Causin' Elementary School Drama

This week I caused a mini uproar. I half-wished I hadn't said anything, but on the other hand I was kinda entertained by the whole ordeal - and in the end, the children reaped the benefits.

When I received the lesson plan for one of the schools I had to teach this week, I noticed that in the margins it said, "Vocabulary cards - provided by ALT, please." Normally I don't have a problem with this, but I didn't receive the plan until the end of the day and had no time in the office to do preparation. But, I did my best and managed to come up with the cards.


After I taught at that school, I returned to the Board of Education and casually said,

"You know, this school never has any English teaching cards and materials, but all of the other schools have them. I wonder why?"

My supervisor didn't know why either and we left it at that.


The next day my co-workers told the section chief what I had said. I might not be stellar at Japanese - but I've improved on my listening skills so I picked up the gist immediately. But I pretended like I didn't know what they were talking about (bwahaha). Then I saw the section chief call the vice principal of the school I was talking about. Great... here we go. Next thing I know, more people are on the phone trying to clarify the problem.

I had to go back to the school to teach more classes. When I arrived I was approached by the head teacher and he told me that the Board of Education had called him. "Uh oh, I hope I didn't get this man in trouble...," I thought. He looked a bit worried.

Then 2 hours later we got a budget of $200 to buy English teaching supplies. Wow! That was fast. The school asked me to look through catalogues and pick what I thought would be the most useful for the English class. I was so excited!


But the excitement was short lived...

Turns out that everything in those catalogues was so expensive! For example, a set of 8 plastic hamburgers cost $300.00. You might as well go to McDonalds and bring the kids real hamburgers! In fact, we could feed the whole school!

Another example, was play money - which I thought would be cheap. But $200.00 worth of play money would set you back $500.00! How does that make any sense? And then I came to the conclusion that we couldn't afford anything except miniature 5" maps of Japan - which you know, is so useful for an English class.

Disappointed, I told the principal that all I needed was a laminating machine and I'd just make the cards myself. But he insisted that since the BoE gave us the budget, we should use it to buy something. So we settled on a package of large cards that had 8 sets in it. It was $300.00 - which was over our budget, but they were flexible.


It was just funny seeing all the teachers scramble over the problem and listening to all the discussions and the phone calls being made. And within a day, I was able to get some supplies for a school that never had any.

At first I thought I had done the wrong thing - causing a big fuss, but the teachers were actually thankful that I had said something. For them, it's very difficult to try to approach the Board of Education for more money when budgets are already tight. There is a clear boundary between the teachers and the administrators, and you take a risk when you ask for more than what was given to you. Each side has a different set of priorities.

But the curious foreigner can always jump in and drop casual remarks that just might get them somewhere.

LOL