I usually try to remain cheerful and friendly for a first class, but my students today were having none of it.

My worst students in my (current) worst class decided to live up to their reputation by causing trouble. One student didn’t have his summer homework but claimed he’d left it in another class. I told him to go get it but he seemed to think that the claim that he’d completed it was sufficient to count it as completed. He put his head down and tried to go to sleep. I woke him up and we had exactly the same conversation until he started at least pretending to write.

Another student tried playing dumb about what he was supposed to do until I pointed out there were Japanese instructions on the paper. He then acted as if he was being sneaky by copying the example sentences put there for him to copy.

I did manage to remain calm, but it’s a bad start to the week when your first class on Monday goes that way.

The rest of the day went better, but I don’t like Monday’s schedule: three classes in a row, then nothing for three hours. I get a lot of prep work done, but it’s still an oddly exhausting day. Then again, with the kind of start today had, it’s hard to keep the energy flowing.