In my worst class, today, three students had to do speeches. Despite sending messages to them via their homeroom teacher, most of them seem surprised about this.
Two of them had failed miserably and/or cheated during the actual speech day and were required to repeat their performances. Granted, they were supposed to have done this at lunch some time in the past week, but I’m not sure if the message was actually delivered or if they would have heeded it if it were.
The third was absent on speech day and was given extra time to practice.
The first two started practicing right away. One of them, student A, then decided to take a 15 minute break to “wash his hands”. I suspect that he was hoping that I’d somehow forget that he was supposed to do his speech. When I didn’t, he seemed annoyed but he did manage to get through his speech. (I had them face me, not the class, so there was no way for them to get help.)
The second student, let’s call him B, had one of the best speeches in the class. He’d met and exceeded the assignment and, if he hadn’t cheated, would have been finished. Today, though, he did a kind of triage on his speech by cutting out almost half of it. I am now faced with a dilemma. Do I send him on to the school speech contest but tell him to use the long speech, or do I send someone else? Either way, he failed the speech, but he doesn’t know that yet.
The third guy, let’s call him Mr. Absent, didn’t understand why he had to do his speech. I reminded him about his absence and he kind of nodded in a teenaged “yes, I notice there are words coming out of your mouth” sort of way but it was clear he didn’t understand how his absence hadn’t absolved him of the need to do his speech. He started talking to his friend. I eventually called him up and he acted angry. He then couldn’t get through the first two sentences of his speech. I made him sit down and memorize it and he eventually got through it.
I’m glad to be done with that part of the speeches, especially with that class. I’m still not sure it was worth the energy.
Today I took our youngest out on a Daddy/Daughter Date (whilst our oldest stayed home and “studied” for her mid-term exams tomorrow). By request, we saw the movie Bakuman, which is based on the manga of the same name.
I was struck by three things in the movie: 1) how reliant it was on sound even though it was a movie about visual images; 2) how it may be the most effective example of native advertising I’ve ever seen; and 3) how much of a pen nerd I am to try and figure out what pens and pencils were being used.
Bakuman is the story of two high school students who come together to create a manga worthy of being included in Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine. The movie tracks their trials and tribulations and although you’ve probably seen this movie before in other forms and know what’s going to happen, the way it happens is often done surprisingly well.
For the uninitiated, Jump and its publisher Shueisha are the grandfathers/grandmasters of all manga magazines in Japan (and probably the world). Jump‘s history includes Mazinger-Z (which came to the USA as Tranzor Z and spawned the Shogun Warriors toys), City Hunter, Dragon Ball, Hunter x Hunter, Yu-Gi-Oh, Naruto, One Piece and Death Note, and those are just the ones people in the West might know.
(Note: If you recognize none of these you are either completely normal and/or don’t have young kids or relatives.)
Jump‘s earlier incarnation also spawned MahaGoGoGo, which came to the USA as Speed Racer, and one of its affiliates spawned All You Need is Kill, which begat the Tom Cruise movie Edge of Tomorrow. (At one point, in the closing credits, the camera spends two minutes scanning over a bookshelf full of Weekly Shōnen Jump titles.)
Jump and its offices are major stars in the movie, but the other stars are the pens they use. After the protagonists have decided to collaborate on the manga, Mashiro Moritaka, played by Takeru Satoh, picks up a dip pen that used to belong to his manga artist uncle–the uncle’s death years before is a major plot point in the movie–and begins to draw with it. He’s immediately impressed by how much more expressive it is than a ball-point pen or a pencil. (The pen geek in me was going “damn straight, brother, damn straight” and trying to figure out a way to bring She Who Must Be Obeyed to the movie, if only for that part.)
The best part about that scene is the excellent sound design as the pen scratches across the paper. It was enough to bring chills to the spine of this pen addict. In fact, one of the movie’s best accomplishments is the different sounds of the different pens and pencils on paper. At one point, the scratch of the nib serves as the snare drum part in a music video sequence where the anime they are drawing is projection-mapped onto the paper and the room around them. (You can see bits of it in the trailer here. Note: it’s all in Japanese.)
Of course, the whole time any pens were on screen I was doing a Rainman monologue: “I think it’s a Copic, I don’t think it’s a Pigma Micron. I think it’s a Copic. It’s definitely not an Ohto. I think it’s a Copic.” Given that there were no complaints from other viewers, including our youngest, I’m pretty sure I kept that internal monologue internal.
The movie’s weakness is that it relies too much on its Sakanaction soundtrack. The music is excellent, but it’s often overwhelming as if the director were saying “Listen! This is awesome!” as it stops moving forward for a short (with one exception) music video.
