I’d make them practice more, but it’s probably too late.

Today was a slow start thanks to a number of sports events that cancelled all the regular junior high classes at the school were I work. Some students were out doing sports while the non-athlestes were at school enjoying movies and other distractions that didn’t involve me.

It was a nice break and gave me a chance to do some planning and save a little energy for the rest of June.

For some unknown reason, tomorrow is a regular schedule and Wednesday was listed as a partial schedule to accommodate the rest of the sports tournaments. I was hoping that tomorrow would be a tournament as it would give me an entire day off. On Wednesday I would lose two classes but have one class in the afternoon.

However, it’s probably for the best that the tournament was on Wednesday as it saved me a lot of potential heart break.

It turns out that the teams at the school where I work did so badly they will not be going to the second day of the tournaments. Because of this, they will be having regular classes. Since I have to go in anyway on Wednesday, losing that rest won’t be that big of a deal. Losing and entire day off, though, would be depressing at this point in the school year.

As it stands now, I’ll be able to put the extra classes to good us. I’ll have the students practice sports a lot more to get ready for the October version of the tournaments.

It’s too late to do anything for them now, but they still have a few months to get better.

As we reach the middle of June, it’s traditional that the main part of my job is staying awake.

Because June is a busy time at the school where I work, I often schedule projects that require the students to do most of the work while I pace around pretending to be attentive or I sit and work on personal projects.

The problem with the former is I end up drifting off while walking and just end up pacing back and forth, which is a waste of time. The problem with the latter is that it’s easy to get relaxed which means it’s easy to drift off to sleep.

The other problem is that eventually I have to sit and listen to the final projects. This starts out well but, at a certain point, the bad English and occasionally low voices leads to me slowly drifting off. I don’t fall asleep, I just go elsewhere. This often leads to puzzled looks when I miss the ending, ask them the change parts when they’ve already done so, or fail to take any notes and just assign a score based on the mood I’m in at the time.

(Note: If I’m in a bad mood I take that as subconscious proof that the speech was terrible even if I wasn’t consciously listening.)

Today’s problem was a little different: I didn’t actually care and neither did the students. My JHS 3’s were finishing and performing game shows. They had last class to write and today to practice and perform.

The problem is, there wasn’t much practice.

One group peppered their “game show” with facts that surprised one of their members. This meant, of course, that they hadn’t actually practiced and/or he was talking with a friend the entire time. I was more interested in his reaction than to their performance.

At the end of the term they get their Speech Contest assignments as summer homework. This leads to us hearing the same basic speech again and again and again.

That means that at the end of September. I’ll be pretending to be interested whilst trying to stay awake.

As we reach the end of the term at the school where I work I find myself facing an ethical dilemma.

At the end of the term, those of us teaching junior high school first year classes will have a meeting to decide which students to send where. Right now the classes are divided only by number. However, after we finish with them, they will be divided into “S” classes, which are higher level and “R” classes which are lower level. After we finish, the “S” classes will have 20 students whilst the “R” classes have 14.

The ethical dilemma involves troublesome students who also happen to have good English. Do I play things honestly and keep the good students in the higher level class or do I find way to fail them and get them sent to the lower class?

Similarly, there’s also the dilemma with troublesome students who have poor English. Do I pump up the scores of students who’d otherwise stay in the lower level “R” classes and pass my problems onto others or do I write down the crappy score they’ve earned and keep them the rest of the year?

Thus far there are only a few students creating the dilemma. Two in the future “S” classes who are at the edge of “restless and filled with bored energy” and “future asshole”. Often, with the higher level classes, the influx of students from the other class changes the class dynamic for the better. (However, there’s always THAT class.)

With the lower level class, the influx of weaker students often changes the dynamic for the worse. The new students don’t like the new accent (which they can’t understand) and they feel compelled to test the new teacher’s limits.

Eventually, students in both classes will hit their puberty growth spurt and as their bodies grow their brains will shrink to teenage size. This makes them ready to be second year junior high school students, who are usually the worst students.

The trouble is, I’m not the only one making these decisions and we probably offset. Sigh.

I wish I could say it went downhill when my student saw the mascot from a distance and decided it had a penis on its face. Unfortunately, at least for him, the problems started early and a few students are suddenly realizing that things are getting serious.

In my high school second year class my students are working on their term projects. This is a three week/six class project that requires them to “invent” a product and write commercial for it. Starting next week we will begin filming the commercials, which will be shown in class. (Sort of. Long story.)

The students are in groups of three and are also required to develop some sort of visual aid to help them sell their “invention”. Students who don’t do the project will receive the lowest possible score for the term (a 1 out of  10). This means they will have to take the make up exam or risk failing the year.

Because of this rule, I always encourage students to choose their partners wisely. Unfortunately for one group, they chose poorly.

One student worked well the first day and then decided he was finished. He started playing something on his phone (which are allowed as dictionaries) and clearly wasn’t helping his other two partners work. At some point, he saw a mascot (a person in a cartoonish animal suit) off in the distance near the bus stop and decided the elephant trunk and small white tusks on the mascot’s face represented a penis. This led to much distraction.

Eventually, toward the end of class, I told him and his partners they’d earned a zero for the day. At this point the partners rebelled with “all of us?” and “why?” I referred them to the assignment sheet and the list of rules which explained that all partners would be punished for the actions, or non-actions, of their partners.

Next class the performances start and, potentially, people will have to redo their commercials or fail.

The record is four repeats. I suspect the group that failed today may set a new record.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that getting out of bed on a rainy day is more difficult than getting out of bed on a sunny day.

Not only does the lack of sunlight keep you in sleep mode, but that white noise of rain fall helps keep you sleepy and comfortable and relaxed and (yawn). Add in the fact that it was cool and that I’d be leaving earlier than normal and that I wasn’t in the mood to arrive at school with soaked shoes and I seriously considered, for a few minutes, calling in sick.

Luckily, I didn’t.

Halfway through my first period class I took the odd step of actually checking the schedule for the rest of the term which is not something I normally do until mid June. (First shock: it’s already mid-June). When I did I realized that two of my classes (my first and second period classes on Monday) only had one class left after today. (Next week is a sports festival, probably. Long story.) I rushed the students through their final unit and scribbled a few notes about what to do on the last day.

Having one class remaining (probably) means I need to start thinking about review lessons and exam preparation for those students whilst at the same time thinking about making an exam for the grade I’m in charge of.

In this case, it should be noted, that “thinking about” means just that: “thinking”. No more and no less.

“Doing” will come later after a suitable period of denial and then panic.