The worst thing you can hear when you’re about to take over a class for four weeks is “which class are you teaching?” from the person you were counting on to tell you which class you were teaching.

The worst answer you can give is “I don’t know”.

Since I’m now “off work” for a couple weeks, I agreed to pick up four weeks of Sunday classes with a program I’ve mentioned before. The trouble is I was given no information to help me prepare for the class. I didn’t know what class I’d be teaching, what level or what textbook I’d be using.

Eventually, after the other three teachers arrived, and through the process of elimination, we figured out what class I was teaching in time for me to prepare for it. That’s when my worries really started.

My predecessor had finished only four units out of book that has ten. A colleague teaching a different class in the same level was on unit seven. With four weeks left his status actually made a lot of sense. For me it means that I have to rush to finish as much of the textbook as I can.

This is the moment when the doubt hit. I doubted his notes; I doubted my ability to fill five hours of class with little prep; and I wondered how in the hell he managed to make “pages 11-18” (from his notes) last four hours. (In his defense, the listenings in this textbook seem to last several hours.)

Once I got in the class and established where the students were in the book (my predecessor’s notes were accurate) my “golden doorknob” skills (more on those in a future post) took over and I managed to create a plan that lasted five hours.

The trick, of course, is to assign work for the students: check your answers with your partner; make a short speech; make groups and write a two minute role play about death. (Something like that.)

For next week I’ll have time to plan. Because of that, I doubt the class will go very well.

I finally got to properly waste time today, but most of it was done in class.

The last day of classes can be strange, especially if you have junior high school classes. Our classes amount to

1–tease high score, low score and average on board,
2–take roll,
3–pass out answer sheets,
4–correct mistakes in answer sheets,
5–finish writing high score, low score and average,
6–hand out exams,
7–Let students copy answers,
8–Answer questions, correct counting errors,
9–Collect answer sheets,

That all takes, at most, 15 minutes–and that’s only if there are lots of questions and/or one student takes it seriously–leaving 35 more minutes to fill. Some teachers show videos; some give extra credit assignment; and next year I’m going to have extra work for the classes with the lowest averages.

However, this year, I got nothing. I let the students relax while I do other things.

Then there’s some final busy work: entering final marks, correcting mistakes, and purging desks and folders of old paper and roll cards.

Leaving feels really strange, especially if most everyone else is staying and are coming back the next day.

Once i get home, there’s the odd feeling that things aren’t over yet. There’s still some busy work, a farewell party (for teachers who never actually spoke to me) and then a speech contest next week. It all feels very strange, but I managed to properly waste time.

I played some games and then took pictures of ink. That involved cotton swabs, paper, a Samsung tablet, and no small amount of self-doubt and swearing. That led to a need to break out the real camera and the light box to get better pictures. It wasn’t a pressing enough need, though, to prompt immediate action.

Eventually I’ll settle into proper time wasting, interrupted only by my company’s odd demands for attention/busy work.

I’ll probably go back to school at least once, though. I’m sure there’s something I forgot.

Today was one of those days where work stretched to meet the time, and then they mangled each other in a messy fight and the work kept pushing time around.

This is a nice way of saying I spent a lot longer finishing things today than I expected and than necessary.

When I have lots of time, I tend to stretch my exam marking over a few days with, in theory, an equal amount of work each day. This is supposed to prevent burnout. However, my plan for yesterday was to finish everything so that today would be free. Yesterday’s excursion, which I only learned about the morning of the show, left that plan in shambles.

Marking, especially when I’ve got lower level junior high school classes, requires constant momentum. If I’m in the middle of a big push and stop, it’s hard to get going again. The other thing the excursion did was sap a lot of energy.

I got up later than usual and took my time getting started. Once I got started, things went well, but I quickly faded. (It didn’t help that I’m always watching a local store’s website to see if ink is in supply.) When the fade happens, I find myself marking a couple pages and then actively seeking distractions. The lower level the students, the harder it is to get through their exams.

It also didn’t help that I was also stopping to record notes about my marking pen.

Luckily, today was rainy and cold and I didn’t feel like going out again (to buy ink, of course) and I that meant I couldn’t put the exams out of mind. I also, much to my own surprise, didn’t play any games.

That said, except for marking, I didn’t accomplish much, which meant my time wasting was actually wasted.

When I was finishing marking exams tonight, I heard a song that distracted me and took me out of my marking rhythm. This isn’t as bad, though, as the song that kind of made me feel high.

One of the things that happens when you’re marking exams is you eventually feel the need for music to provide a little background noise or/and to block out family sounds. The problem is, at least in my case, the music has to meet certain criteria.

It can’t be too ballady and slow because, eventually, I will wake up to find my head and a spreading drool stain on my students’ exams.

The music, however, can’t be too catchy or familiar because then I start enjoying the music too much and not marking. Tonight I’d chosen a good radio channel on iTunes (more on that in a minute) when all of a sudden The Vapors’ “Turning Japanese” came on. This led to chair dancing and lip-syncing but very little marking.

Usually, a punk channel is safe. The music is fast-paced but not terribly distracting. Also, although individual punk bands can be fun, a one-after-the-other stream of punk songs sounds suspiciously the same which also helps keep the marking pace going.

