It’s late; I’m tired; and work has infected my brain.

Today was the end of our first full week of “teaching” at the school. Teaching is in quotation marks because the only information that was imparted was names, class rules and a couple impromptu demonstrations of how the students won’t like me when I get angry.

(For the record, I don’t turn green, I get red and loud.)

I usually like to assign some kind of short conversation; the students introduce their partners or, in one case, they lie about their partners and then the partners set the record straight. This lets me know who is willing to do work, who plays well with others, and who already has a decent level of English.

Everybody is carefully studying everyone else and students are trying to figure out what they can get away with. Most students usually don’t push things too far in the first week. They’ll make a little noise, but usually the first week is the only time that every student actually does a project.

Then I’ve got the kids who just put their heads down and go to sleep. I usually invite them to leave and hilarity ensues.

That happened twice today. One kid was clearly surprised by my reaction–he strikes me as the kind of kid other teachers are happy to see fall asleep. Another kid tried to drop attitude, partly because he clearly thinks his English is already good enough. The first kid will be annoying, but I suspect he’ll eventually do something. The second kid will discover I don’t mind spending a long time after school watching him do work. The latest I’ve stayed is until 7:00 o’clock waiting for a student to finish a speech.I’ve been known to make deals: sleep now, and we’ll study later. The school’s pretty good about helping us enforce detention. He’ll also discover that his partners don’t like losing points whilst he’s sleeping. Finally, he’ll discover I can teach just as well from next to his desk as I can from the front of the room. I’m a lot louder there, too. He’ll also get called on a lot.

In the end, he’ll do his work because he wants a good mark and the kid who’s been watching carefully will become the worst student.