I’m in one of those unicorn placements where they have us “work from home” when the kids aren’t in school (and encourage us to just go “experience Japan”). 🙃
I don’t have much deskwarming time with a full 5-6 classes every day — but leading up to winter break, they’ve compressed our days so I now have 4hrs a day to deskwarm while the other teachers grade students.
In elementary school: How I’ve spent this time is preparing tons of games for the new year! Memory games/go fish reviewing vocabulary. My kids love card games so I just keep making them.
Morning: wake up fml
1st period: coffee and reddit, try not to cry
2nd period: grind japanese
3rd period: walk around school, more coffee
4th period: more japanese, almost lunch
lunch: eat lunch, bored, I shoulda bought more food
5th: more coffee, hate life
6th: almost the end, feel motivated, take an online course
Evening: go home feeling tired despite doing nothing
Night: You know what, today was kinda productive, 3 drinks in
Repeat
Prime Japanese studying time!
Mostly studying Japanese/React and thinking of travel plans for the future. Ordered some “easy” manga so probably going to read that too.
Oh, and wasting a lot of time on Reddit too.
Vacationing
My placement has a special holiday system called cultural furlough. 5 days per holidays season, domestic only, to experience Japan. As such, off from this weekend till the 6th. Very little desk warming on the agenda
tbh, I have no clue what I will be doing this desk warming season. I was yelled at by a JTE about how I can’t be on “messaging board sites” and I “need to do something productive. You’re here to work.” so after that, I started studying Japanese, and was promptly called out for that too. Then they tried to make me turn in work to do a month before the actual class.
I’ve also been yelled at for taking nenkyu.
So yeah, I don’t know what Im gonna do.
My Vacation starts on Friday and I don’t have to come back until the 4th. Then classes will start soon after.
i’m going on a short trip around christmas time, and i have the standard new years holiday off, but other than that, chatting with the school nurse and some other coworkers i’ve become friendly with, probably. making goals to study japanese more and not meeting them. writing. drinking tea. the usual!
I’ve taken 3 days nenkyuu so I can have a break until the 4th of January. Would’ve had to work the 26th-28th otherwise. When I come back it’s 4 days of deskwarming and then back into regular classes.
As for Christmas, my fiancé is coming to stay with me for a few days and then we’re going back to his for New Year. He also happens to live in a place about 15 mins from where some of my family reside. It’s gonna be my first proper Japanese New Year.
ああああいうかこれこそお楽しみくださいよね
My prefecture gives me breaks off in order to ✨experience Japanese culture✨!
Work on future lessons and watch some videos.
Between the new year holiday and the fact that every sane person is going to take at least three days nenkyu, this is the easiest deskwarming season to get through. It barely exists.
Even with my schools starting later than most, I’ve only got 3 days of no class days and the students are in school one of those days.
Browse Reddit – 1 hour
Study Japanese – 2 hours
Misc work/prepping for next term – 1 hour
Go home by lunch..too easy
I love deskwarming. Last school year I was teaching only ES, 5-6 classes each day. Now I also go to a JHS twice a week and am usually deskwarming when I’m there.
I browse Reddit (not great), study Japanese, read up on things I find interesting and take notes on them. I write songs, so I work on that as well, lyrics and chord progressions and all. I have a fiction story I work on every now and then for fun and the challenge. I read about 1800s-1900s America. Because I still work at ES, I’ll usually spend 2-4 hours working on materials for my classes there. *Sometimes* I will draw at my desk. If I’m lucky, students will ask me to draw them something, so I have an excuse.
I am a CIR and everyone is extra busy in my village office because they need to finish stuff for the year, they need to do budgeting, etc….the only one who isn’t really busy, is me 😛 I do so much desk warming every day that I am starting to feel like I could build a central district heating system to distribute the desk warmth I am producing, to warm up the cold uninsulated houses of my village xD
Unfortunately for me, I kinda need to look like I am busy all the time, so I can’t just doodle around too much. Or at least the doodling I do has to look kinda like I am doing some sort of work, because my kachou can see my computer at all times, so any doodling has to be large amounts of text so he can’t understand what I’m doing.
I have various projects I am working on (such as developing a recipe for some food for the local hotel) but they are super anal about me having to be at the office all day, so this stuff has to be done in my spare time -_-
One good thing about working in a village office is that we close from New Years until January 5th, and combined with a couple of days off after Christmas from my nenkyu, I at least get to be freed from my desk for a couple of days.
My base school is pretty cool with me fucking around during downtime (during the school year and breaks). Only rule is no computer or handheld games, which is fine since I don’t play often anyway. That time came into place not because of an ALT . Funny story, a former Japanese staff use to play Minecraft on the PC during lunch or school breaks. It only became banned when the data from the game started over powering the hardware on the PC and caused it to crash completely (according to one of the JTEs)
I usually practice kanji which wins brownie points with my coworkers around me when they see me practice writing. I read Reddit (no one cares at all—all they see is a wall of English text and everyone is suddenly afraid lol) or I read a book at my desk. I’m also in grad school and would do grad school work, but I’m on winter vacation, so that’s out. Usually, I do grad school work during desk warming days during the school year.
Anyone load up with alcohol during desk warming? I guess you could slip something in your PET bottle of coffee.
I usually either study Japanese or play games on my PC. My base school doesn’t really care if I game, but I try to stick to playing classy looking stuff like The Zachtronics Solitaire Collection or Victoria 3.
I don’t mind desk warming at all. I’m basically getting paid to study Japanese, something I would probably be using a good chunk of that time doing anyway.
