Today we finished our first week of the new school year. Now we need the weekend to recover.

The first week back after a break is weird. It’s been several weeks since we were in front of a class and we are suddenly back on our feet. In my case, I move around the classroom a lot and my feet are sore from all the sudden walking (in new shoes, no less). We also spend a lot of energy planning and having meetings and, for some of us, getting the new people up to speed.

It’s also hard to get back in the groove in front of the students. Teaching after a break is not like falling off a bicycle (something like that). Each class is different and the plan that worked well with one class got disrupted by a little jerk in another and by the teacher having too many carbs for lunch in yet another. In once class some of the students get the jokes, in others they weren’t listening closely enough to realize the teacher was speaking.

It’s also hard to get into the teaching rhythm early in the year as there are a few national holidays coming up (starting next week, actually). Breaks get filled up with busy work and our legs are still trying to find the path from one room to the other. In my case I’m doing boring stuff like talking about rules while at the same time trying to give the impression that English is interesting and fun to people who mumble in Japanese about how they can’t understand my English.

As I mentioned yesterday, in first year high school classes (10th grade) we are also dealing with students who haven’t had time to recover from junior high school anything goes mode.

That said, it’s good to be back in front of students. It’s also good knowing one week is already past.

Today I asked one of my colleagues if he knew anything about a student I’m teaching. He just laughed.

That was all the answer I needed.

After all the years I’ve been teaching at the school where I work, I remaine amazed at how different one class is from the other, even in the same room. In my first year high school classes (10th grade) I’ve got one good class, one average class, and one that promises to age me at a much faster rate than normal. The funny part is that class is made up of two different sections of the same grade. (Basically about half the class is from one section and the other half from another).

The students from “the other half” are loud, sarcastic and rude. Even worse, they are confrontational. Today I was very close to throwing a boy out of class (the one I asked about) because his basic form of response involved slurping noises and raspberries and putting on a show for his friends. He was also disguising his poor English level with sarcasm and back talk (in Japanese, of course). Normally I ignore those kids, unless they drag others along, but today, when I’m explaining the class rules, I give the bad boys the attention they crave.

Some of this trouble is caused because the classes are arranged, roughly, by club, with baseball boys tending to be in the same class and soccer boys in another class. This means the classes have different moods and the bad boys have a lot of friends around to act as an audience

The other part of the problem is that only a month ago the students were still in junior high and couldn’t fail and couldn’t be thrown out of class. (Well, they can, but it’s complicated and involves other teachers. Long story.) They are still of the belief that there’s not much I can do to them.

They are wrong.

First, they can fail. At least two students were held back in 10th grade last year. One dropped out/moved on, the other chose to repeat the grade. Another student failed on attendance but managed to get himself promoted to 12th grade, albeit with lots of complicated caveats.

I can also give them lots of extra work (much of which I will mark as received but never actually read)

The students have also forgotten that my class is last period. I have all the time I need. (My record for keeping an entire class late is 25 minutes.)

At the end of class, after explaining the stick, I threw them a carrot and let them relax for the last five minutes. The bad boy asked why I hadn’t done that sooner. I told him it was because I’d had to spend so much time trying to get him to shut up. If he’d been quiet, they would have been able to relax sooner.

Sigh. Apparently I’m too good at being scary and that means I have a lot of work to do in the next few days.

A few days ago I wrote about he sales pitch I had to make for my third year high school class elective. I mentioned how we had to temper our pitch to chase out the wrong types but keep enough of the right types to have a viable class.

I didn’t temper very well, apparently as only one student signed up.

This means I have to do a lot of rethinking and revising by Monday. My class was based around acting techniques and acting exercises and it works best with a lot of people. With one it will be possible to do a monologue but extremely difficult to do a dialogue. It will also make the entire second term impossible as my students do a staged reading of one three person play and then write another as their final project.

The other problem is that even when I do have a few good ideas, it doesn’t take that much time for one person to finish the activity and leave me with lots of time to fill. (I had the opposite problem when the course jumped from six students to 14 a few years ago.)

Oddly, this phenomenon affected my other colleagues as well. Another teacher got only one student; a second teacher got only five; and a third got 15 for a class about music. This is a huge surprise as the teacher is actually likable and music classes usually attract almost twice that number of students. There wasn’t much love for the foreign staff this year as we gathered only 22 students between us.

I have a few ideas about what to do and I suspect a lot of videos and discussions of acting decisions will be involved. (I’m imagining watching scenes of the different Jokers from the Batman movies and talking about the differences.)

At least I’ll only have two exams to mark this year. I’ll just have a lot of work before that.

Today I was in a room where everyone was watching me as much as I was watching them.

Today was the first day of classes and that means today was a kind of testing period. I gave the students an assignment and then watched how they worked and what they did and didn’t do.The assignment was to introduce your partner using only lies–they were supposed to lie about his name, too–and then the partner gets to correct the introduction.

(Please note: Yes, I work at a Christian school and, yes, I am teaching my students to bear false witness.)

I paid attention to which part of the room was noisy when I was busy with other students, which students volunteered to do the introductions, which students needed translations from other students about what to do and which students were doing the translating.

Some names I remembered from past classes and others I recognized from the trauma they caused other teachers. In at least one case, the teacher had disliked the student so much the student’s name had become a swear word.

At the same time, the students are watching me. How noisy do I let them get before I quiet them down. Am I keeping score.

The next class, when they are supposed to have finished their first homework, will be another test. I’ll be watching who has excuses and not homework and they’ll be watching my reaction.

Of course, one of the questions I asked them to tell me was their biggest fear. That’s what I can use against them. (Unless they are afraid of ghosts; that’s more problematic.)

On Saturday I had the job of selling a class while also trying not to sell it too well.

At the school where I work the third year high school classes are electives. Students get to choose the classes they want and we teachers can teach any topic. In the past we’ve had courses in Canadian History, Media, Computers and Music. Japanese English teachers have offered courses on Nathaniel Hawthorne and Basic English. Students can also take Spanish and Japanese history.

To pitch our classes we write a general outline at the end of the previous school year and then are given a half-hour time slot and a room. During that half hour the students roam around to classes that seemed interesting in the outline and we make a more personal pitch and answer questions. The students then fill out cards listing their first, second and third choices and there’s a vote counting session that would put Chicago and Florida to shame. (More on that later.)

The sales pitch is tricky. As teachers our goal is to attract the right kinds of students whilst simultaneously attracting enough students to make the class viable. In the past I’ve taught classes in literature that ranged from four to six students, business English classes with 14 students and a class I called Basic English that had 24 students. (Important safety tip kids: never call a class “Basic English” because lots of students sign up; call it “Damned Near Impossible Hard Torture English” instead.)

However, you can’t oversell the pain. One year I had zero students sign up to a literature class. I was informed that this happening one time was forgivable, twice much less so.

This year I’m offering a course that will require the students to do a lot of speaking. I had a good turn out of about 20 students who arrived in three waves. That said, turn out does not always correlate with sign ups as the year I had 14 students I only had five or six students attend my sales pitch. Groups of friends divvy up the presentations and then assemble to decide which class to take. It’s also possible to end with students who put your class as their last choice. (They are typically not very happy to be there.)

During the sales pitch, most of the students I recognized as good students and some asked good questions. Others had to have someone translate my comments. I encouraged them with a wave of the hand and a “this isn’t the class you’re looking for” to take a different class.

Towards the end of the half hour a group of students I knew to be, er, LESS than good students walked by. I encouraged them with a stern look that this wasn’t the class they were looking for.

Sometime this week I should get a class schedule or much less forgiveness if no one signs up.