It’s clear that there is a “vortex of suck” running through the school where I work. Luckily it only seems to exist in two rooms.

My four bad students all turned in their homework this morning, more or less on time, but they were replaced this afternoon by four different students who now have to do the same homework for the same reasons. I blame the place they sit for this. And maybe the time.

I was teaching the same part of the unit at the same time of day (last period) to a different set of students, but once again, four students were talking and not doing the work. What surprised me, and I pointed it out to them, was they were sitting in the same place as the other four students–the back four chairs of rows 3 and 4–one floor down.

I checked their books and noticed they hadn’t done anything. One wasn’t even on the correct pages. I told them they had three minutes to finish everything or they’d get home work. One student went “okay okay okay okay” in a way that meant “fuck that and fuck you” and got him a lot of laughs from other students. I said he should talk to the four boys who’d just turned in homework if he thought there wouldn’t be consequences and then dared him to say “okay” again. He didn’t.

However, although they made a very manly try, none of the four actually finished the work, even after I told everyone to check the answers at the back of the book. (At that point they could have just copied the answers.)

Instead they got the assignment to copy a page in the textbook and then translate it into Japanese. To a young man they played dumb, and I had to explain the difference between “finish everything now” and “I’m finished because that’s everything I feel like doing right now.”

I’m now wary of those seats in that place. I’l probably have to move the students and, since it’s a religious school, call in an exorcist. (For the room not the students.)

They thought I’d forget, and I’m sure they’d already forgotten. When they saw their names in big red letters, though, they started to remember.

Last week, as we were gearing up for the school festival, I mentioned how the students tended to be brain dead because school suddenly didn’t seem that important. One week ago, my last class of the day was in an especially brain dead mood and four guys at the back insisted, through constant chattering in Japanese, that they were no longer interested in my class

I called on them a few times and, after managing to finally get their attention, they couldn’t do the activity because they hadn’t actually done the activity.

At the end of class, I pulled them aside and explained their homework (copy every English word on the page into a notebook and then translate it all into Japanese). Two guys left as I spoke, one ignored me, and the one with the best English just smiled and nodded in a way that said “yeah, I get it, fuck that and fuck you.” I warned him that I’d bring them in at lunch and  after school every day until they finished if they didn’t do the homework. That got me another, as Stephen King might say, shit eating grin.

Because I had that class today, I created an announcement that featured their names in bold red letters at the top and described the homework at the bottom. (Note: I stole this “doom note” idea from a colleague). The last line was “If you forget…” and that was all. I posted the “doom note” on the blackboard in their homeroom during lunch and then went and did some other work.

When class time rolled around three of the four had the Japanese translation. Because I’ve been in a disturbingly good mood the last couple days (which still has me worried) I gave them until 8:15 a.m. tomorrow to complete the rest of the homework or I’ll start bringing them in at lunch to work on it. If they ask around, even in their own class, they’ll discover how many times I’ve done something like that.

If they don’t ask around and don’t do the work, well, at least I know what I’ll be doing for lunch.

Today was actually a pretty good day, which is odd for a Tuesday.

Today was the first full day back after the School Festival and that usually means the students are either brain dead, distracted or both. I therefore was expecting the worst.

Then, my first period class actually did the work I assigned them and did it quietly. Granted, my worst student wasn’t there as he has apparently taken my “You don’t have to be here” speech to heart and has decided not to attend class any more. I hope that’s not the case as I know he can do the work, he just chooses not to.

Surprised by that, I got ready for my worst class. As expected, they were pretty bad and the guy who had to stand up last week did nothing but project attitude and got to stand up again when he decided to sleep. However, in the end, everyone did the assignment. Granted, there was lots of cheating going on but in the end everyone come up front and did a speech. They even memorized their speeches and got bonus points. Mr. Attitude actually came up and did his speech.

At that point I was thoroughly freaked out and convinced that something bad was bound to happen. It had to. If my worst class was good, they had to be offset by someone else being bad. If not, the universe would spin off out of balance.

Luckily I had classes after lunch when the exhaustion and stress of being back would set in along with a rush of after lunch energy followed low blood sugar and that would trigger the bad things and help me be less freaked out.

Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. My fifth period class was noisy but good. Only a couple students tried to annoy me, but they didn’t try very hard.

Sixth period I did have some noisy students, but was able to get them to do work and, all in all, it was a good first day back.

I therefore headed home with a certain amount of dread. If the train didn’t crash it would mean that tomorrow would be terrible especially as I’ll have some bad students to deal with.

The train didn’t crash.

I was in an odd mood today. I wasn’t angry or cranky and I wasn’t impatient. I was just confrontational in a very calm sort of way.

My first class went well, but I had a couple students try to cheat on the assignment. I saw Student A copying from a completed paper. When I confronted him and his partner they tried the “play dumb and pretend the teacher is dumb” tactic by saying the paper that was being copied actually belonged to Student B. The problem was they couldn’t explain why they had three papers for two students and why Student B’s paper hadn’t been turned over to the correct side to do the writing. I assigned them to memorize it (which was not part of the original assignment) and told them to meet me in the teachers’ office at 1:00 p.m.

They didn’t show up, which means it’s time for me to go hunting and have a little fun.

Then I had my worst class, and they started out bad. Students stayed out in the hall after the bell, other students sat in the wrong seats. I gave them fair warning and got laughs in response. I then went to the hall, grabbed the biggest student by the shirt and dragged him to his chair. This prompted the other students to hurry a bit. (Note to teachers: if you’re going to get physical, take out the biggest guy first and the rest will follow.) Then, during the warm up, a few students refused to ask me questions, thinking they could somehow win. Instead, I started the lesson and left them standing until they asked me a question.

One student stood the entire class because he thought he could out-stubborn me and/or that I would forget. (He can’t and I didn’t.) Another student fell asleep and after I woke him up, he got to stand, too. (I did let him sit, though, after he finished his work.)

After that class things settled down a bit. Mostly because I didn’t have any classes until after lunch.

After lunch the classes went well, although they were noisy (normal for Japan) and I did have to walk around a lot playing enforcer. By the end of the two classes my voice and ears felt as if I’d just spent two hours in a night club trying to talk and listen over loud music.

Oddly, during all this, I never shouted. I just got loud a couple times and acted scary. During my worst class, some students were throwing a pencil case. I looked at the student who had the case and said “Throw it again. I dare you.” He didn’t know exactly what was going on, but knew I looked angry. I repeated “Throw it again. I dare you.”  After a minute, he figured out what I was saying and I hinted that if he threw the case again, it would be mine for a very long time.

He put it away and I never saw it again.

Now I have to decide if I want to keep this mood as part of my teaching persona. If I do, I’ll have to figure out what it was the caused it, first.

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.

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.