Japanese society is renowned for people’s concern for the wellbeing of the group as a whole. However, this means nothing to The Health Risk: they insist on coming to class for their weekly dose of social contact, even though they have a virus or infectious disease.

I imagine some eikaiwa teachers have had to teach students with more serious illnesses such as conjunctivitis and shingles before, although thankfully the worst Health Risk students I’ve had to teach have been those with the flu.

Still, it’s an unpleasant experience sitting in the confines of a shoe box-sized classroom in close proximity to students with the flu, watching in horror as they alternate between sneezing all over the table and blowing their nose into a handkerchief then touching your flash cards – especially since most eikaiwa expect teachers to use their paid vacation days as sick days if they need to take time off work with the flu.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 10th, 2008 at 6:14 am and is filed under Uncategorized, Articles in English, Teaching English in Japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.