It also suffers from a noticeable lack of women. Weekly Shōnen Jump is apparently staffed completely by men and the only woman to get a speaking part disappears early. Nana Komatsu plays Miho Azuki, Moritaka’s love interest and muse. In the few scene’s she’s actually around, Komatsu does a good job, but she’s mostly there to smile and look radiantly beautiful. As such, she is always shot in glowing, angelic soft focus (which you can even notice in the trailer). There were comic moments where she is in angelic soft focus and the person she is talking to is shot in regular light. At first I thought she might be imaginary, but she was apparently real.
The rest of the actors are well cast. However, because they are based off a manga, they walk the line between wacky and good. One manga artist has a brass knuckles phone case and gets his accurate fight depictions by having his friends take pictures of him being kicked and punched. However, when his work is accepted by Jump, he giddily announces his acceptance over the pachinko parlor loudspeaker. Another strips down to work while another drinks lots of sake and acts depressed.
For no particular reason other than soundtrack filler, there is a manga style fight between Moritaka and his collaborator Akito Takagi (played by Ryunosuke Kamiki) and their rival Eiji Niizuma, played by Shota Sometani. They fight with ink and pens to excellent music and at first it’s kind of funny, but it goes on way too long.
The most impressive acting happens near the end when Niizuma and Moritaka come together over the latter’s drawing table. I won’t spoil it too much, so let’s just ask “what would you do if your rival was scribbling on your true love’s face?” Satoh’s reaction is brilliant–and proves he can act–and it was not even close what I was fearing was about to happen.
I was glad our youngest dragged me to it and I would happily take our oldest and/or She Who Must Be Obeyed to see it. I think it’s also worth seeing, even if you don’t like manga. (Also, pen and stationery addicts should definitely stay for the closing credits. There’s a taste at the end of the trailer.)
We talked about booze tonight with our youngest, and our oldest had, at least officially as far as her parents know, her first taste of beer. It ended badly. Which is kind of good.
I’ve mentioned before about how I had my first taste of bourbon at the age of 10 and about how my parents would give us watered down wine with either Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner. It turns out there’s also a tradition like that here in Japan, but we haven’t really acted on it until today.
At supper, our youngest asked She Who Must Be Obeyed about the beer we were drinking. Our youngest seemed to know from reading and/or television, that beer is made with hops which makes it bitter and it’s the bitterness that makes it beer. (Something like that; she seems to know more about it than I do so ask her for clarification.) SWMBO tried to explain it and then gave up and offered her a taste instead.
Our youngest was surprised and didn’t act interested, even when we assured her one sip wouldn’t make her drunk. Now that I think about it, though, that’s probably not the best way to get her try it. She ended up refusing.
Our oldest seemed more interested and finally agreed to try a sip. Keep in mind, we were drinking Yebisu All Malt Beer, which is one of my favorite beers in Japan. In fact, it was the first beer I drank after I moved to Japan which also means it’s a sentimental favorite. It is, however, more bitter than most national beers which is part of what I like about it. It isn’t alcohol infused soda water, it’s got flavor.
Our oldest, though, was unimpressed. She took one sip. Made a face that was one part “you tricked me” and one part “bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntu onnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!” and ran to the sink to spit the beer out and flush her mouth with water.
One part of me was pleased she’d had that reaction. Another part, though, was thinking “Don’t waste the beer you little idiot! Don’t waste the beer! You’re no daughter of mine!”
The next step, I suspect, will be a taste of sake with New Year’s breakfast. I need to find some bad sake for that event, though. Just in case.
Maybe it’s just that we have to work or maybe it’s just the speeches. Either way, all the foreign staff at the school where I work felt like yesterday was Friday and that today was a mistake.
I’ve written before about how I need to beware the ides of October, but this year things seem to have started early.
One of the things that happens at the school where I work is that we spend the first month of our autumn term junior high school classes chasing down speeches and speakers and reading speeches and then listening to speeches. This burns a lot of energy, especially if we sacrifice a lunch break to hear a speech. We also spend a lot of time talking about missing speeches with homeroom teachers who do a good job of blending “Oh, that’s terrible” with “Why is this my problem?”
There are sports days and sports tournaments and the approach of the two day school festival when the all boys school gussies itself up and tries, in general, to impress visiting young women and their parents.
Little things like “school” and “schoolwork” and “grades” aren’t that important in October.
For us, because of quirks of scheduling and a couple train delays, we hadn’t had a full week of work until last week. Then, for most of us, this week was a full week and everyone was dragging and trying to remember what day it was. Everyone agreed that getting up to go to work today was surprisingly depressing.
In my case I worked last Sunday, which means I’ve worked six days in a row. It also means I stopped caring about day four. I only lost my temper once and had to get loud twice. I also threatened a memorized conversation to get class’s attention. This could be that start of the October doldrums.
I do have a couple projects in mind for the rest of October to keep me distracted and am even considering starting National Novel Writing Month early (sort of) to take advantage of some days off so that I can stop before exam time in November and still accomplish 30 days of writing. (More on that in another post.)
