Today I had to teach my worst group of students. They started the class off by insulting me.

After I entered the classroom, the bad student with the “whatta ya gonna do aboudit?” attitude muttered that he’d been informed by his homeroom teacher that if he didn’t turn in his homework at the beginning of class he’d have to meet me at lunch and do his work. I also tried to remind him but he tried to ignore me.

After got his attention he said “nice joke” and that that prompted the rest of the class to start saying “joke” and to start calling me “Jason,” after Atsugiri Jason, an American in the IT industry who’s become a popular comedian by poking fun at the absurdity of the Japanese alphabets. (For example, the kanji for one, two and three are 一､二､三 and the number of strokes match the numbers in a nice pattern. But four 四 has five strokes. After he points this out he shouts his catch phrase “Why, Japanese people!”)

They called me Jason, I guess, because I’m a white foreigner and we apparently all look alike.

The name Jason stuck most of the rest of the class. They even tried calling me over for help by calling me Jason. I entered a blissful zen state (a very, very rare occurrence) and I ignored them until the used my name. (I also don’t respond to “teacher” or “sensei” so I had a lot of practice at this. I also ignored the three “fuck you’s” that were muttered. I caught one student and told him if he said it again, the entire class would get homework and I’d keep them all after school until they finished. (Note, because this was a junior high class, I can’t send students out of the room for things like that.) (Second note: the “fuck you’s” and most of the “Jasons” stopped after that.)

Somewhere in there, most of the students actually got work done. A few others adopted the usual “I don’t understand therefore it’s free time” attitude and did very little.

I collected all the worksheets and then reminded my bad student about our lunch appointment. I then reminded his homeroom teacher about it. (Long story short: the student showed up, eventually and eventually finished his homework.)

Now I have to back off a bit. I don’t want to keep dragging the homeroom teacher into the battle (and will probably buy him lunch to thank him) and I can’t pull the homework card all the time.

The precedent, however, has been established and that’s often all I need.

All my students were pretty much brain dead today, but it wasn’t actually my fault. That said, my brain wasn’t much better.

The school where I work is strange in May. There are lots of school trips and lots of disrupted schedules and lots of partial days. During mid-term exams we focus on our final exams and making lesson plans for the final push whilst everyone else is administering and marking exams and they don’t care about anything else. To give an example of what happens, on the day before exams I told one of my homeroom  teachers I had a junior high student who was sitting back, doing nothing and daring me to make him work with a “whatta ya gonna do aboudit?” smirk. The homeroom teacher’s reaction to this news was one part “why is this my problem?”, one part “why are you telling me this now?”, and one part “yeah, how about that.”

(For the record: now that mid-terms are over and I can keep students after school, my student’s about to discover what I’m gonna do aboudit.)

The final push, as I’ve mentioned before, is June. We’ve been at school since early April but still have about half our classes to go because of the strange schedule.

Today, though, was especially strange as it fell after two days of mid-term exams. To a student, in three different grades, the students’ attitude was “Whoa? You’re still here?” and “Why the hell are you making us do stuff?”

I had students sleeping; students pretending to use their phones as dictionaries whilst “secretly” texting; a student who walked in with a smile but no text, no pencil and no paper; students who didn’t bother to bring the handout; students who ignored me when I called on them because they weren’t ready; students who did the wrong assignment when it was their turn to speak and had to do it again.

Granted, they are coming down after an intense couple days, but my class doesn’t have mid-terms exams which means, quite frankly, I don’t care about their previous problems.

June is coming and things are about to change. If they think this ends happily, they haven’t been paying attention.

Shout.

That pretty much explains this morning.

As a rule, although I’m not afraid to let fly an angry “SHUT UP!” that echoes down the hall, I try to avoid shouting at students, especially those in lower level classes. This is because 1) the Japanese tend to react to angry outbursts with laughter that 2) leads to a larger angry outburst and 3) if it’s a lower level class, most of them don’t understand a word I’m saying anyway.

Today my high school classes went well but one of my junior high school second year classes was in a mood from the moment I stepped in the door. They didn’t get sat down once the bell rang and then some of them kept walking around during the warm up. This led to a very rare seat change and the first ever that occurred during the warm ups.

I’d been warned about a few of these students before school started during the traditional annual “Commiseration of the Class Lists” when we look at each other’s class lists and wish each other strength to get through the year.

