First Day Back In Class.

From dark to bleak, the future has turned.

First day  back in the classroom in around 8 months.   Over these past three years, most of my employers have held classes exclusively online.  There are two exceptions, both of which are vocational schools.  One of these delayed the start of the school in both 2020 and 2021.  Classes followed the prepanic schedule last year, 2022 but all were in person throughout the panic.  Sadly, this course is one semester only.

The one that started back today is the other vocational school.  This one kept changing how we were to conduct classes.  At first, it was in person for the full 90 minutes as is usual in Japan.  Class time was later reduced to 70 minutes as we had to change the air every 70 minutes,  cuz Covid.  Then we switched to email lessons and later to online.  I can no longer recall, but this school may also have had us doing on demand lessons too.  Some of my others certainly did.  For those who have read my earlier postings, it is at this school that I asked an infectious disease control expert why he was wearing a mask and being told it was political.  This is also the same school that once demanded that I wear a mask for online lessons.

I had no idea what to expect today.  I entered the school knowing that at least in theory, whether to mask or not was to be up the individual.  Given their history with masking, I was not at all surprised that I was the only unmasked person in the entire 6 floor building.  Nevertheless, I was disappointed.

My students were quite lively, which is good.  Hard to understand them, however, through their masks.  After three years o wearing masks they still do not know that they must speak much louder when wearing a mask than with out.  The biggest disappointment came in the number of classes I am teaching.  Apparently, not enough students applied to the school to allow for even 2 smaller classes.  Instead of the two I was expecting, I have one over sized class of 45 students.  This comes just hours after learning that not enough signed up for my elective classes at the med school causing them to be cancelled.  Those were to start next Wednesday.  Two huge blows to my expected income. At least I no longer need be concerned about wearing a mask and face shield for Zoom lessons.

Bottom line: everyone in my professional sphere is still masked, half of my expected income this semester will not come to be and 100% of what I was expecting was far below sufficient.