The oddest moment happened a few years back when I’d put on headphones for reasons I don’t remember, although I suspect that blocking out family noises was somehow involved. The headphones did their job until Santana’s “Black Magic Woman” came on. At first I was fine, but, then, once the lyrics were finished and the long instrumental section started, I suddenly felt really groovy, man, like really groovy. And the colors around me started moving and pulsing and talking to me and I could see my bones through the skin of my hands. And I could fly.

Something like that. I felt kind of dizzy and got weirded out enough that I had to stop listening to music.

I did finish marking, though. I just did it with family noise in my ears.

None of us on the native speaker staff at the school where I work are sure what day it is or what day is coming. Our only motto is “trust no one, especially yourself”.

Because the schedule at the school where I work is weird in January and then gets crazy in February when different grades end at different times and some seem to never end, it gets difficult to keep track of what is happening when. This often leads to confusion and misinformation.

Yesterday, for example, one of my colleagues said that she though classes ended next Wednesday and three of us assured her that, no, classes actually ended on Tuesday.

The trouble is, we all seemed to think that next Tuesday was next Wednesday or that yesterday was today, which was Wednesday. Something like that.

That was all corrected today, though, when those of us who’d given the false information suddenly realized what day it was yesterday.

Part of the problem is that we are still teaching some grades even though final exams have started. We will also be marking final exams before we’ve finished teaching. This makes it hard to keep track of where we are supposed to be when, even when we exploit modern technology such as Google Calendar or older technology such as “legible notes on paper”.

Hopefully we will all remember to show up for our exams when they finally happen. I have two exams on Friday, including the exam I’m responsible for, but before that I have a junior high class. I then have to remember two more junior high classes.

In the past we’ve had people confuse what day was which and they ended up missing their last classes before exams.

Truth be told, I have at least one class I’m tempted to miss. It may be time to play dumb. I’m sure I’ll show up, but I won’t know until the last minute if I will or not. I’ll also be questioning what day it is until I do show up.

Some classes just don’t get it. It’s rare, though, for the same class not to get it three times in the same year.

At the end of every term, depending on what days they meet, it’s possible for a class to have extra days compared to other classes of the same grade. In those cases, I usually follow the same plan: The last two class meetings are reserved for review. The first of the two usually follows the rule “Study my class today and I won’t look at what you’re studying next week”.

I phrase it this way because I’m not, technically, supposed to allow what you might call study hall classes unless the students are studying my lessons. Every now and then, though, some goodness and kindness enter my heart and it becomes .0003 times larger.

Classes that get it understand that while on the last day I might state that they should review my class I won’t actually be looking at what they are studying, unless they start sleeping and playing, in which case they must review my class.

The class that didn’t get it though, failed three different times on the next to last day. In each case I had groups of students who:

Didn’t open the book.
Opened the book, but to the wrong unit.
Opened the book to the correct unit but never turned the page after that.
Open the book to the correct page but had a different text book set on top of it.

All that, of course, happened in Japanese with nary a word of English spoken.

I reminded them a few times about what was going to happen and they either ignored me or, in case of the worst students in the class, acted annoyed and muttered bad things about me and my heart became 3 sizes too small.

That earned them a special assignment for this week. I made a nice review worksheet that, in theory, should have taken no more than 20 minutes to complete, however, several students spent the better part of the lesson working on it.

I suspect some of the worst students hadn’t actually been working on it until I started collecting the worksheets. That inspired the worst students to finally finish, but the worksheets from the best students were already in my possession making it harder for the worst students to cheat.

Now, I’ll just make sure I have them all and then throw them away without grading them.

I told you my heart got three sizes too small.

Yes, I really am that kind of teacher, although I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be. I’m also not sure if I should bothered to try.

Because we are in the week before final exams at the school where I work, new rules suddenly apply. Clubs have been cancelled and students have adopted an air of invincibility as if there’s nothing that can happen to them if they misbehave.

Because after school activities have been cancelled (including, apparently, baseball practice which usually meets every day possible) students have assumed that means that they cannot be held after school. They also seem to assume that they cannot be given homework and, if they are, that there will be no consequences for not doing it.

Part of the problem is that they don’t seem to understand, or have forgotten, that they need a higher score in their English classes than they do in other classes in order to get automatic recommendation to university. In the past, when I’ve reminded students of this, they suddenly developed an interest in studying English.

However, there are a couple things they don’t understand. 1) I’m not afraid to assign homework during exams because they can finish on test pass back day when they think they will have some free time. 2) I’m not afraid to keep them after school because 3) I can always play the “I didn’t understand because I’m a foreigner card” 4) I really am that mean.

The only problem with being that mean is that if I keep them after school I have to stay after school, too.  If I assign homework I have to either actually mark it or go through the motions that it’s actually going to be marked. Neither of those possibilities interest me. The latter requires hypocrisy; the former requires actual effort.

In the end, I often err on the side of just letting the year end and moving on to the next year. I’ve taught them all they’re going to learn from me and there’s no point wasting any more time or energy on them.

