Today we finished our first week of the new school year. Now we need the weekend to recover.

The first week back after a break is weird. It’s been several weeks since we were in front of a class and we are suddenly back on our feet. In my case, I move around the classroom a lot and my feet are sore from all the sudden walking (in new shoes, no less). We also spend a lot of energy planning and having meetings and, for some of us, getting the new people up to speed.

It’s also hard to get back in the groove in front of the students. Teaching after a break is not like falling off a bicycle (something like that). Each class is different and the plan that worked well with one class got disrupted by a little jerk in another and by the teacher having too many carbs for lunch in yet another. In once class some of the students get the jokes, in others they weren’t listening closely enough to realize the teacher was speaking.

It’s also hard to get into the teaching rhythm early in the year as there are a few national holidays coming up (starting next week, actually). Breaks get filled up with busy work and our legs are still trying to find the path from one room to the other. In my case I’m doing boring stuff like talking about rules while at the same time trying to give the impression that English is interesting and fun to people who mumble in Japanese about how they can’t understand my English.

As I mentioned yesterday, in first year high school classes (10th grade) we are also dealing with students who haven’t had time to recover from junior high school anything goes mode.

That said, it’s good to be back in front of students. It’s also good knowing one week is already past.

Today I asked one of my colleagues if he knew anything about a student I’m teaching. He just laughed.

That was all the answer I needed.

After all the years I’ve been teaching at the school where I work, I remaine amazed at how different one class is from the other, even in the same room. In my first year high school classes (10th grade) I’ve got one good class, one average class, and one that promises to age me at a much faster rate than normal. The funny part is that class is made up of two different sections of the same grade. (Basically about half the class is from one section and the other half from another).

The students from “the other half” are loud, sarcastic and rude. Even worse, they are confrontational. Today I was very close to throwing a boy out of class (the one I asked about) because his basic form of response involved slurping noises and raspberries and putting on a show for his friends. He was also disguising his poor English level with sarcasm and back talk (in Japanese, of course). Normally I ignore those kids, unless they drag others along, but today, when I’m explaining the class rules, I give the bad boys the attention they crave.

Some of this trouble is caused because the classes are arranged, roughly, by club, with baseball boys tending to be in the same class and soccer boys in another class. This means the classes have different moods and the bad boys have a lot of friends around to act as an audience

The other part of the problem is that only a month ago the students were still in junior high and couldn’t fail and couldn’t be thrown out of class. (Well, they can, but it’s complicated and involves other teachers. Long story.) They are still of the belief that there’s not much I can do to them.

They are wrong.

First, they can fail. At least two students were held back in 10th grade last year. One dropped out/moved on, the other chose to repeat the grade. Another student failed on attendance but managed to get himself promoted to 12th grade, albeit with lots of complicated caveats.

I can also give them lots of extra work (much of which I will mark as received but never actually read)

The students have also forgotten that my class is last period. I have all the time I need. (My record for keeping an entire class late is 25 minutes.)

At the end of class, after explaining the stick, I threw them a carrot and let them relax for the last five minutes. The bad boy asked why I hadn’t done that sooner. I told him it was because I’d had to spend so much time trying to get him to shut up. If he’d been quiet, they would have been able to relax sooner.

Sigh. Apparently I’m too good at being scary and that means I have a lot of work to do in the next few days.

A few days ago I wrote about he sales pitch I had to make for my third year high school class elective. I mentioned how we had to temper our pitch to chase out the wrong types but keep enough of the right types to have a viable class.

I didn’t temper very well, apparently as only one student signed up.

This means I have to do a lot of rethinking and revising by Monday. My class was based around acting techniques and acting exercises and it works best with a lot of people. With one it will be possible to do a monologue but extremely difficult to do a dialogue. It will also make the entire second term impossible as my students do a staged reading of one three person play and then write another as their final project.

The other problem is that even when I do have a few good ideas, it doesn’t take that much time for one person to finish the activity and leave me with lots of time to fill. (I had the opposite problem when the course jumped from six students to 14 a few years ago.)

Oddly, this phenomenon affected my other colleagues as well. Another teacher got only one student; a second teacher got only five; and a third got 15 for a class about music. This is a huge surprise as the teacher is actually likable and music classes usually attract almost twice that number of students. There wasn’t much love for the foreign staff this year as we gathered only 22 students between us.

I have a few ideas about what to do and I suspect a lot of videos and discussions of acting decisions will be involved. (I’m imagining watching scenes of the different Jokers from the Batman movies and talking about the differences.)

At least I’ll only have two exams to mark this year. I’ll just have a lot of work before that.

Today I was in a room where everyone was watching me as much as I was watching them.

Today was the first day of classes and that means today was a kind of testing period. I gave the students an assignment and then watched how they worked and what they did and didn’t do.The assignment was to introduce your partner using only lies–they were supposed to lie about his name, too–and then the partner gets to correct the introduction.

(Please note: Yes, I work at a Christian school and, yes, I am teaching my students to bear false witness.)