20 comments
I’m in one of those unicorn placements where they have us “work from home” when the kids aren’t in school (and encourage us to just go “experience Japan”). 🙃
I don’t have much deskwarming time with a full 5-6 classes every day — but leading up to winter break, they’ve compressed our days so I now have 4hrs a day to deskwarm while the other teachers grade students.
In elementary school: How I’ve spent this time is preparing tons of games for the new year! Memory games/go fish reviewing vocabulary. My kids love card games so I just keep making them.
Morning: wake up fml
1st period: coffee and reddit, try not to cry
2nd period: grind japanese
3rd period: walk around school, more coffee
4th period: more japanese, almost lunch
lunch: eat lunch, bored, I shoulda bought more food
5th: more coffee, hate life
6th: almost the end, feel motivated, take an online course
Evening: go home feeling tired despite doing nothing
Night: You know what, today was kinda productive, 3 drinks in
Repeat
Prime Japanese studying time!
Mostly studying Japanese/React and thinking of travel plans for the future. Ordered some “easy” manga so probably going to read that too.
Oh, and wasting a lot of time on Reddit too.
Vacationing
My placement has a special holiday system called cultural furlough. 5 days per holidays season, domestic only, to experience Japan. As such, off from this weekend till the 6th. Very little desk warming on the agenda
tbh, I have no clue what I will be doing this desk warming season. I was yelled at by a JTE about how I can’t be on “messaging board sites” and I “need to do something productive. You’re here to work.” so after that, I started studying Japanese, and was promptly called out for that too. Then they tried to make me turn in work to do a month before the actual class.
I’ve also been yelled at for taking nenkyu.
So yeah, I don’t know what Im gonna do.
My Vacation starts on Friday and I don’t have to come back until the 4th. Then classes will start soon after.
i’m going on a short trip around christmas time, and i have the standard new years holiday off, but other than that, chatting with the school nurse and some other coworkers i’ve become friendly with, probably. making goals to study japanese more and not meeting them. writing. drinking tea. the usual!
I’ve taken 3 days nenkyuu so I can have a break until the 4th of January. Would’ve had to work the 26th-28th otherwise. When I come back it’s 4 days of deskwarming and then back into regular classes.
As for Christmas, my fiancé is coming to stay with me for a few days and then we’re going back to his for New Year. He also happens to live in a place about 15 mins from where some of my family reside. It’s gonna be my first proper Japanese New Year.
ああああいうかこれこそお楽しみくださいよね
My prefecture gives me breaks off in order to ✨experience Japanese culture✨!
Work on future lessons and watch some videos.
Between the new year holiday and the fact that every sane person is going to take at least three days nenkyu, this is the easiest deskwarming season to get through. It barely exists.
Even with my schools starting later than most, I’ve only got 3 days of no class days and the students are in school one of those days.
Browse Reddit – 1 hour
Study Japanese – 2 hours
Misc work/prepping for next term – 1 hour
Go home by lunch..too easy
I love deskwarming. Last school year I was teaching only ES, 5-6 classes each day. Now I also go to a JHS twice a week and am usually deskwarming when I’m there.
I browse Reddit (not great), study Japanese, read up on things I find interesting and take notes on them. I write songs, so I work on that as well, lyrics and chord progressions and all. I have a fiction story I work on every now and then for fun and the challenge. I read about 1800s-1900s America. Because I still work at ES, I’ll usually spend 2-4 hours working on materials for my classes there. *Sometimes* I will draw at my desk. If I’m lucky, students will ask me to draw them something, so I have an excuse.
I am a CIR and everyone is extra busy in my village office because they need to finish stuff for the year, they need to do budgeting, etc….the only one who isn’t really busy, is me 😛
I do so much desk warming every day that I am starting to feel like I could build a central district heating system to distribute the desk warmth I am producing, to warm up the cold uninsulated houses of my village xD
Unfortunately for me, I kinda need to look like I am busy all the time, so I can’t just doodle around too much. Or at least the doodling I do has to look kinda like I am doing some sort of work, because my kachou can see my computer at all times, so any doodling has to be large amounts of text so he can’t understand what I’m doing.
I have various projects I am working on (such as developing a recipe for some food for the local hotel) but they are super anal about me having to be at the office all day, so this stuff has to be done in my spare time -_-
One good thing about working in a village office is that we close from New Years until January 5th, and combined with a couple of days off after Christmas from my nenkyu, I at least get to be freed from my desk for a couple of days.
My base school is pretty cool with me fucking around during downtime (during the school year and breaks). Only rule is no computer or handheld games, which is fine since I don’t play often anyway. That time came into place not because of an ALT . Funny story, a former Japanese staff use to play Minecraft on the PC during lunch or school breaks. It only became banned when the data from the game started over powering the hardware on the PC and caused it to crash completely (according to one of the JTEs)
I usually practice kanji which wins brownie points with my coworkers around me when they see me practice writing. I read Reddit (no one cares at all—all they see is a wall of English text and everyone is suddenly afraid lol) or I read a book at my desk. I’m also in grad school and would do grad school work, but I’m on winter vacation, so that’s out. Usually, I do grad school work during desk warming days during the school year.
Anyone load up with alcohol during desk warming? I guess you could slip something in your PET bottle of coffee.
I usually either study Japanese or play games on my PC. My base school doesn’t really care if I game, but I try to stick to playing classy looking stuff like The Zachtronics Solitaire Collection or Victoria 3.
I don’t mind desk warming at all. I’m basically getting paid to study Japanese, something I would probably be using a good chunk of that time doing anyway.