Dartboard

Okay, can I just rant for a post? I’ll do this in the traditional end-of-the-day POW WOW format that my friends and I used to do in college. (ahh… sitting around Dillin Hall with the Pioneer Girls, those were good times!)

The “POW” is… well, it’s complicated. It’s a lot of things. Work is just not fun recently. Ever since the arrival of a new supervisor in April, but the last month in particular I’ve been growing increasingly distant and disconnected from the teachers and students—especially the teachers, though. The reason is simple: Sasaki. She’s my supervisor and she just seems to make everything a struggle. Everything I suggest, everything I ask, everything I do is done wrong or impossible to accommodate.

At first any of our problems were just between her and me, but now I feel like it’s affecting so much more. I’m rarely in a good mood around her because she refuses the simple niceties such as acknowledging me with an “Ohayo” in the morning. I sit right next to her, people! Because our constant problems (of which “ohayo” doesn’t scratch the surface) I'm often not in the mood to make as many efforts to communicate with anyone and I’m becoming more withdrawn from the “community” of the staffroom. And they are more withdrawn from me too. Honestly I feel like she talks negatively about me to them and it’s made them a lot more reserved around me. I don’t have any proof of that; it’s just my suspicion and the only evidence to support that claim is simply how unwelcome I feel. (Luckily this is all happening very slowly and only the last few weeks is it beginning to get me down.)

“But that’s not the nature of the teachers…” I think. I'm sure that if anyone knew I felt this way, they would do anything they could to reassure me. They were so kind to me the first year I WANT to believe there’s another reason for this, that I’M inventing things because I’m worried about her.

And the thing with the students I blame myself entirely. I’m just not my happy-self and I’m not reaching out to them like I used to. I dread classes with Sasaki because they’re always fraught with problems—and I teach more classes with her then the other teachers combined. I can’t expect students to be anything but the shy high school students they are. If I want the relationship I used to have with them then I have to work at it like I used to. But it’s all part of the snowball—the bigger the problem with Sasaki, the more areas of my work and people it affects.

The “WOW,” which is much more exciting than the POW, is that I realized it’s not all my fault. (I do understand that I need to make changes in order to repair this “situation” with my super but I'm not the ONLY one.) Today I asked if I could take a day of paid leave in September which would allow me 11 consecutive days off (I’ve got a trip coming up!) and it turned into a 45 minute discussion with the vice-principal of the school. It was only resolved once Sasaki had to leave to catch her ferry and Hatakeyama-sensei took over as translator and all the problems miraculously dissolved.

Sasaki told it was “impossible” to take the one day off because I would be teaching at an elementary school on that day. I had to change it to the previous week, but then only getting 5 consecutive days off. When talking with Sasaki she seemed destined to ruin my plans, and Hatakeyama approached it as though we weren’t going anywhere until the problem was politely and diplomatically solved—AND I had been granted my “right” of taking a day of nenkyu. His words, “It’s my right to take this day off.”

After everything was solved I apologized profusely for interrupting him and causing trouble and he said I had NOTHING to worry about. There was NO problem.

WTF? Why did Sasaki make it such an issue? I feel like she’s out to get me. Who wants to go to work every day to sit next to someone who makes your life SO difficult?

I left work feeling both disappointed (POW) and relieved (WOW) because I seriously thought I was causing a huge ruckus by asking to take this day off, but on the contrary, Sasaki was just making it appear that way and THANK GOD Hatake was there to save me. He’s such an advocate for me--is there NOTHING I can do to get him back as my supervisor?

I'm not sure what to think… except, I think my tenure is up. There have been signs pointing me to believe two years in Japan will be sufficient, and frankly, she is the major one. So, she very well may be gone in April (cross your fingers for me!) but she could also be here for another two years too. Who knows. I have to decide before I know, so that makes that decision significantly easier.

Either way, NOT wanting to teach classes is unacceptable. Of course, I haven’t been in the classroom since mid-July, but I MUST find a way to enjoy teaching with Sasaki. And we’ve GOT to figure something out before one of us is driven to performing hara-kiri first. (Today I finished reading “Clouds of Sparrows” an “epic novel of Japan” and so all this bloody-gore samurai killing and suicide-by-sword is on the mind! It’s funny. I started the 560-page book three days ago and have been reading it from 8 to 4 at work. Finished in less than three days. It’s a good thing I went to work this week, isn’t it?)

So, that’s my POW WOW for the day. Thanks for bearing with me.

I’ve decided to apply for graduate school for next fall. It would take something significant* to change my mind about that.

*Sasaki-sensei not teaching at Nakagoto HS next year is considered “significant.”

Love, Sierra