To this point, the class had been noisy but usually did the assigned activities and work. When this happens it usually means that a day of reckoning is coming, which is what happened today. When I spoke several students turned and mocked 1) that I was speaking 2) that I was speaking English and 3) that they couldn’t understand me in English. (Note, this is somehow a joke on me.)

At one point, the boy who had to change seats was talking with the people who got him in trouble. This led to a Level Seven Shut Up–this one goes to eleven–which led to laughter in three different classrooms down the hall. (Note: Teacher’s leave the doors and windows open because this is the time of year when it’s just warm and humid enough to need air conditioning but before the air conditioners are turned on.)

I kept plugging through the book and the plan until a student asked me a question in Japanese and I answered in English. It suddenly dawned on them that I might actually be able to understand them. This prompted another boy to mumble something about me speaking in Japanese. I reminded him he was at a top tier school and there were plenty of public schools he could go to if he wanted to speak Japanese.

At this point they were openly discussing the fact I could understand Japanese. They then tried to press to see if I’d speak Japanese. I shrugged and said my classes were always in English.

Then I told them to shut up and get back to work.

Today I felt as if I was being called in to work to substitute for myself.

To understand this you have to understand that every now and then, at the school where I work, classes get cancelled because of trips and we end up teaching a reduced schedule. However, although I do a lot of planning at home, there’s no real reason for  me to be at the school on these days until I actually have a class.

This often leads to the strange act of going to work around lunch time. Now a colleague of mine insists that a day of work is a day of work and it doesn’t matter if you’re working in the morning or the eventing. I respectfully disagree. There’s a big difference between finishing at lunch time and starting after lunch.

In the case of the former, you can look forward to relaxing at home or at a coffee shop in the afternoon. In the case of the latter, you can’t relax because you have some place to be. In fact, at best, it feels as if you’re interrupting a day off because you’ve been called to work.

I once volunteered to teach extra classes if I could get all my classes in the morning. The person in charge of scheduling said it was impossible and ignored all pleading after that.

There’s also the problem of going to work during the hottest time of the day. I walk to the station and by the time I get there I I’m sweaty enough that might as well have not bothered to take a shower and/or suddenly desperately need one.

This schedule, however, is only a May phenomenon. By June we are back in the grind and the days come without mercy.

It’s almost like having a job.

I have a student who’s bored with my class. In his defense, he’s the only student in the class.

I written before about how I’m apparently too good at scaring students away from high school third year classes and how I ended up with only one student in my class and what problems that was going to cause.

Unfortunately, the predicted problems have already come true and it’s only the fourth class. It doesn’t help that the student isn’t doing his homework. Basically, the deal I offered was that I would provide material for the first hour and, if there was a writing assignment, the second hour. (Note: the classes meet once a week for two hours.) His job was to bring something to do for the second. It could be a conversation topic or an article, but he had to bring something.

I kept up my part, but he’s been slacking on his. Last week I kept him busy most of the second hour and then he wanted to talk about Los Angeles because he wants to move there. (He doesn’t seem to know it’s built on an earthquake fault line and run by morons.) This week he just stared at me as if he was surprised I expected him to do something. I reminded him he was supposed to bring something to do or talk about and he gave me the teenager shrug.

I cut his points 50%. I’ll give him one more chance to do his homework and then I’ll start giving him work to do: Essays about his favorite actors. Essays about his favorite movies. Homework to research different acting schools and write about them. Or my personal favorite: Essays about why it’s more fun to bring things you want to do than write about why you didn’t bring something to do.

I suspect once the class finds its feet and I figure out how to teach it to only one student he’ll be fine. Until then, he’d better have a pen and some paper.

I have a pair of magic pencils. At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

This started a few years back when I called for volunteers to do a classroom assignment and was met by crickets and groups of boys who averted their eyes in the hope it would make them invisible. I held up my pencil and said that that if there were no volunteers I’d let the magic blue pencil decide. I dropped it on my class roll sheet and announced the name of the person the magic blue pencil had chosen.

That would have been all of it except, a couple weeks later, I once again called for volunteers and my students instead requested that the magic blue pencil decide. After that, the transparent blue Pilot S3 mechanical pencil (similar to this black one) became a regular character in my class. The magic blue pencil always chose the person who secretly wanted to go next. When students protested I told them that the magic blue pencil was never wrong.

On a couple occasions I pretended to receive phone calls via the magic blue pencil. The phone call explained the students were about to do a large project. I pretended to protest and when students protested the assigment, I said they should blame the magic blue pencil. I had tried to defend them.

