Thread: Japanese Teachers Never Grow Up

So in Japan, when the school events roll around, it seems as though the teachers are determined to participate. We do our own set at the chorus contest, we run in the Sports' Day relays, we compete openly with kids in contests designed for them to enjoy... and we go all out.

Sports Day teams are chosen based on the fastest runners, the most athletic, ie. the most likely to win... if we lose, the entire group of younger staff members assigned to pwn sports day sulks for the next month.

The same school (not ours, thankfully) sweeps the speech contest every year because the TEACHERS, not the students, write all of their schools' entries. Everyone knows and vaguely disapproves... but this never affects the judging. They always win everything. The kids enjoy winning well enough... but the teachers seem to NEED it! They'll do anything for those trophies!

Now we're preparing our chorus contest set... we have one song with all the teachers (a traditional stand-and-sing chorus) and a song with the support staff only (which I'm a part of). The entire support staff is only 8 or 9 teachers in their 50s and 60s and is going to sing a song about school that was written in 1963... tonight we had our first rehearsal and it's gotten a bit out of hand.

Not only are we singing, we're now doing a mini-play/history lesson about the year the school was built and three of us are wearing vintage costumes (I'm going to be in the sailor uniform) and stealing bags from the children to swing around. Our music is going into old textbooks from the school library (so it looks like we're reading out of them)... and I have to choose between my principal and my vice principal to kiss on the cheek and walk off the stange hand-in-hand with. They want me to braid my hair and put it up in those little loops too O_o; And they're looking for military hats for the two guys.

I'm not sure if this is incredibly awesome and they're doing this to entertain the kids... or if they're all just trying to pretend that they're students again by participating in the same events they did as students over and over, refusing to let go and leave them to the students.

I'm all for the teachers participating... but maybe we should be helping with the kids' skits/songs or at least letting THEM decide what we're going to do... maybe singing songs THEY know or will find inspiring...

Are Japanese teachers awesome, dedicated and playful? Willing to devote massive amounts of time to their school and their students? Or did they become teachers so that they'd never have to stop being students? O_o;

I suspect it's quite a bit of both...