TENSE!!!

Today's the big teacher move. Starting at three thirty this afternoon the principal started calling the staff into his office, one by one. Teachers who spend all of their time in other offices scattered around the school have joined the rest of us on pins and needles in the big staff room. They're all wondering if they will be transferred or not. The V.P.s of the school are still trying to get work done, but every time they approach a teacher for a request of some kind, the teacher gasps and things that they're being directed to the Big Cheese's office for an upheaval of some sort.

Teachers in Nagasaki, as well as the rest of Japan, only spend a handful of years teaching at one school, then they are moved. All teachers are required to spend five to seven years teaching on one of the islands in the prefecture. This is probably the move they dread the most because it means long commuting hours, or living away from their families and only seeing them on the weekends when possible.

Out of about seventy teachers here, ten or fifteen will be transferred. After all the teachers have been informed one-by-one, the principal will come and make an announcement as to who was moved. That will be happening soon. I may just stick around to hear the news.