The Pilot S3 (top) and the UNI Kurutoga Roulette. That Kurutoga looks scary.

However, over time, the magic blue pencil got replace by a UNI Kurutoga Roulette in Gun Metal gray. The magic gray pencil looks scarier and more weapon like but is no less wise than the magic blue pencil. It always chooses the person who was supposed to go next. It’s also partly made of metal and makes a satisfying thump when it hits the roll sheet.

I recently, through a sale, acquired a Karas Kustom’s Bolt. It’s made of brass and feels heavy enough to be a weapon. It may, someday, replace the magic gray pencil.

Until then, I’ll keep relying on the wisdom of the magic gray pencil. (Something like that.)

In every class there’s a moment where your students find out you’re serious. In the case of first year high school students at the school where I work, after mocking any attempts to discipline or threats to fail them, they suddenly discover they are not in junior high school anymore.

Today was that day in two of my classes.

In all fairness, the classes went well right up until the moment they didn’t. When they didn’t go well the students were supposed to be rewriting and memorizing a conversation from the book. Instead, most of them chatted. In the first class when I asked for volunteers no one raised their hands so I chose a pair. One partner didn’t know what page they were on and the other hadn’t changed the conversation. This continued through a few more pairs, with one doing a passable job, until I gave them all a homework assignment. I can tell they didn’t take me seriously so I told them that anyone who hadn’t finished the homework would have to meet me after school or at lunch the day after the homework was due.

That was the first class of the day.

When I got to the last class, I warned them that their fellow students had earned homework and I’d be more than happy to give them homework. One student had failed to bring a textbook or a notebook and assured me his textbook and notebook were in his head. I told him to prove it by tearing out a sheet and giving it to me. (He didn’t, but it would have been really cool if he had.)

Once again, things went well right up until the final project. In the second class, guys were talking to people other than their partners forcing me to invoke Rule 13:

If you are talking to someone other than your partner, that means you are ready and must do your performance right away.

Four pairs ended up violating Rule 13, including the kid with no textbook. Once again, the first pairs weren’t ready and they got defiant and started reading from the text (neither had changed it as they were supposed to). I told them every time they looked at their book they lost a point. They ended up with 1 point out of 10 for the day.

The no textbook guy did badly, then he and his partner surprised me by asking for “revenge” or a chance to go again. They did much better the second time. A pair I chose at random didn’t know which parts they were reading. One of the partners got mad and didn’t understand why I was calling on him. (I told him it wasn’t me, it was the magic brown pencil. Long story.)

After he argued some more, I told him 1) he should go to an easier school or 2) he should save his textbook because he might need it again next year. He made a rude comment and I said I’d be happy to introduce him to the guys held back from previous year. They did badly.

In the end, though, enough did well to save the class and only three pairs got homework.

I can tell the guy who was rude doesn’t think I’ll actually keep him late or that he can actually fail. Poor fella. He doesn’t know me very well yet.

First a correction: In yesterday’s post I mistakenly called Showa Day by it’s old name Greenery Day. I’ve edited the post to correct that.

Although my students have a half day of classes before their holiday begins, most of them today acted like they were already on holiday.

I kind of joined them.

This coming week three Japanese national holidays collide in an event called Golden Week. They consist of Constitution Memorial Day on Sunday, Greenery Day on Monday, Children’s Day on Tuesday and “Crap, Constitution Day Fell on a Sunday So Let’s Give Everyone A Make Up Holiday On Wednesday” Day (not it’s real name).

Although the holidays are awesome, my students mentally enter holiday mode right after Showa Day. It’s even worse that this Golden Week this year is a five day weekend for me and a four day weekend for my students.

Today they were noisy and spent a lot of time talking in Japanese. Some of them didn’t bother doing the assignments and a couple of them tried to sleep. The worst were the high school 1st year students (10th graders), many of whom have never had me as a teacher before. As such, they are woefully unaware that 1) I really will give them homework over a major holiday and that this will happen because 2) I am a vindictive bastard.

This is especially true before a holiday. I get a break and I never have to actually read the assignment I give. I only have to collect it and mark is as “done” or “zero”.

Luckily, a few of my students had me as a teacher in junior high school and they let their new, naive friends know what things I am capable of. Also luckily for them, I couldn’t be bothered to think of a suitably cruel homework. (The worse ever: spell all the numbers from one to one-thousand).

Now I have to keep myself busy for the next few days. I could do a lot of writing, but I suspect I’ll just waste the time. I do this because June is coming. And June has no national holidays.