For those of you who might not know, I am a JHS homeroom teacher in a normal Japanese school building, although the school organisation itself is not Japanese curriculum. The school belongs to the city and is a normal Japanese JHS building. It was built in the 1950s and was closed in 2002 when it and another JHS in the area were combined and a new building about two blocks away was built. It sat empty and neglected until 2010. In that year my school organisation moved in. However, the school has been pretty badly abused in the last six years and I am in constant fights with the administration to restore it. Between the lack of maintenance, shoving 750 students into a school zoned for 550, not obeying the outside shoe/inside shoe custom, and lack of adequate sanitation, I have lobbied hard for improvements to be made.
I have not been successful.
I finally basically told my administration lead, follow, or get out of the way. They sort of chose the last option, and I am restoring the classroom myself. I cannot do the entire school, but as I will be here for at least a few to several years, I can stake claim on this classroom as my homeroom from now going forward, especially if I am restoring it. As some of you might be interested in the Importance of Scenery or in Japanese stuff generally, I will document my restoration here. Note: the classroom isn't even the standard classroom. It was actually the art room. This has two major advantages: it's bigger for the same amount of students, it has the long row of sinks. Great when you need constant access to water for restoration work, and the kids never get to go out to fill up water bottles or wash hands or brush teeth. I can watch them.
This is what the classroom looked like the day I found out I was assigned as homeroom teacher:
Pretty goddamned sad. So, I immediately instituted a normal desk arrangement and seating chart, and I began instituting normal Japanese rules. My predecessor essentially had no rules. I, on the other hand, after 8 years teaching in Japanese public schools, near had a heart attack and started running the class under normal Japanese rules. It's a Japanese classroom, and I expected it to be treated as such.
I also put up a US Constitution (not that it's very useful under Trump), four US presidents, my own Japanese JHS diploma, some stuff from my previous schools, lots of pictures of my former students/friends/schools/etc around my teacher's desk, set up a lectern (although it's not standing height, I need to find one or make one), put up calendar, a class period time table (in Japanese and English), made magnetic white date kanji (月 日 ( ) 日直), name cards with magnetic backs for each student for Class Rep (that's what日直さん means), and lunch ordering form box. I even drew lines on the floor for the desk arrangement because the kids kept putting their desks out of alignment.
I don't screw around as a homeroom teacher.
Today I started resurfacing the floor. I mopped twice, magic erasered half the floor pulling out the dirt (it's a combined cleanser and abrasive, so like a very light gauge sand paper), and then mopped again. It looks like I will probably be able to lay down polyurethane/sealant after two total magic eraserings of the floor, and some sanding of particular stained areas or areas of ancient gum usage (
). I will need to fill in some holes in the wall, repaint the sink sliding doors, the wall floor moulding (I probably will pick something else than dark brown, maybe a green or blue), and paint the walls. I'm thinking of doing a mint green/white split at around shoulder-when-sitting-level. That seems popular in Japanese schools. The research I have done suggests having mint green at about the same level of the students has a calming effect. 
Yeah, so that's where we are. Oh... yeah... and because of course, I am, I'm using my own funds and my own free time to do almost all of this. Welcome to being a homeroom teacher.
Future plans including building shelving into the back for standard cubby holes for the students, and placing shelving/lockers outside of my classroom door and buying school slippers (the colored shoes called uwabaki, I have my own pairs sneakers and uwabaki already, they're cheap) for all of my students, so they don't screw up my restored floor.
