Jebi Typhoon Day
It was decided that all schools are canceled due to a “life-threatening typhoon.” However, regardless of whether students are at school, it is expected that teachers be at school, typhoon or shine. This rule also applies for summer, winter, and spring breaks; teachers have to be at school whether they have work to do or not and whether there are students or not. Luckily, on my way to work in the morning, the typhoon was not at full potential. However, there were significantly less workers going to work because the typhoon had already damaged the trains. Thus, I rode a practically empty bus 45 minutes to work. My mentor messaged me on the bus, and she said, “I think it would be best if you took a holiday and leave in the afternoon.” I was confused by this statement because I would prefer not to take a vacation day when I didn’t need to, so I messaged a few returning teachers asking them to interpret/decipher her message for me. Basically, rather than sending me home because the buses would be canceled in the afternoon and because there is nothing for me to do, I needed to take a half vacation day to leave school, hoping to catch the last running bus. I was slightly annoyed by this situation and culture the same way one would be slightly irritated by someone who eats a KitKat bar by biting into the whole thing instead of breaking it off into the smaller bars. Each school is different, but generally, teachers go to school when school gets canceled, they get asked to take a half day vacation day or they get sent home without needing to use vacation days. I would’ve preferred the latter but I wasn’t too bothered because the half day suggestion was for my safety and so I wouldn’t be stranded in the countryside in the middle of a catastrophic typhoon.