That said, sometimes it’s fun to be mean though, even if it involves a little hypocrisy.

I thought was going to get to see a young man’s head explode today. Luckily, more or less, it didn’t happen, but I was pretty sure it might.

One of our number at the school where I work was sick and the company I work for sent a substitute teacher for him.

The problem is, the company I work for knows nothing about the school where I work–in fact, they seem to have a willful blindness and deafness about the school, but that’s another post–and that can lead to complications.

First, although I was informed of the young man’s name, the head of the English department hadn’t. It was also no known when he would arrive. Also, when I was informed of the young man’s name, the person giving me the information used the wrong name to describe the person he was replacing, which did not instill confidence in me.

I was also informed that he’d never taught either junior high school or high school.

Second, the young man arrived but had been given no instructions on what to do upon his arrival. I only found him when one of our number (from a different company no less) pointed out there a was a lost looking young lad down on the ground floor.

Third, this left us with 10 minutes to get him ready (we all had class at the same time) and he was in full panic mode. His voice was shaky; he was trembling; and we could tell that he was hearing what we were saying but not actually comprehending it. I was pretty sure he was either going to catch fire or his head was going to explode.

I escorted him to his junior high class and picked him up after. He looked slightly more relaxed and still in possession of all his limbs but he did not look very happy. It turns out he didn’t know, and we didn’t know that he didn’t know (see my earlier comment about willful blindness and deafness) that he’d be teaching the class solo. He said he’d waited for someone to arrive and then realized he was on his own. As students can smell fear about as well as animals, they hadn’t given him an easy time.

Right after that he had his second junior high class. Once again I dropped him off and picked him up. That class went better, though, and he seemed relaxed and ready to do more.

A few hours later I escorted him to his first high school class. When I picked him up the unhappy look had returned. It hadn’t been a good group of students and he’d been nervous.

Now, we don’t know if our colleague will be back tomorrow, but we do know the young man won’t. This means we may get the chance to see someone catch fire or explode after all.

It is the time of year, at the school where I work, where everyone goes slightly mad.

I, of course, go fully mad.

In my first period class, I was the only one in the class when the bell rang. One student had been there before the bell but he asked if he could go to the restroom, and per a strange school policy, I allowed him to go. Several other students quickly arrived and by two minutes after the bell, I had a full class of students. A few minutes later, the restroom student returned and he was followed by a late student who announced he’d also been in the restroom. (The former was forgiven, the latter was counted tardy. Long story.)

After the warm up, I told them to take out their prints from the last class and the tardy student asked if he could go get his print because, if I understood him correctly, he’d either never been to my class before and/or had been dropped on his head as an infant and was still suffering from the brain damage.

Yes, that perfectly sums up my mood. That and the fact I gave him only a minute to get to his locker and back.

Then, third period, my worst class returned to bad form until I started making plans, complete with specific times, that they’d have to meet me during lunch time. When they mocked me about this by saying I’d never get them there, I reminded them that their homeroom teacher was 1) an English teacher and 2) a friend of mine and that I’d have little trouble getting them to the teacher’s room at lunch. Every day until exams.

Suddenly work got finished. Badly, but it got finished.

My fifth period class was actually okay and I came out of it feeling surprisingly positive. However, this was just a way to set me up for my sixth period class.

My sixth period class had, to a student, all apparently suffered some sort of madness inducing brain damage. They payed dumb and, in some cases, actually played and ended up getting homework per my “play now work later/work now play later” rule.

The fun happens next class when half of them don’t turn it in. What happens will depend on the level madness I’m feeling.

Went I entered class, I had two and a half students.

I spent the better part of today down in Tokyo teaching students who hope to go to the USA to study. I’ve done this off and on for several years and I especially like the workshop days because 1) the are longer so there’s some extra money and 2) I don’t have to do any of the planning or prep work.

However, when I arrived in class, I knew I’d have to do some quick improvising. Two young women were awake while a third had her head down on the desk. She was fast asleep. As I got ready to wake her up (with the scariest sounding alarm on my phone) a fourth student came in. That didn’t help me much, but talking to him woke up the third young woman.

The problem is that the course is designed for 18 people. Giving 18 students their work, checking their work and then having them present their work would take a good part of the day. With only four students, I’d have to improvise a lot because they’d finish in almost no time.

Even the opening activity “Find Someone Who” would go quickly with only four students. I quickly wormed my way into a larger class for the warm up and by then a couple more students had arrived.

Over the course of morning, a few more students arrived. One arrived during a writing assignment and did nothing because that was easier than having me explain (once again) what he was supposed to do.

Two young women who arrived late immediately started acting bored. Their English was pretty good but I had to threaten to send them out a couple times for speaking Japanese and for talking when I was talking.

Over time, they faded to a level below boredom and I’m sure the last half hour was brutal for them. They even wanted to play games and were annoyed when I said no because the games wouldn’t help them pass their TOEIC or TOEFL.

This argument did not impress them.

At the end of the day, we were all ready to get out. I’ll see them again in a month. At least I’ll be in the building. I don’t know if I’ll see the same students. If I do, I hope they arrive on time and bring some energy.