Blows my mind

On Wednesdays I have only one class to teach and it is the last period of the day. So generally I will catch up on writing letters or emails on Wednesday mornings and just bide my time until lunch. After lunch I have my aerobics class fifth period and then I teach during sixth. After aerobics today, I get back to the teachers' room, change back into my normal clothes and wait at my desk to go to class with Otsuka-sensei. So the bell rings for the class to start, and Otsuka is no where to be seen. I walk around a look for him a bit, but again, no where. So I just wait patiently at my desk, read some news online and keep an eye out. I ended up waiting the whole class period, and he never shows until after the bell has rung for class to be over.

Turns out, during fifth period a student and a teacher got into a bit of a verbal fight. The student had a question and the teacher proceeded to ignore his raised hand, so the student lashed out. He became unruly in the class and was very disruptive. Otsuka had to run interference during sixth period between the teacher and the student. The most surprising part of this whole scenario however, is that while Otsuka is taking care of this issue, our sixth period English class is just sitting down in their classroom completely alone and hanging out. They got a free period today. Now, would that EVER happen in an American classroom? Is one teacher going to completely ignore a class they should be teaching to moderate a situation of which they had no part???? I think not! Educational priorities are pretty screwy in the Japanese system to be sure.