I’m not sure what to think about what happened in class today.

Nothing happened, and that has me a bit worried.

As a rule, when I start the new year, even though it’s not a new school year, I tend to approach each class as a new start. Well, not with my worst class, I expect them to be bad.

Today they weren’t, but the so-called “higher level” half of them were and I’m not sure what that means.

It could be that because my expectations were so low for them, I abandoned any pretense of trying to do anything fun. My colleague had plans for games and sundry activities. I started with a plan to do an activity (albeit not a fun one) and then changed plans and did something a lot simpler.

The students were reasonably quiet and did the work. Granted, for some of them “doing the work” means waiting until someone smarter finishes and then copying their paper. They did this today even though the answers were supposed to come via an interview which makes it look like a lot of my students are actually the same person with different faces. (This actually explains a lot.)

Because I came in with low expectations I was worried when it appeared as if they would all finish sooner than I expected, which meant some of them would never finish. Luckily, their natural distraction took over and the worst students slowed down.

They did spend most of the class testing me, though. One refused to stand at first during the warm up; one started using bad Japanese words until he realized I understood and then he stopped; one tried calling me “Mr. Jason” which is their old nickname for me; the one who refused to stand up thought he’d get away without showing his print. Then he seemed to remember what happened the last time he tried that and quickly copied someone else’s answers (adding yet another face to the one student).

As classes with my worst class go, it wasn’t a bad day. My colleague, though, had lots of trouble. Her students wouldn’t listen to the game rules and she didn’t finish everything she’d planned. It’s an odd day in deed when I’m happy with my class and she’s not.

I’d tell their homeroom teacher about how good they were, but they’d just be terrible the next time.