Well, the devil over my right shoulder won the day and I did a good job in my demo classes today. Well, at least I did in one of them.

The first thing that surprised me, and actually put my mind at ease, was that the parents visiting the open campus were dressed as if they were going to a picnic. So were a lot of the students. On parents days during the year the parents dress up and I very often have to avert my eyes as the mothers seem to get younger and younger each year whilst I stay the same age. (Something like that. I’ve been 24 or 25 for at least five years.)

I also noticed that the turn out for high school classes like mine were much smaller than for junior high classes. This is because 1) it’s easier to get into the junior high school (requirements: Japanese and breathing) and 2) once you’re in the junior high it’s easier to get into high school.

Because there wasn’t much pressure, I relaxed. However, me being me, I immediately started changing the plan while I was standing in front of the class. This involved drawing a picture that represented fear of heights on the board and adding the words “collecting pens” to indicate my hobby (at least for today; I also told them I was 24) and added “#1 Fear”.

For the first class, when everyone, myself included, was fresh and energetic, I was able to sell all those and get a reaction when I pointed out the number one fear was “giving speeches” and that’s exactly what they were about to do. I then got a series of good speeches that ended about 10 minutes before I expected them to, which was 15 minutes before the end of class. I then went into actor improv mode and pointed out that the back of the speech paper was blank and, as a teacher, “I hate blank pages” and had them make pairs and write short conversation based on the speech.

I also noticed that one of my students was also a pen and pencil collector. He had, based on my quick observations a Pilot S20 mechanical pencil; a Lime Green Lamy Safari, a black Rotring Rapid Pro mechanical pencil and several other pens all tightly packed in a Lihit Lab Teffa pen case.

(Note: this means he’s not allowed to attend school where I work. He’s not allowed to have cooler pens and pencils than I do.)

The class went so well I knew the second class, the one after lunch, would be bad.

It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great. The vibe was a lot different and the students weren’t as energetic. Once again it finished early and I assigned a conversation. Although some students asked for help, others just sat there staring at each other wondering what to do. I authorized my Japanese assistant (long story) to act as a human electronic dictionary and answer their questions.

No one had any cool pens though. I even had to loan one guy my Rotring 600 mechanical pencil because he hadn’t thought to bring any pens or pencils.

Unfortunately for him he gave it back rather than trying to steal it. That means he can’t come to the school either.

The school where I work still enters final marks on optical character recognition sheets. This isn’t as old school as it gets (we could be using Hollerith code) but it is rather old school and it also requires a certain amount of penmanship. This is where a lot of people get in trouble.

First some background: The OCR process involves filling in the OCRs with pencil, turning them in at a specific time and then waiting whilst the secretive people in the secretive old school computer room scan the cards and make a print out. We then checked the scores (on continuous form dot matrix paper from a dot matrix printer) and, if there were any mistakes, we waited whilst the corrections were made and reprinted. My first year at the school we turned in the cards around one in the afternoon and didn’t see the results until around five-thirty. I even had to call She Who Must Be Obeyed and delay our night out.

This slow process apparently scared some people because a couple years later we had an intranet system and a program we could access from our desks. The problem was the program wasn’t particularly intuitive (it had complicated steps to get to the complicated steps) and there were lots of complaints. Then the company went bankrupt and we were back to OCR cards.

Apparently, though, a deal was struck to speed up the process and now the turnaround time is usually an hour. Mistakes are taken care of quickly, too. The biggest mistakes usually involve 8s and 7s which can look like 0s or Bs or 1s. (Well, there was also that year I entered marks from the wrong row but that’s another post.) It helps to keep your pencils as sharp as possible, even if you have to resharpen them during the writing process.

My biggest complaint about the current system, though, is that you can’t submit early. With the unintuitive program we could finish everything the night before final marks were due and run away early. With the OCRs we can submit at any time, but the secretive computer people won’t fire up the OCR machine and scan them early.

My other complaint is that the dot matrix paper isn’t the classic green and white style. If you’re going retro, go full retro.

The tenth graders at the school where I work are funny people. They are in their first year of high school and as they approach their first final exam in my class, they get, well, kind of funny.

For lots of complicated reasons the classes I teach don’t have mid-term exams. This creates a couple problems for me. First, because they haven’t had a major exam in my class but have had them in others, the students tend to not take my final exam seriously. This is a bad problem for them to have because they need a higher percentage in their English classes in order to get automatic recommendation for university than they do in all their other classes. However, because there’s been no big exams, they don’t act as if the coming exam is important.