I paid attention to which part of the room was noisy when I was busy with other students, which students volunteered to do the introductions, which students needed translations from other students about what to do and which students were doing the translating.

Some names I remembered from past classes and others I recognized from the trauma they caused other teachers. In at least one case, the teacher had disliked the student so much the student’s name had become a swear word.

At the same time, the students are watching me. How noisy do I let them get before I quiet them down. Am I keeping score.

The next class, when they are supposed to have finished their first homework, will be another test. I’ll be watching who has excuses and not homework and they’ll be watching my reaction.

Of course, one of the questions I asked them to tell me was their biggest fear. That’s what I can use against them. (Unless they are afraid of ghosts; that’s more problematic.)

On Saturday I had the job of selling a class while also trying not to sell it too well.

At the school where I work the third year high school classes are electives. Students get to choose the classes they want and we teachers can teach any topic. In the past we’ve had courses in Canadian History, Media, Computers and Music. Japanese English teachers have offered courses on Nathaniel Hawthorne and Basic English. Students can also take Spanish and Japanese history.

To pitch our classes we write a general outline at the end of the previous school year and then are given a half-hour time slot and a room. During that half hour the students roam around to classes that seemed interesting in the outline and we make a more personal pitch and answer questions. The students then fill out cards listing their first, second and third choices and there’s a vote counting session that would put Chicago and Florida to shame. (More on that later.)

The sales pitch is tricky. As teachers our goal is to attract the right kinds of students whilst simultaneously attracting enough students to make the class viable. In the past I’ve taught classes in literature that ranged from four to six students, business English classes with 14 students and a class I called Basic English that had 24 students. (Important safety tip kids: never call a class “Basic English” because lots of students sign up; call it “Damned Near Impossible Hard Torture English” instead.)

However, you can’t oversell the pain. One year I had zero students sign up to a literature class. I was informed that this happening one time was forgivable, twice much less so.

This year I’m offering a course that will require the students to do a lot of speaking. I had a good turn out of about 20 students who arrived in three waves. That said, turn out does not always correlate with sign ups as the year I had 14 students I only had five or six students attend my sales pitch. Groups of friends divvy up the presentations and then assemble to decide which class to take. It’s also possible to end with students who put your class as their last choice. (They are typically not very happy to be there.)

During the sales pitch, most of the students I recognized as good students and some asked good questions. Others had to have someone translate my comments. I encouraged them with a wave of the hand and a “this isn’t the class you’re looking for” to take a different class.

Towards the end of the half hour a group of students I knew to be, er, LESS than good students walked by. I encouraged them with a stern look that this wasn’t the class they were looking for.

Sometime this week I should get a class schedule or much less forgiveness if no one signs up.

Today was the last day of exam passback classes which means there are a lot of students I won’t see again, at least for a while. In many cases this is a good thing.

At the school where I work, there is a progression in behavior. Junior high first year students (7th graders) are a lot of fun until the end of the year. At the beginning of the year you can scare them and trick them because they haven’t figured out the scam yet. (More on that later.)

Second year students (8th graders) have begun to figure out the scam. They are also entering the more incoherent and disruptive phase of puberty. Most, when they return from summer vacation, are suddenly grown up young men. At this point they begin working on the important things they’ll need for the rest of their teenage years 1) angst, 2) semi-coherence; and 3) absolute knowledge of anything and everything.

By the end of 8th grade most students have figured out the scam: 1) Mr. Lively’s class is only a percentage of their English mark and 2) they can’t fail.

This means that 9th graders, especially in the lower level classes, are difficult to teach. My biggest tool at this stage is orneriness and inherent meanness. Students quickly learn that I really will make them do homework at lunch and/or after school. One student had to come in at lunch everyday for a week until he finished spelling all the numbers from one to one-thousand.

Even the most disruptive students learn that making their lives miserable until they finish their work is something I do for sport. By the end of the year there are students who never want to see me again and I never want to see them again either even though that meant that I’d be passing my problems on to others. (Basically we all scream “Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia!”)

In all fairness, sometimes the student does better with the new teacher.

Today, though, was kind of pleasant. Although there are some students I hope I never see again, two of my 8th graders asked if I was going to be teaching them in 9th grade. I told them I wasn’t and they seemed disappointed. (Most are disappointed when they find out I’m going to be their teacher.)

Another student surprised me by having a fountain pen: A metallic green Pilot Vanishing point. (As seen here.) I was so impressed I gave him a bonus point (even though he didn’t actually need it).

Today counts as my shortest day of work ever. Sort of.

Because we are in the pass back phase of exam season, I originally had little reason to go to the office today and, in fact, had planned to work from home (more on that later).

Then, suddenly, yesterday, lots of reasons to come in today found me. First, junior high school marks were due today which meant I finished marking my exams “yesterday” (at least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it) and had to enter final marks in the computer today.