Until then, it’s a three day weekend followed by an exam shortened week.
I’m working on Sunday again, though, which kind of messes things up.
One of my weaknesses as a teacher is that I’m always happy to have days off and I’m always happy to have my students do well in sports if it means I don’t have to see them for an hour or two.
A couple times of year at the school where I work junior high school classes are interrupted by various sports tournaments. Non-athlete students still have class, but because the majority of students are absent, special classes are held in place of regular classes. I suspect this is because Japanese law makes class attendance both compulsory and a right. Students have a legal right to attend the class they must legally attend (something like that). If the majority of students are gone, that means regular classes can’t be held because 1) that would be depriving the athletes of the their legal right to an education and 2) most of the teachers are off serving as team faculty advisers and coaches anyway.
Whatever the reason, all I know is I don’t have to see my worst class tomorrow. Because there is a special schedule, our junior high first and second year classes (7th and 8th grade) are cancelled completely. This is true even if it rains as enough sports take place in-doors, or can be played in the rain, to preclude classes taking place.
The only thing that can hurt this is the teams sucking. This happened several years ago. Many of us had already planned our free time (if you have mostly junior high classes it is possible to get an entire day off) but then found out that not enough teams had qualified for the next round to justify a special schedule and we were informed that although we’d have a few absences, we would have regular classes.
I therefore found myself standing in front of a class and saying “Why am I here” to the soccer and baseball players.
Since then, I’m pretty sure a couple of my colleagues have spent time after school coaching the various team to make sure they play at peak performance. I’ve considered making my athletes run laps around the room to help keep them in shape.
But that’s a problem for next year. Until then, I have a long lunch break tomorrow, which causes other problems.
A colleague of mine is standing at the edge of the rabbit hole and I find myself with a moral dilemma. Do I do what’s right and hope for the best which is good for my colleague, or do I do what’s wrong and hope for the worst because that’s the best for me?
This colleague, seeing my extensive collection of pens and fountain pens, has decided to stick a toe in the ink, so to speak, of fountain pens. She also implied that I was going to be her adviser in all this.
This is where my moral dilemma enters the situation: do I use Jedi mind tricks (which I totally have) to persuade her to buy a more expensive starter pen in the hope that if she doesn’t like fountain pens, I can pick up the pen on the cheap for myself?
Unfortunately, once she made the decision to try fountain pens and before I could advise her, she did a shocking amount of research in a short amount of time and settled on a Platinum Preppy which was actually a very good choice (for her). It writes well and has a smooth nib. It also comes in fun colors, which is often important to people just starting out with fountain pens. It lets her try fountain pens without spending a small fortune.
She said she’d considered a Pilot Cocoon for a while but had opted against it as it was a bit pricey for a starter pen. I started waving my hand saying “this is totally the pen you’re looking for, this is totally the pen you’re looking for” but she went with the cheaper pen. (My Jedi mind tricks must be a bit rusty.)
The problem with the Preppy is that of the three I’ve owned (in two different nib sizes) I’ve had two caps split lengthwise rendering the caps and the pens useless. (I did convert one in to an ink cartridge holder but more on that in another post.)
I’m now kind of hoping she likes pens as I don’t want another Preppy. Also, if she likes them, it will be nice to have fellow pen addict, especially one who likes to do research.
Part of my day is best summed up by rephrasing Rudyard Kipling:
If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, You will be a teacher.
Today, in my worse class (not my worst) my students were supposed to go up to the front and practice their speech contest speeches. They were not required to memorize them–unless they wanted bonus points–and it wasn’t necessary for them to bring the “show” part of “show and tell”. The day was mostly for me to see 1) that everyone was finished 2) check the times of the speeches and 3) see who had a loud speaking voice as the voices usually disappear when students give their final performance.
I reminded them that it was speech practice day and my reminder triggered a wave of excuses with the most common being “I forgot my speech paper.” If I didn’t have a copy of it (because they’d neglected to make a copy for me–long story) I told them “Congratulations! That means you’re going to get bonus points!”
(Note: this level of cruelty/sarcasm/snark is the only time I speak with cheerful exclamation points.)
This triggered a wave of panic. Students quickly rushed to find their speech paper or to quickly write a new one. This meant I had to field a wave of students asking me to check hastily written “speeches” of barely more than a few lines.
Some students were in such a state of panic they asked me to look at their hastily written speeches whilst other students were up front reading. I’d chase them away and get dirty looks as if I didn’t care about them.
Eventually, everyone read something–often with the caveat “my speech paper at home is better” which is roughly the equivalent of “my other wife is a supermodel” (or something like that).
I reminded that next week will be the final performance and they won’t be allowed to use their scripts. They will also have to bring their “show” items or draw pictures of them.
