Part of my day is best summed up by rephrasing Rudyard Kipling:

If you can keep your head when all about you 
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
You will be a teacher.

Today, in my worse class (not my worst) my students were supposed to go up to the front and practice their speech contest speeches. They were not required to memorize them–unless they wanted bonus points–and it wasn’t necessary for them to bring the “show” part of “show and tell”. The day was mostly for me to see 1) that everyone was finished 2) check the times of the speeches and 3) see who had a loud speaking voice as the voices usually disappear when students give their final performance.

I reminded them that it was speech practice day and my reminder triggered a wave of excuses with the most common being “I forgot my speech paper.” If I didn’t have a copy of it (because they’d neglected to make a copy for me–long story) I told them “Congratulations! That means you’re going to get bonus points!”

(Note: this level of cruelty/sarcasm/snark is the only time I speak with cheerful exclamation points.)

This triggered a wave of panic. Students quickly rushed to find their speech paper or to quickly write a new one. This meant I had to field a wave of students asking me to check hastily written “speeches” of barely more than a few lines.

Some students were in such a state of panic they asked me to look at their hastily written speeches whilst other students were up front reading. I’d chase them away and get dirty looks as if I didn’t care about them.

Eventually, everyone read something–often with the caveat “my speech paper at home is better” which is roughly the equivalent of “my other wife is a supermodel” (or something like that).

I reminded that next week will be the final performance and they won’t be allowed to use their scripts. They will also have to bring their “show” items or draw pictures of them.

If they were panicked today, next week should be  a lot of fun.

At the school where I work we are fond of saying “that’s 50 minutes of my life I’ll never get back” to describe a particularly bad class. In an odd spin on that, I made enough silly mistakes today that I should give the entire back.

Despite a couple silly accidents this morning I thought it would be a good day. I should have taken those accidents as the omens they were.

My mistake in my first period class was handing out the wrong lesson for the next phase of the class. I was supposed to give out a lesson on superpowers as a way to start the “Superhero Adventures” curriculum we are trying out this term, but instead I jumped straight to Superheroes. I kicked myself a few times then decided to roll with it. The changed order is now officially classified as a “pedagogical experiment”.

After kicking myself I went to my worst class. My mistakes in this class were 1) not asking the homeroom teacher to remind the students to be ready for their speeches and 2) actually showing up to class. They are always bad but were in rare form today, leaving me with two lunch dates who both stood me up but who I will find.

Then, after lunch, I went to a high school first year class and started teaching a lesson when they were prepared to give presentations. I made a joke about it being a joke and then watched them do their presentations.

In my last class, I started calling names and realized I had the wrong roll sheet. I did a quick warm up and then went to get the correct roll sheet and folder. Once the folder was in hand I realized I was once again starting the wrong unit.

All this, I suspect, started because I didn’t bother to double check the folders I make for each class. If I had I wouldn’t have made a mistake in that class which led me to mope rather than double check which created a cascading series of mistakes

All that could have been avoided and I wouldn’t have been left wondering if it was possible to give the day back to the world. (No pay, for the record, just the day gets given back.)

My worst class still would have sucked, but at least the others would have been good.

Today, in my class with one student, that one student started panicking. I don’t blame him, but I hope he doesn’t reach the wrong conclusions.

At this time of year in the course I introduce a short play called “The Box” by Rich Smolen. The students are supposed to decide what motivates the three characters and then block the play. After a couple classes of practice, they are supposed to put on a staged reading of the play.

This poses some interesting problems for my student: 1) he has to play three parts even when they fight; 2) he has to give each a different way of speaking and different mannerisms 3) he has to interpret the play, which reminds me a lot of a Samuel Beckett play, and (spoiler) decide what’s in the box at the end; 4) he has to do all this by himself.

Unfortunately, because his English is excellent, he’s used to getting by with the bare minimum of effort. Already this year he’s done a monologue as a character who seemed suspiciously like him and improvised his way through a different monologue. (Improv is his way of NOT doing the required writing.) At no point has he tried to do anything resembling an actual “character”.

