My Thursdays at work will be best described as beginners, beginning to change and become too cool for school.

I started off with junior high school first year students today and this was kind of fun because I suspect I am teaching their first junior high school class. My job, at this point, is to both comfort and horrify. I speak slowly and as clearly as possible whilst maintaining a semblance of natural intonation and rhythm and then horrify with six simple words “I only speak English in class.”

Later I taught junior high school second year students. Most of them are in the transition form boys to young men. They are still tiny, but their voices are cracking and their attitudes are beginning to bleed through. At this age the standard response to anything difficult is laughter and a game with friends. Failing that, sleep is also considered an option.

During summer, most of them will hit their initial growth spurts and return unrecognizable.

The main goal at this point is to show them that both actions an inactions trigger reactions and homework. I also let them know that I’m willing to punish an entire class to get them to turn on one guy. Luckily this class is before the lunch break. This means I have all the time I need to make them rethink their actions.

After lunch I teach high school second year. No longer being the lowest students in the school, they feel mature enough to act childish. Oddly, the school where I work puts the lower class men on the uppermost floor and the upper class men on the lowermost floor. The junior high is the opposite meaning students rise and fall as they progress in school (something like that).

The class today was noisy but manageable and it has students I’ve had trouble with before. They all think they are too cool for my class, which means I may have to hand out some homework, which isn’t cool.