Category Archives: Teaching

Once Bitten Twice Freaked Out Subconsciously

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Today was the one year anniversary of a disaster that wasn’t actually my fault but I apologized for it. The funny part is, I didn’t even realize it was the one year anniversary, but I still felt nervous about it.

Today was the start of our high school exams which means 1) I’m about to get really busy for the next few days and 2) I’m already in denial. This isn’t that unusual.

However, both yesterday and today I had a surprising amount of stress about the exam. There’s always a little bit of stress if it’s a test you’ve written, but today’s was a higher level of stress than usual.

This morning I checked the test schedule three times and even as I was walking to school I checked my phone to make sure I wasn’t getting any “where the hell are you” calls and messages. It wasn’t until I saw, off in the distance, a colleague heading to work that I felt confident that I wasn’t missing the test.

Then, because I’m in charge of the year and the exam, I went down to get the listening test CD and carry it to the broadcast room. When the technician performed his initial tests everything seemed okay, but he had to turn the volume up pretty high. This made me worry the sound quality wasn’t good enough. I spent the 10 minutes before the exam pacing and had the script ready in case I had to perform it live.

During the broadcast everything seemed to go fine but I was waiting for the “we couldn’t hear the damned thing” calls. They never came. After the listening–which was unusually short this time; a subconscious reaction to last year, I guess–I went back to the office and waited for the calls indicating the students had questions and/or had found horrible mistakes. (Past example: instructions say write ONE word but answer requires TWO,)

No calls came. But I paced, sat down, paced, sat down and paced until the last 10 minutes when it was unusual to get questions.

Now I’m in the denial phase and it wasn’t until I did some checks to make sure I wasn’t repeating myself in one of these posts that I discovered where all that stress had come from.

Now I have to get back to work, or denial, both are okay.

Training with Red Flags and Scheming and Shouting

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I once had a trainee talk about cheating on his wife and then yell at his fellow trainees. I had another trainee decide to skip part of the training.

This all happened because about ten years ago I started helping out with training in my company. Basically, my company recruits, or at least it used to (more on that later) from two locations. Inside Japan and outside of Japan. (This outside the box thinking tells you a lot about my company.)

After the new hires arrive, they are put through four or five days of training. They get basic TEFL teaching instruction, company policy explanations and tips on not snapping mentally and then beating your colleagues with a textbook; and they also get medical checks and, on occasion, go visit their employer.

Along the way, trainers and training assistants are watching them for any and all warning signs that they may cause trouble. We would listen for obvious red flags such as racist and sexist comments; people who didn’t seem to work well as part of a team; and any comments that indicated a too eager interest in being near junior high and high school girls.

In one training session, after I’d had a lot of experience, I was assigned a group of Bulgarian women (long story) and a couple random Englishmen. Near the end of the training, each trainee was assigned a 20 minute demo lessons. Each demo lesson had to have a warm up; introduce a grammar point; and then show a variety of lesson and the trainees ability to transition from one activity to another. They had a couple hours to plan and make materials and be ready to teach. I would also assign at least one trainee to play the part of “obnoxious little shit” (a technical term) to see how the trainees handled bad students.

One of the Englishmen got up and announced that he couldn’t think of a warm up and skipped to the first activity. He passed out a work sheet and then spent five minutes quietly walking around and “observing”. He then repeated that with the next part of the lesson. He finished after 10 minutes and the students had barely spoken. I told him he had to do it again and that he should probably figure out a way to do it right.

My favorite incident, though, happened in one of my first solo training sessions, I had a group of about 20 and most of them seemed to play nice with each other. One guy was dressed a bit casually (suits and ties were expected, at least at the time, even in summer) but he seemed to be working well with the others, although he did tend to go out of his way to partner with women.

During a smoke break, I was talking with him and a group of the ladies and somehow and for some reason he started talking about his wife throwing a remote control at him. He said she did it because he’d told her “if you don’t give me what I want I’ll just go out and find it myself”.

Red flags started popping up all over the place.

Later, I put everyone in pairs for the 20 minute demo lessons (at the time they were a pair activity). I made the mistake of pairing him with one of the quietest women in the group which let him dominate the planning.

When it was their turn, he took charge of the warm up. He then started shouting:

(points at random students) LISTEN! THINK! LISTEN! THINK! (points at own mouth) YOU CAN’T UNDERSTAND THE WORDS COMING OF MY MOUTH BECAUSE YOU CAN’T SPEAK ENGLISH! LISTEN! THINK! LISTEN! THINK!

That went on for three minutes. Once the rest of the class were suitably scared to death–even the designated “bad student” was too freaked out to know what to do–he stopped shouting and turned the lesson over to his partner.

I made several notes as red flags clouded my vision. Luckily the other trainees made most of the comments I was going to make, leaving me to only interject that I was glad he gave the response he did because I wasn’t sure if he was serious or just trying to piss me off.

I never saw him again, although he did become a big part of my training as I imitated the shouting to demonstrate a key “thou shalt not”.

I don’t know what happened to him, but I heard things didn’t go very well.

Comments that Leave You Speechless

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When I was still in Niigata, a teacher explained to me how another teacher had explained to her that her  husband must be disappointed in her because she has small breasts.

