My students assure me my bad student is bad in all his classes, but often in different ways.

Today, my bad first year junior high school student finally gave in to boredom and fell asleep. I kept waking him up, which annoyed him.

I also asked the other students if he was like that in other classes. They said he was bad, but chatty in other classes which means what he’s doing in my class is an act. This means the devils of my worse nature are stretching and getting ready for a useless battle.

Today, my students were preparing conversations/presentations for Friday when parents will probably arrive. (Actually, Saturday will be the busiest day, but a few mothers and grandparents will show up for my classes.) My worst student did nothing other than use his textbook as pillow.

At  the end of class I told him that if he fell asleep again I’d take his chair and make him stand/sit on the floor and that I had no problem doing that in front of parents. (Note: in my time at the school where I work I’ve been seen shouting at students; sending students out into the hall; and thrown high school students out of class during observations.)

My bad student responded by shrieking as he was being stabbed. I responded by shrieking even louder. This surprised him and I reminded him that I’d take his chair. He snarked off at me, in English (See you; good bye) and left.

Next class, depending on how many parents are around, I’ll encourage him to get involved and slowly try to set him off. Eventually he will explode and all the sympathy will be mine.

My techniques are not mature, but they can be effective.

The lower level classes at the school where I work seem to get lower every year. Today being the day before the Golden Week holidays didn’t help much.

After a ho-hum year of classes last year that even I felt were boring I’ve decided to add more games to my classes to add some competition and some fun. The problem, and this is why I stopped doing games years ago, is that lower level classes often require explanations that are longer than the games and I can only simplify my language so much before using Japanese, which I won’t do in class.

Today I thought I had the perfect game: it was based on something in the textbook and it only required the students to copy numbers printed in the textbook and show them to me. I would then state how many they had correct and send them off to make changes. (It was, in essence, a simpler form of Mastermind.)

However, after having it work in two other classes, albeit both higher level, I was surprised when no one in the class understood what I wanted them to do. Usually one student gets it and educates the others. This time I explained it four times and no one moved. I got a couple uncomfortable snickers but no one even bothered to pick up a pencil. (Note: that’s not an exaggeration; every student sat as if he was frozen in place.)

Also keep in mind that this is the kind of class that prefers to complain that they don’t understand what I’m saying when I talk rather than actually listening to what I’m saying. They are the kind of class that answers “How are you?” when I ask “How are you?” despite them having had at least a year of English.

I abandoned the game and told them to practice a conversation. I also assured them there would be no games in the class.

If they don’t want any fun, I promise I won’t give them anything fun to do.