Original Post
Man I love Saturdays at Keikyu! I had a no show for my last lesson, so I sat in the teacher`s room and read a book and sent email with my phone.
2013 Update
As someone who takes a lot of pride in their work, reading my original post really made me cringe. NOVA was one of the few English schools that paid you even if students didn’t show up for lessons. If you were scheduled for 5 lessons, you got paid for 5 lessons even if nobody was there. In turn, the expectation is that when you have a free lesson that you find something productive to do in the office, and not just sit around reading and texting.
Kawasaki NOVA was always insanely busy, so nobody had ever needed to explain what I should do if I had an empty lesson. A few weeks after this original post, I was in the same situation and a senior teacher explained the priorities. The job list for free lessons included:
- Preparation of kids class materials – there was always some colouring, stapling or glueing that needed to be done for kids classes.
- Lesson preparation – ensuring that you were prepared for your upcoming lessons and reviewing or improving your current lessons
- Maintenance of student files – removing old students, replacing folders that were falling apart
- Tidying the office – teachers are generally very messy and there were always files, books and other things lying around the office
- Assisting the staff
From that time forward, whenever I saw a new teacher sitting around doing nothing I was able to get them working.
Drinking in Japan 