Second, because they’ve usually just finished a major final project, they often act as if there’s nothing left to do in class. My job, then, is to remind them that they are wrong.

That was an issue this week with a couple of my classes that, for various complicated reasons, have had lots of extra class time. In such cases I usually offer a deal: if they study my class on the next to last class, I will look the other way at what they are studying on the last class. They should study my class, but I won’t look too closely at what they are doing.

However, if they play or waste time, I take that as meaning they want to study my class on the last day and I prepare a review lesson. It’s at this point that they start trying to test me. I had students laugh at me as if I were joking when I told them I’d give them work on the last day. I had students mock what I was saying by repeating it and laughing. When I pointed out that two guys who were supposed to be studying together had their textbooks open to different units (with one book open to a unit we didn’t study) they just ignored me.

This is partly because many of my students didn’t go to junior high at the school where I work so they don’t know much about me. Those that did are used to my English classes not having much meaning but they should also know that I never bluff (well, almost never).

At the end of the classes, I told them that because too many of them hadn’t studied, i planned to bring something for them to study. Most ignored me.

Then, today, I handed out a work sheet that involved writing a couple hundred words.

Suddenly I had their attention.

One student reminded me that I’d said there’d be free study. I reminded him that I’d said that not enough people had studied and that I’d bring an assignment. However, when he finished the assignment, I wouldn’t look at what he was studying.

They were all annoyed but they were quiet as they finished the assignment. After they finished I checked their answers with them which also kept them from having any free study time.

If this goes like normal, this will be the last time I have this problem with these students.

I’ve written before about how this time last year I was stressed because I’d decided to change things and was waiting for them to fall apart.

This year, though, the stress isn’t mine.

Once again we decided to have our students film two minute “television” commercials for original inventions as their final project. This process involves first screening the inventions to make sure 1) the inventions aren’t just modifications of an existing product (in other words, no “These totally aren’t Google glasses” glasses or iPhone 12s) and 2) the inventions don’t already exist. For example, a couple of my students tried to use “Memory Bread” but I said they couldn’t use it because Doraemon already had some.

The students then had a chance to prepare their scripts and visual aids and polish their presentations.

This week, though, I started filming. Unlike last year, I’ve made friends with one of the computer lab teachers as they also serve as the “Keepers of the Cameras”. This means I’ve already got cameras and tripods reserved which removed a lot stress. I’ve even moved an entire class of students to make it easier to access the few open rooms we need for filming.

The new teachers are feeling the stress a bit more, as are the students as we’ve emphasized that they will fail if they don’t do a good job.

Last year several students taped their scripts to the backs of their posters. Because I didn’t have time to have them do their videos again, I let them get away with it. This year, though, because I have more time, I let them finish their commercials and then tell them they have to do it again.

Today’s only glitch was that I had students misunderstand my instructions. I told them I’d give them two takes to do their commercials. I meant that they could stop once and start again. They interpreted it to mean they could do a crap job today and get a second chance.

Once I corrected this misunderstanding, the performances suddenly improved and a couple pairs hurried back to finish.

I just relaxed and let them do their work.

The odds against people named Suzuki are not good, at least in the classes I teach. In my experience, at least at the school where I work, the odds of a Suzuki being bad are pretty high.

Now, I’ll grant you that this may be a math problem. Suzuki is the second most common name in Japan therefore the odds of encountering a Suzuki are high and given the normal distribution of good and bad then, well, um, no, that doesn’t explain the past at all.

About a decade ago I taught a class that had four lads named Suzuki in it. They were all bad. (Given the normal distribution of good and bad then at least one should have been good.) What was funny about them was they were all bad in different ways. Suzuki A (not his real name) was lazy and had to be coaxed into doing work. Suzuki B was noisy and had to be stapled to his chair (metaphorically, of course; the school wouldn’t buy me a stapler that large); Suzuki C was distracted by games and work from other classes and, if he had a book, it wasn’t from my class; and Suzuki D was all of the above forms of bad plus a few more.

While I was teaching the Four Bad Suzukis of the Apocalypse, we had an open class where other teachers could observe our classes. A young teacher observed my class.

Unfortunately on that particular day, Suzuki D’s usual partner was absent and he felt this meant he had the day off. He leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms and fell asleep. I woke him up and told him to get a partner. He pointed to the empty chair, mumbled something and went back to sleep.

I woke him up again and he pointed to the empty chair again and once again mumbled something and went back to sleep again.

I woke him a third time and pointed to another lad who had no partner and Suzuki D mumbled something and went back to sleep.

