap, and many of you have trained your eyes to just skip over my links, but this is actually worth reading.