If they were panicked today, next week should be a lot of fun.
At the school where I work we are fond of saying “that’s 50 minutes of my life I’ll never get back” to describe a particularly bad class. In an odd spin on that, I made enough silly mistakes today that I should give the entire back.
Despite a couple silly accidents this morning I thought it would be a good day. I should have taken those accidents as the omens they were.
My mistake in my first period class was handing out the wrong lesson for the next phase of the class. I was supposed to give out a lesson on superpowers as a way to start the “Superhero Adventures” curriculum we are trying out this term, but instead I jumped straight to Superheroes. I kicked myself a few times then decided to roll with it. The changed order is now officially classified as a “pedagogical experiment”.
After kicking myself I went to my worst class. My mistakes in this class were 1) not asking the homeroom teacher to remind the students to be ready for their speeches and 2) actually showing up to class. They are always bad but were in rare form today, leaving me with two lunch dates who both stood me up but who I will find.
Then, after lunch, I went to a high school first year class and started teaching a lesson when they were prepared to give presentations. I made a joke about it being a joke and then watched them do their presentations.
In my last class, I started calling names and realized I had the wrong roll sheet. I did a quick warm up and then went to get the correct roll sheet and folder. Once the folder was in hand I realized I was once again starting the wrong unit.
All this, I suspect, started because I didn’t bother to double check the folders I make for each class. If I had I wouldn’t have made a mistake in that class which led me to mope rather than double check which created a cascading series of mistakes
All that could have been avoided and I wouldn’t have been left wondering if it was possible to give the day back to the world. (No pay, for the record, just the day gets given back.)
My worst class still would have sucked, but at least the others would have been good.
Today, in my class with one student, that one student started panicking. I don’t blame him, but I hope he doesn’t reach the wrong conclusions.
At this time of year in the course I introduce a short play called “The Box” by Rich Smolen. The students are supposed to decide what motivates the three characters and then block the play. After a couple classes of practice, they are supposed to put on a staged reading of the play.
This poses some interesting problems for my student: 1) he has to play three parts even when they fight; 2) he has to give each a different way of speaking and different mannerisms 3) he has to interpret the play, which reminds me a lot of a Samuel Beckett play, and (spoiler) decide what’s in the box at the end; 4) he has to do all this by himself.
Unfortunately, because his English is excellent, he’s used to getting by with the bare minimum of effort. Already this year he’s done a monologue as a character who seemed suspiciously like him and improvised his way through a different monologue. (Improv is his way of NOT doing the required writing.) At no point has he tried to do anything resembling an actual “character”.
Today, after he got the assignment and was turned loose on the play, he panicked and said he didn’t understand. I told him a couple ways to interpret the play and the characters. He got a “Eureka” look and then stared at the paper, partly to waste time and partly to figure out what to do.
The problem is, for this assignment, he has to turn in a script book with all his blocking notes and his notes about the characters. If he doesn’t do that, his grade will suffer. I’m expecting him to try to improv the entire and thing, if I get anything resembling a script book, it will be a few scribbled notes.
Then again, I’ve already been surprised by students this term. Maybe he’ll surprise me, too.
A young woman showed up late to my class today and I’m still not sure she was actually awake when she got there.
The look she gave me and my students when we said hello was one part WTF?; one part How the hell did I get here?; and one part BRRAAAAIIIINS. She never actually said hello; she just sat down.
It turned out there’d been a birthday party for one of the students and that half my class had gone to the party and had got only a half hour of sleep. Because of this, and because I kept having to tell them to leave the room if they wanted to sleep, I never developed any real chemistry with the class. (Nothing wins students over more than raising your voice to them and telling them to get out.)
I seemed to connect with a few, including zombie woman, and their group did all the required work and took time to develop their presentations. The other group, consisting of the rest of the zombie party survivors, did the bare minimum. They’d finish quickly and then sit and look bored while the rest of the class worked and took the assignment seriously.
The zombie party survivors would try to whisper in Japanese and I’d tell them they could leave which would result in more sulking. In their defense, the two guys had good English and the topic wasn’t that interesting, but I still expected them to do the work and do it correctly. I kept pointing out that when they got to the USA there’d be a lot more group work, a lot more discussions and lot more impatience than what I was expressing. Their reaction was to pretend to work for two minutes and then drift back to oblivion.
The woman grouped with the two guys seemed to sulk for the entire class and barely spoke to me. (She’d only speak to them.) I tried to mix the groups around, but they wouldn’t move. If I’d been more on my game (i.e. if I’d cared enough about them to actually give a crap) I’d have forced them to move. Instead I just let them sit.
At one point, I let them play grade school level games just to get some energy back in them. That lasted about half an hour.
In the end we were all counting the minutes to the end of class and I was kind of glad to show them my backside as I hurried out of class.