I woke him up fourth time. This time he threw his arms out and shouted “nani?!” (Which usually means “what” but given his tone, was Japanese for “now what the fuck do you want/will you fuck off”) I told him to get out and he left without much more coaxing than that.

The young teacher was both horrified and impressed and, because Suzuki D was well known there were no repercussions. I don’t know what happened to him. I vaguely remember him not passing the year, but that might be my imagination.

Now, when I have students named Suzuki I ask them “are you a good Suzuki or a bad Suzuki”? They usually say good. I’m not sure I believe them. You are Suzuki until proven innocent.

No, this post is not a repeat of last week’s post on the same subject; rather it’s a post on the similar events as happened last week.

Today we got rain and that means the weather’s about to turn hot and the changing weather and air pressure is messing with lots of people’s heads. I got to school mostly soaked and in a bad mood.

That was the perfect setting for teaching my worst class.

Once again, they started off with the “Jason’s” and this time were more persistent about it. Once again I ignored them and went on with the class.

Things went reasonably well after that until I checked answers by having students stand up. (If you answer you get to sit down and last brat standing starts the next row). At one point, three students decided to play a game by refusing to answer. One guy even turned away. This not being my first rodeo, so to speak, I made three rows stand up which suddenly inspired faster response times.

Towards the end of the activity, a different group of three brats decided to try the same game. This time I just let them stand. I told them I had no problem making them stand until the end of class. (I stand for hours a day as part of my job so half a class is no big deal for me, but it’s torture to them.) One of the brats then tried to lead the class in the “We Will Rock You” beat. I let them do it and started working on my notes for my next class which stopped the music (although they tried it a couple more times).

When they finally realized they couldn’t out-stubborn me or piss me off enough to yell, they answered questions and got to sit down. (Note: the ring-leaders did this to their teacher last year, too.)

Their final gimmick was to refuse to memorize the conversation I told them to memorize. They took great joy in getting help or blatantly reading from the book. In this case the joke was on them, though, as I actually got all but one of them to perform the conversation, which they wouldn’t have done unless they thought they were making a game of it. (See, I know a few tricks.) Everyone who read (which was all but two pairs) earned a zero for the day but at least they spoke English.

One boy in a group of three didn’t perform the conversation as both his partner’s refused to go twice. I told them to come in at lunch (flash forward: they didn’t, but I’ll get them.)

As I left the room, I heard someone say “Fuck you” (Remember, the school where I work is nominally a Christian school). The good news is the homeroom teacher is on my side. I told him to warn them that if I hear another “fuck you” I’ll keep the class after school every night until final exams. It’ll be my own little English club as they write “fuck you” 10,000 times or spell all the numbers from one to ten-thousand.

If they think I’m joking, well, I’ll be the only one laughing. I do this kind of stuff for sport.

Today I taught a class that’s the same level as my worst class. Unlike my worst class, though, they are bad in a better way.

First some history: A few years ago, the school where I work changed the way it divides junior high school English Conversation classes. It added an extra section to the grade to make class sizes smaller, then divided the classes with the “S” class having 20 students and the lower level “R” class having 14. The idea was that 14 students would be easier to control than a larger class. (Note: the classes used to be divided more evenly with about 17-21 in the lower level class and, yes, 14 are a lot easier to control than even 17.)

Because the “R” classes are lower level, and because no one can fail, they are often rowdier than the “S” classes and usually more trouble. The worse they are, the more likely they are to get a nickname: Class 2A (Second grade, A class) becomes “2 Awful”; 2B becomes “2 Bad”, etc. (Note: the others are “2 Crappy,” “2 Damned/Dammit,” “2 Evil” and “2 F@#ked”.)

Today’s class was loud and the students have a typical “I don’t understand, therefore I now have free time” attitude but they actually listened and actually did work (most of them). It was only in the last 10 minutes or so that things began to collapse. Some gave up; some finished and started playing; everyone was talking; no one was working. This is typical of an “R” class. I’ve always maintained that if “R” classes were 40 minutes long they’d be great; unfortunately they are 50 minutes long.

Also unfortunately, my worst class tends to skip the first 40 minutes and starts well after the collapse and goes downhill from there. Those classes tend to get lots of worksheets and they often make me recite the mantra (it’s only 50 minutes, it’s only 50 minutes) and start counting how many more times I will have to see them.

The better bad classes, though, tend to be more fun to work with and they often surprise you. Today a student who got in trouble stayed into lunch to help another student finish his writing assignment.

This class doesn’t have a nickname yet, but it’s still early in the year.