Today, after he got the assignment and was turned loose on the play, he panicked and said he didn’t understand. I told him a couple ways to interpret the play and the characters. He got a “Eureka” look and then stared at the paper, partly to waste time and partly to figure out what to do.

The problem is, for this assignment, he has to turn in a script book with all his blocking notes and his notes about the characters. If he doesn’t do that, his grade will suffer. I’m expecting him to try to improv the entire and thing, if I get anything resembling a script book, it will be a few scribbled notes.

Then again, I’ve already been surprised by students this term. Maybe he’ll surprise me, too.

A young woman showed up late to my class today  and I’m still not sure she was actually awake when she got there.

The look she gave me and my students when we said hello was one part WTF?; one part How the hell did I get here?; and one part BRRAAAAIIIINS. She never actually said hello; she just sat down.

It turned out there’d been a birthday party for one of the students and that half my class had gone to the party and had got only a half hour of sleep. Because of this, and because I kept having to tell them to leave the room if they wanted to sleep, I never developed any real chemistry with the class. (Nothing wins students over more than raising your voice to them and telling them to get out.)

I seemed to connect with a few, including zombie woman, and their group did all the required work and took time to develop their presentations. The other group, consisting of the rest of the zombie party survivors, did the bare minimum. They’d finish quickly and then sit and look bored while the rest of the class worked and took the assignment seriously.

The zombie party survivors would try to whisper in Japanese and I’d tell them they could leave which would result in more sulking. In their defense, the two guys had good English and the topic wasn’t that interesting, but I still expected them to do the work and do it correctly. I kept pointing out that when they got to the USA there’d be a lot more group work, a lot more discussions and lot more impatience than what I was expressing. Their reaction was to pretend to work for two minutes and then drift back to oblivion.

The woman grouped with the two guys seemed to sulk for the entire class and barely spoke to me. (She’d only speak to them.) I tried to mix the groups around, but they wouldn’t move. If I’d been more on my game (i.e. if I’d cared enough about them to actually give a crap) I’d have forced them to move. Instead I just let them sit.

At one point, I let them play grade school level games just to get some energy back in them. That lasted about half an hour.

In the end we were all counting the minutes to the end of class and I was kind of glad to show them my backside as I hurried out of class.

The company I work for has a lot of people who don’t actually teach. They try to justify their jobs by occasionally  watching me teach. They typically do this on the worst day possible. Today, there was a twist as it was a good day to observe but my students weren’t that good.

The plan was for the observer to watch my junior high students give their speech contest speeches. Class started well: I spoke English, students responded in English and I asked who had their “treasure”. That’s when problems started.

The speech topic is “show and tell” which, by definition, requires the students to bring something to class to show. If they don’t, they get to do the speech on speech day and then do it again the next class when they bring their treasures. (Note: the record is four do-overs.)

After I asked who had their treasure, only seven of 20 students raised their hands. After a few minutes of “no really, who has their treasure?” and “Stop fucking around, who has their treasure?” it became clear that I’d need a second class to finish speeches. The observer, lets call him Fascist Fred, watched me with a “what ya gonna do aboudit” look.

I went into improv mode and announced that since there were so many do-overs, today was a second practice day. Any one who brought their treasure would get extra points as would anyone who could do their speech with no paper. (Note: this class has lots of extra classes compared to other classes I teach, so I was looking for any excuse to burn an extra day/stall.)

I gave the students 15 minutes to practice and then we started the speeches. That got us through the class, but I was disappointed with the number of students who didn’t memorize, even in a higher level class.

In the end I think I looked professional enough, and the class seemed to go smoothly.  The few students brought their treasures did an excellent job on their speeches which means they won’t be punished if they forget their treasures next week.

It also means they’ll probably go to the school speech contest, which some of them consider punishment.