Whiteboard Breakdown
This post is basically a guide, aiming to help you decipher your school’s whiteboard(s). At all of my high schools, there is a whiteboard (ok – at one it is a blackboard, cause they kick it old school) with just about every piece of information you could possibly want to know written on it. It pays to learn how to read this magnificent map of minutia, because sometimes people forget to give you a personal heads-up about what is going on. This is especially true if you speak Japanese and it’s known around the teacher’s room.
The first step in decoding this thing is to cut it into bite-size pieces. I’ve segmented the whiteboard of my base school as an example. It splits roughly into about 9 sections. We’ll tackle each section individually. Continue reading for a whiteboard Rosetta Stone guide. Obviously, you’ll likely encounter a totally different layout in your situation, but it helps to deconstruct one with help before trying it on your own.
In the area covered by frame 1, we find a calendar that reads right to left. The Japanese title at the top says 行事予定表, pronounced gyouji yoteihyou, which means roughly “event schedule,” and can be more naturally translated as Calendar of Events. The month is filled in at the top. The days are numbered 1 through 31, and the corresponding day of the week may be written in the appropriate blanks. (Sometimes, especially during busy seasons, the calendar is kept rolling, which means that once a day has passed, it is immediately filled in with the next month’s events. Usually a special note makes this clear, moving along with the month change, and you can safely assume that all dates after the present date are still in the month noted at the top.) After the space left for actually cataloging the items for each day, there are 2 more rows along the bottom. The first reads 当番, pronounced touban, which means (Teacher) on Duty. If you are an ALT, this will never be you – but it is good to know that this is the person who might be able to answer any questions you’ve got about the day’s activities. The second reads 出張, or syucchou, which means Out on Business. This particular area is reserved for the use of 3 key people in school operations. Your 校長 (kouchou / Principal), 教頭 (kyoutou / Vice Principal), and 事務長 (jimuchou / Office Manager) will list any business trips that they must take for the month here. Note that it only accounts for scheduled trips – necessity may dictate that they take off without much warning. But this will help you know who should be at school at any given time. For other teachers, check out the related area in section 6 of the whiteboard. 
Section 2 in my case isn’t actually part of the whiteboard, but it still needs to be analyzed. It presents some helpful information. This is the daily timetable for this particular school. It tells me that the Monday to Friday standard day will have the same basic shape: a morning faculty meeting (8:20-8:30), Short Home Room aka SHR (8:35-8:45), 1st period class (8:50-9:40), 2nd period class (9:50-10:40), 3rd period class (10:50-11:40), 4th period class (11:50-12:40), Lunch (12:40-1:20), Cleaning Time (1:20-1:30), 5th period class (1:40-2:30), 6th period class (2:30-3:30), and 7th period class (3:40-4:30). Sometimes things shift on special days – but those days are frequently noted in the monthly calendar of section 1, so pay attention!
We’re already at the third section. The framed calligraphy is the school motto, or 校訓 (koukun). Ours happens to be 「忍耐 真剣 希望」, which translates as “Be patient (nintai), earnest (shinken), and hopeful (kibou).” The piece of paper below that is the special 60th anniversary slogan, which I think was ripped off from a TV drama. It says 「夢にときめけ、明日にきらめけ」(yume ni tokimeke, asu ni kirameke). That is difficult to translate. It’s something like “flutter to your dreams, sparkle to tomorrow.” Like I said, it’s hard to translate. You slogan will be different anyway! Ha ha. Moving on.
This is also simply a piece of posterboard stuck to the wall above the actual whiteboard. But it’s important anyway. It contains the assigned duties for each extracurricular club. The left-most column reads 部 (bu), or club. It lists track & field, volleyball, soft tennis, baseball, badminton, ping-pong, basketball, brass band, tea ceremony, farming, performing arts (taiko drums, etc.), visual arts (manga illustration, etc.), and haiku. The center column lists the attached teachers. I’ve blurred out their names, cause it’s none of the internet’s business. The right-most column reads 活動場所 (katsudou bashyo), which gives the location for the club’s activities. Some of these are more helpful than others. For instance, if you didn’t know your school had a ping-pong club, you’d be hard pressed to find “the ping-pong place.” Ha ha. Get help reading these places from someone who knows where they are, or simply match the names to a school map.
The 下校時刻 (gekou jikoku) is basically a table that shows you by what time you need to have left school for a given range of months. For instance, in this table, between September and November, you need to be gone before 6:30 if you’re not with a club and have no further business for the day which requires you to be at school. My guess is that the changes are related to the changes in daylight hours. If you are an ALT, your contract likely stipulates that you leave much earlier than this time.
