The sense of entitlement is pretty strong right now at the school where I work. This is mostly because we are in a between phase where there’s not much that can be done.

Last week was a full week, but it comes post-school trips which, as I’ve mentioned before, leaves the students feeling that school is something that interrupted their trip. and pre-midterm exams which means there are no clubs and it’s understood that there will be no homework.  It’s also understood that students are not supposed to be held after school as they should be home studying. (Insert canned laughter here.) That’s especially true this week, in the two days before the exams.

Making things even worse, my classes have no mid-term exams which means the students don’t take them that seriously until the end of the term when I do have an exam. Because of this, some students expect to have a free study session before the exams and are surprised when one is not forthcoming.

(Note: it is possible to get free study in my class, but it has to be earned by finishing work early.)

This leaves the more troublesome students feeling as if they don’t have to do anything because they feel as if they are untouchable. The school trip made them forget how school works and the mid-terms protect them from immediate consequences.

The result is one of my students insulting a colleague and then turning the word “magnetron” into a dirty word by reversing the “g” and the “n” in “magne” which makes it sound like a bad  Japanese word. This normally wouldn’t bother me that much as about a thousand years ago I was a teenage boy, but this kid isn’t in junior high school and wouldn’t drop the joke, even when I was trying to explain an assignment to the class.

I finally told him that if he didn’t stop saying the word he’d get in trouble. He played dumb, mostly trying to get me to repeat the word, but I finally got him to shut up when I told him no one was going to get a chance at free study until he stopped talking. (I also told him that if he asked “why” again I’d give everyone a writing project.)

I suspect that when the final project starts he and his partners will come up with some kind of lewd invention. That’s when the fun starts, though, as there will be no restrictions on how late I can keep them after school–the record is 6:30 p.m. if you’re counting–or how much homework I can give them. For example, I can have him write the bad word and the word “magnetron” 5,000 times.

And yes, I’ll either count them all or give him numbered sheets of paper so that he doesn’t have to count by himself.

It has become a tradition in the school where I work to let sleeping students sleep, so long as those students don’t belong in the class where they are sleeping.

If they do belong to the class, they are woken up right away and sent to their seats.

If they don’t, as long as they are not in another student’s seat, we have fun trying to figure out how long they will sleep before waking up and realizing they are in the wrong room.

In my case the record is 15 minutes. Fellow students attempted to wake the student and, after he didn’t wake up, I checked to make sure he was breathing. Once I confirmed he was breathing, i started class. After 15 minutes he suddenly woke up and looked around. He seemed confused as to why there was a foreigner at the front of the class. Once he realized what my job was, he then looked around and realized he was in the wrong class. He then made production of getting ready slowly as if to prove he were still cool, rather than groggy looking with drool stains on his face.

As I’ve mentioned before, something like this happened to me last week. Two students arrived late, one after the other, as they woke up and realized they were not where they were supposed to be. At least one remained in a semi-awake state the remainder of the class as he’d clearly been woken up before reaching a proper level of REM sleep.

The other had apparently gotten a proper amount of sleep as he had a lot of energy. Unfortunately it was not positive energy. Just noisy energy.

I confirmed with my colleague that they had been asleep in his class and not running around the school. Mind you, it didn’t matter what they were doing. All that mattered was they were late.

I surprised a teacher by telling him how good his class was. I’ll almost certainly regret that, but it is part of a plan.

In the past, when I’ve had bad classes I’ve done my best to report both good news and bad news. I do this because I recognize that having someone drag their problems into your work day can be a real pain as it used to happen to me more times than it should have. (More on that in another post.) It’s very easy to abuse that outlet and, over time, the homeroom teachers cringe as soon as one of us walks in the classroom.

It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that one of the times I brought good news, the teacher was happy I thought he might cry tears of joy. Mind you, his class was never good again, but I made his day at least once, and that good news helped me deliver bad news.

What’s unusual this year is that the homeroom teacher was the one who delivered the bad news. He told me the class were worse than my bad class last year as he visibly shuddered at the thought of teaching them.

However, they seem to be made up of mostly students from one of my better classes, albeit with a few unknown unknowns thrown in.  However, today they were pretty good and everyone did the writing and speaking (although i suspect one student cheated on the final speaking project). This is unusual enough for the first class after school trips that felt I should deliver this news to the homeroom teacher. At first he seemed to think I was lying, then he acted genuinely pleased that I’d brought good news.

Mind you, June is coming along with hot weather that is often accompanied by rainy season (note: it appears that it may actually rain during rainy season rather than before it in the season in which it rains.) When June arrives temperaments change. If nothing happens before summer, it almost always happens after.

Until then, I’ll keep saying nice things about the class every time they deserve it. Until it’s time to not be nice.

It may by the weather, or maybe I’ve added too much sugar back in my diet, but lately I’ve been in a mood at the school where I work.

Last week there were thrown papers and today I was pretty close to throwing them again when I taught the same lesson with a different class. (Luckily, a few students started moving about that time.)

For the second class today, I tried a different approach to that lesson and got better results, although with a class that behaves much better than the others.

Third period is when I started to see the effects of last week and when my mood started to manifest. Last week the high school second years were off to Okinawa, Kyushu or Shikoku as part of the school trip. They return as seasoned and weary world travelers who suddenly no longer feel the need to quietly endure the banalities of the local milieu.

I eventually dragged them through the lesson and had a few hours to recover and plan for the next lesson (and a few tomorrow).

Then sixth period rolled around and the students there suddenly forgot who I was and what I’m capable of doing when I’m in a mood.

First, no one had erased the board from the previous class. Although each class has designated board erasers, no one would fess up or accuse another. I told them that if I had to do it, I’d add time to the end of class. They forgot who I am and tried to call my bluff, making class 52 minutes instead of 50.

One student showed up with no paper, pencil or textbook. Every other word out of his mouth involved references to male genitalia and/or female body parts. I told him to shut up or get out.

Then, one by one, two missing students, who were apparently still asleep in their homeroom, slowly dragged themselves to class about 10 minutes late (more on things like that in another post).

Eventually, as I was working through the lesson, there came a point where I had to do some talking and try to elicit answers from the class. After a few attempts to do this, a lot of students weren’t listening so I implemented “Plan J” (named after a former colleague). I told them to translate every English word on one of pages into Japanese and that no one could leave until everyone was finished.

They eventually finished and then I assigned the homework.

The real surprise came when the bell rang and Mr Genitalia tried to leave. I reminded him he owed me two minutes. The prompted a reaction from the two who arrived late, as they’d missed the earlier drama.

The best part is, it isn’t even June yet. That’s when the real fun usually happens.