Inheriting the Role

Background: One of my ex-students quit GEOS over a year ago and is still trying to get a refund on her unused group lessons. One night she called with the intention of leaning on the manager for a concrete answer but got Kaya, the senior teacher at the Odawara school. When my student asked for the manager, Kaya quipped that there wasn't one and that she was essentially running the school until GEOS could bring in a "permanent" manager.

For many years before and after my stay at GEOS, there has been one consistent staff member, one who has been there since the school opened. She has always avoided the enticements of GEOS to make her a manager. It seems her luck has run out. Kaya is being forced into the position of management that she has always shunned.

Let's back the tape up a few years. When I first joined GEOS, Karen was always saying that Kaya-chan would make a great manager. Kaya's eyes would bug out of her head in strenuous denial. She always said she would never take the job because of all the pressures- she wanted to keep the relative freedom of being able to schedule hours she enjoyed as a part timer. As one of the three senior Japanese teachers-Kaya, Rina and Akira-they basically dictated to the management what were acceptable teaching hours and what were not. Being new to the gig, I thought, "that's the way it is!" WRONG!

In no other GEOS that I have ever heard about has a part time teacher decided her hours. Kaya could have her cake and eat it too. After the departure of Akira (victim of omiai) and Rina (bored), Kaya-chan ruled the roost. Many times management was coached by her, often running to her for approval for various inanities. She was approached time and again to take the reigns, I know this because she used to brag about it after each phone call from head office-but each time she refused. Now it looks like it has been thrown upon her. Maybe it'll ring her bell and make her wake up to the smell of the shit that permeates that organization.

Then again, maybe not. My coworker Gloria and I used to have lunch together a few times a week and we concluded that Kaya was not a "good catch" in terms of marriage for a Japanese man. She's too western. No Japanese man could handle having a wife more worldly than himself. I'm not saying she is sage, she's just been out of the country&emdash;that qualifies as worldly in Japan. Also, she's old. If you think about it, you could really pity her because she is a prisoner of her own doing. She was there when the school opened and was a popular teacher. But, being a woman in her thirties, there are not many job opportunities for her. She made her bed, now she lies in it. Caught between being a big fish in a small town, and being a little fish in the big world, Kaya is not comfortable in either setting.

Then you could look at GEOS. It's a mess. It needs steady staff. It needs English speaking Japanese staff for its school. How many English speaking Japanese live in Odawara? How many are willing to commute from metropolises like Fujisawa out to the "boondocks?"