This area of the whiteboard details things that were mentioned at the morning faculty and staff meeting. It is full of vital information. Let’s see, the top three titles are 行事 (gyouji), 連絡事項 (renraku jikou), and 備考 (bikou). These are roughly equivalent to Events, Items for Coordination, and Side Notes. The Events area has everything specifically addressed in the morning meeting. In this case, you can see that 1st and 2nd year students will have normal classes (平常授業 heijyou jyugyou). The 3rd years, however, will have Year End Exams (学年末考査 gakunenmatsu kousa). There are a few meetings in the list after that, followed by a subheading 明日の行事 (asu no gyouji), or Tomorrow’s Events. Moving to the center column, the only bulleted item is 本日の日程 (honjitsu no nittei), which means “Today’s Schedule.” This is a bit redundant, really. It just means that we need to bring up the items we just looked at under the left column, just to make sure everyone’s aware. The Side Notes column contains two kinds of information in general – 出張 (syucchou) and 年休 (nenkyuu), or Business Trips and Paid Leave. Any teacher who takes paid leave (which is doled out in hour-long increments) will have their business displayed here. Gotta love the lack of privacy. And while the business trips from section 1 are duplicated here, this is also the area where anyone else’s business trips are displayed. I am featured in this box all the time. 
Ok, here’s another important section. This one has a few subsections. On the left, you can see 2 spots stacked vertically on one another. These are spots for the Weekly and Monthly Objectives, called appropriately the 週間目標 (shyuukan mokuhyou) and the 月間目標 (gekkan mokuhyou) respectively. If you’re curious, this board currently has a weekly objective that reads 「しっかり換気をして、風邪の予防に努めよう」, which is pronounced thusly: shikkari kanki wo shite, kaze no yobou ni tsutomeyou. “Let’s take care to properly ventilate (the rooms), and exert ourselves for the prevention of colds!” A noble, yet futile, cause, indeed. The monthly goal reads 「あいさつの励行」. Short and sweet, but quite important to my school’s image. Aisatsu no reikou means something like “make absolutely sure to say proper greetings.” I personally think I know which class that is aimed at…ahem…ha ha ha.
You can see on the far right the same 備考 (bikou) area for side notes, so we won’t discuss it again here. Instead, let’s focus now on the large middle subsection. It says 時間割変更表 (jikanwari henkou hyou), or literally Table of Class Schedule Changes. The classes are split by year, then by group. On special days like the day I took this picture, the area that I have purposefully blurred out is filled in with details. When there are class viewings, for instance, the full schedule is written out along with each class’s location (for guests). During test times, proctors can see their assignments here. It’s also useful for checking for emergency evacuation drills, meetings in the gymnasium, and on festival days like Class Match / Sports Days or Cultural Festival days. If something is written here, you might want to check it – even if it doesn’t involve you, you may discover that your supervisor or JTE is roped into something that you weren’t previously aware of. So heads up!
Alrighty, here’s section 8. This section basically tracks student absences. Homeroom teachers try to keep this updated in real time, so you’ll even know when someone leaves midday. On the left side, we have a chart labeled 生徒出欠表 (seito shyukketsu hyou), or Student Absences. There are then 6 divisions, for year / 学年 / gakunen, group / 組 / kumi, absences / 欠席 / kesseki, authorized absences / 公欠忌引 / kouketsu kibiki, tardy students / 遅刻 / chikoku, and finally early departures / 早退 / soutai. At the time I took this photo, only the 2nd year teachers had filled in their blanks. When nothing is written here after they have been actively ignored, it is safe to assume that nobody is absent.
Moving over to the right, we’ve got the large 生徒出欠状況, the Chart of Student Absences, or seito shyukketsu jyoukyou. This monster lists in more detail any students who were indicated absent in the table to the left that we just mentioned. It gives the student’s year and group, along with which periods the student was absent for and for what reason. You can see a bunch of kids out with influenza in this picture. The plague had just started at that point.
Alright, lastly we’ve got section 9, an easy to understand chart that seldom changes more than once in an academic year. It shows the 生徒異動状況 (seito idou jyoukyou), or State of Student Movement. This primarily tracks the number of students “moving” through each grade. If you look at the part of the table called 在籍生徒数 (zaiseki seito suu), you’ll see the total number of boys, the total number of girls, and the total number of students period for each year and group. There are two columns to the right of this. 休学者数 (kyuugakushya suu) and 担任 (tannin). The first is for students who are no longer studying at school – this is usually blank. The second is for the teacher in charge of each home room, so it’s appropriately blurred out. And just in case you’re wondering, that large blue handled thing is a 2 hole punch. I use it all the time to help me put my school visitation reports into a Japanese style binding folder. But I was too lazy to move it for this picture, so deal with it. Ha ha.
Well, that’s a walk through my whiteboard. I hope it was helpful. Maybe you’ll feel more confident about attacking your own wall of information now. I am going to go back through this entry and comb it for weird romanization (mine is particularly idiosyncratic, not really codified) and incorrect kanji. If you catch anything or have questions, feel free to comment about it!
Customary Drivel, Media, Photos, Unsolicited Commentary, 日本語
