Cleaning Time

One of the unique differences between American and Japanese schools is the participation the kids take in keeping their schools clean. Every day when I arrive to school, the teachers and kids are all busy cleaning various parts of the school, or watering plants or weeding. There is also a Japanese soundtrack (though yesterday I heard Avril) playing over the sound system. The music played at Aka school, combined with the dutiful cleaning and perky attitudes, is reminiscent of something out of The Sound of Music.

After lunch we clean again! The students here in Japan stay in their same classrooms all day while the teachers rotate. This instills a sense of ownership for the students, who take pride in their rooms. The kids sweep and then actually wipe the entire floor with wet rags. So far I have not been suckered into the rag job.

I wrote to my predecessor last week about cleaning time because it's very uncomfortable for me. Three months into my job, I'm still unsure what I should be doing. The jobs and assignees seem to change every day and I'm yet to find the sign up sheet or figure out how everybody knows where to go. I feel guilty hanging out in the teachers' room so I end up just walking around like a supervisor, checking in on all the different groups of students and usually ending by playing with the first or second graders. Today I made a concerted effort to help the Aka second-graders but ended up taking pictures and distracting them by miming a mock English lesson. The teacher came in and caught us in a moment of raucous mayhem so maybe tomorrow I'll be more disciplined.