There are certain, um, certainties that accompany the first day back after summer at the school where I work, especially if you are teaching junior high school classes.

At least five students in the class will have lost the speech contest paper and you’ll have to give them a new copy. This happens even in higher level classes.

At least four students will do absolutely nothing during the “amnesty” class in which there is no penalty for not having finished your speech. (There is, however, a penalty for doing nothing.)

Of the students who actually present rough drafts, at least half will be unreadable computer translator gibberish. One quarter will have obviously been written by the students’ cram school teachers. One quarter will be good.

Also, at least one student will surprise you. (Note: not in each class; just one per day.) Today, one of my more difficult students presented an actual speech. It wasn’t good enough for him to have had anything resembling competent help and it wasn’t bad enough to have come out of translation software. He may have actually written it; or someone slightly more competent than him did.

He didn’t make the obligatory copy of it though, so perhaps he wasn’t all that surprising.