Then, yesterday, I got a text from one of my colleagues telling me that the make-up exam assignment was also due today. Basically, at the school where I work, if a student fails, he is “required” to take a make-up exam which, if he passes and/or bothers to show up (“required” means different things in different cultures apparently) he can get a passing grade. Also, if a student gets a near-failing grade, he has the option of taking the exam to improve his score to a not as near-failing grade. The exams can be either take home writing assignments or sit-down exams. In this case, I planned to assigned long essays and then read them at my leisure when and if they arrived on my desk.

Of course the assignment was due at 8:20 a.m. This meant I had to trudge into work as if I actually was going to work. (The school has not yet discovered an effective way to use the resources of the internet in situations like this.) I got to work at my usual time (7:50 a.m.), entered marks in the computer and filled out the proper forms for the make-up exam and then found the proper teacher and passed the assignment off.

That was all finished by 8:15.

As I’ve written before, I work at the school not for the school, which means if there are no classes I usually don’t have to be there.  Still, I felt kind of guilty being the first person to leave when not everyone had yet arrived. I meandered around a bit pretending I had something to do.  That lasted only a few minutes, though, and I left school at 8:30, which is ten minutes before classes started.

However, although I was not at the place where I’m assigned to work, I was responsible for filling the time with work related activities, which I totally did. Totally. I worked up next year’s calendars and started thinking about how I’m going to fill the days at the end of next week when I’m not working but am responsible for working.

Three different times in my career I’ve had students I never met.

I do not understand how this happens but at the school where I work (and throughout Japan for that matter) there are students who, for whatever reason, no longer come to class but have not dropped out of school. We’ve dubbed them “phantoms” or “ghosts” (Well, actually I did which gives you great insight into my ability for sympathy.)

There is a subtle difference between the two: Phantoms were seen once in class and then disappeared making you wonder if you actually ever saw them; ghosts have been photographed in the class picture but have never been seen in class. I would recognize a phantom if I saw him again; I wouldn’t recognize a ghost.

Most of the students who do this have mental issues (for the record: most of them had the issues BEFORE they took my class) and every student in their class seems to understand this (with varying degrees of sensitivity). In fact, the only person who doesn’t understand is usually me or my fellow foreign staff colleagues.

However, in an odd twist, most of these students actually sit for the exams, albeit in other rooms. Last term, we had to rush around carrying spare listening test CDs to different rooms because we had three ghosts but none wanted to be in the same room as the others. This year, the powers-what-are piped the listening into a spare room and then had someone run the CD to a different room.

Sometimes I am asked to provide study material for the phantoms and ghosts. Sometimes I am not. In several cases, the phantoms and ghosts did better than the students who actually came to class. I used to take this as an indictment on my teaching–the secret to passing Lively’s class: take a pass on Lively’s class–until I realized that the phantoms and ghosts who did well were always part of low level classes which, even those that are reasonably well behaved, are always noisy and hard to teach. By escaping the classroom, the ghosts and phantoms may have found a quiet way to study.

In junior high, missing class is problematic because education is both a basic right and a compulsory duty–students are supposed to go to class where the teachers have to take them, no matter how bad they are–but no one in junior high actually fails. The worse that happens at the school where I work is students are not invited to attend the high school.

In high school, though, students can fail for poor attendance. However, if they fail they are given a shot at a make up exam. If they pass the exam, they pass the course. They may not get invited to the university, but they will get at least a high school diploma from a big name school.

Secretly, part of me wishes I’d figured out how to do this when I was in junior high.

If things happened the way the were supposed to happen, this wouldn’t be an odd time of year. Unfortunately, that’s not the way things work.

What is supposed to happen is this: classes end; exams start; I mark exams; I give exams back; I drink bourbon (not necessarily in that order).

Unfortunately, for reasons I don’t fully understand, during the winter term at the school where I work, all the grades seem to end at different times and their exams start at different times. High school 3rd year (12th grade) ended in January but don’t graduate until March 14. High school 1st and 2nd Grade (10th and 11th grade) finished last Monday. Junior high 3rd year (9th grade which, luckily, I don’t teach) ended last Wednesday (I think). Junior high 1st and 2nd grade (7th and 8th grade) don’t finish until Tuesday.

What this means is that we are waiting for exams, marking exams, avoiding marking exams, wasting time, figuring out final marks, giving back exams and teaching all at the same time. This means we can’t pull all-nighters (well, technically we CAN, we just SHOULDN’T) and it’s hard to get into a marking rhythm.

To make matters worse, we also have to be on top of our schedules because it’s easy to lose track of what day it is an what we are supposed to be doing. On more than one occasion someone has stayed home to mark only to get a call or text calmly inquiring “Where the hell are you?” Others have finished marking their exams in the classroom while the students waited. I’ve personally written the wrong time down, arrived at school thinking I had some time to get ready, and been met by students who wondered why I was late to class.

Answer: Sit down and shut up and get ready to get your exams back. (Yeah, everyone loves having me as their teacher.)

Tomorrow I have final classes with my junior high second graders. At least I think I do.