Contagious
One of the risks of being a teacher - any kind of teacher - is that you can come into contact with sick people. In an eikaiwa, this is especially true, as you are usually teaching between 1 and 10 people, in small, air-conditioned spaces (ideal for re-circulating the germs).
Also, many eikaiwa have kids classes, and most kids haven’t gotten the hang of not coughing into sensei’s face, or wiping their noses after they sneeze on you.
So, if you’re thinking about going into eikaiwa for yourself, it helps if you have an immune system of steel. Especially at this time of year. Rainy season, or typhoon season (depending where in Japan you live) starts in about June every year. But it seems to have started earlier this year. So on top of students giving you their germs (despite the best efforts of alleged flu masks), you’ll have to walk to work in the rain, suffering wet feet and over-zealous air conditioning.
It finally brought me down last week. My housemate isn’t happy with me giving my cold to her either.
It’s not fun recovering when you’re in a profession that requires talking all day either. On two occassions so far, I’ve had to leave my class to have a coughing fit. The students are generally pretty good about it but I have heard from other teachers that students were saying “Ah, Chidade was coughing in class yesterday and today I woke up with a headache”.
Yay.
*cough*
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