How we got to that part of the discussion, I still don’t fully remember. I don’t even remember why we were out together. For some reason, I was in group date or group, um, thing, that involved the male teacher who’d made guest appearance in my date one time, one of my English teaching colleagues and another teacher who may have been a Japanese teacher.

We ended up at a coffee shop where I got to enjoy my expensive shot glass full of coffee and we talked about how expensive the cat poop coffee offered by the coffee shop was and if one of us would ever try it. Actually, now that I think about it, this might be the first time I remember ever hearing about cat poop coffee. (I seem to remember, though, that the coffee shop was famous for its broad selection of random coffee.)

Then, some time during the conversation the topic turned to the teacher’s breasts. (Remember, as you read the following, that we were sober.) Apparently one of the older teachers in the school had sized her up and declared that her husband must be really disappointed because she has small breast. She explained about how surprised she’d been and I asked if she’d hit him with a stun gun or just given him a good kick in the “naught bits”.

Now, the problem I had, was how to respond to something like that. “Actually, your breasts are perfect.” or “Yes, they are, but you are beautiful” didn’t actually seem that helpful (but seemed that creepy).

Mind you, she was barely five feet tall and petite so it’s more accurate to say everything about her was small. (She barely looked older than some of our junior high school girls.)

Instead I think I mumbled something about the other guy being a jerk and if it were the USA she could sue him. It didn’t help, though, when my English speaking colleague pointed out that the teacher who’d made the breast comments had a wife who had big breasts.

Once again, I was left wondering what to say.

 

 

 

Baby Sitting Boys and Pretending

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One of the quirks of the school where I work is that I have to teach students who are about to graduate. If they don’t come to class, though, it doesn’t matter.

At the school all third year high school classes are electives. This is fun for most of the students and almost all of the teachers. The only thing that’s not fun is when students are forced to take classes in subjects where they need to boost their GPA’s.

For example, if students want an automatic recommendation to the affiliated university (without having to take an entrance exam) they have to have a 51% or higher average in all their English classes. If they achieve that in two years (high school is 10th, 11th and 12th grades) they don’t have to take English their final year unless they want to. If they don’t achieve that, they have to take enough English classes to get their scores up.

As a result of this, they tend to gravitate toward easier English classes. As a result of THAT, I usually name my class “Super Mega Hard Impossible English” or “Abandon Hope All Ye Who English Here” (something like that).

Whatever the reason for taking English, by the end of December, they know if they are going to pass are not and teachers who are not passing them are sometimes “encouraged” to offer “second chances”. However, for reasons I still don’t understand, students still have to attend class at least one time in January. The classes have no marks and students are free to skip them, especially if they are taking an exam to enter a different university.

In the past I’ve shown movies but that was always frowned on. This time I gave a “Write a letter to your future self and remind him what your goals are now” writing assignment. Two guys did it. Two others talked most of the time and then wrote a few sentences. One guy didn’t show up until the second hour and wrote very little. Two students never showed up at all.

There’s nothing I can do though, so I just let the students who came to class play. What bothers me the most is why they’re actually coming to school when they don’t have to. That’s either dedication or madness.

 

Beer and Students and Teacher Sightings

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A former colleague of mine doesn’t like to encounter students when he’s out and about living his life. He’s so paranoid about students seeing him with his significant other that he makes her walk several steps behind him when they walk around the neighborhood.

The sad part is, although I find that a bit extreme, I actually kind of understand it.

There are few things as awkward as eating at a restaurant when a group of your students are around. They sneak pictures and talk about you (at least for a few seconds) and then snicker as you leave. I remember encountering teachers “in the wild” when I was a kid and I also remember immediately scanning their grocery carts for things like beer and cigarettes.

Last night, however, I had the unusual experience of encountering former students when both of us had been drinking.

Because it’s the end of the school year and is the Christmas season, a bunch of us decided to have an impromptu Forget Year Party with some of the Japanese staff. We chose, for reasons I had nothing to do with, to go drinking at the HUB, which is a chain of faux British pubs that serve fish and chips, Guinness, and other tasty forms of beer.

The HUB we chose happened to be near the main branch of the university partially fed by the school where we work. As result, we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by college students which, for better and for worse, prompted me to do a tequila shot from a tray being carried around by a waiter. However, because it’s a British pub, and, well, there’s no cultural reason whatsoever to do tequila shots in a British pub, I was given neither salt nor lime.

After that shot, I was informed that several former students were in the pub. Including three directly behind me. This led to conversations with the students, who were drinking yard long glasses of Mojitos (which are also, not technically part of British culture).

I pointed out I could remember their faces but not their names. I said this was because while I grew old, they grew up. A couple of them wanted their pictures taken with me and, having had a couple pints of beer, a Bloody Mary and a tequila shot, my usual aversion to such encounters went away and I volunteered.

Now, I wonder if that was a good idea.

What Happens at the New Year’s Party Stays

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Back when I worked in Nou-machi, because I worked for the Board of Education and at two different junior high schools, I got to forget the year three times.

I’ve mention before how Japanese parties tend to be formal and timed to the minute. They also tend to be rather boring. However, this time of year, even though clocks are still involved, the parties get a little crazier.

One of my favorite names for a party is Bonenkai. In Japanese, the literal reading of the letters is “Forget Year Party” and that pretty much describes what happens.

Instead of the usual two hours, the Forget Year Party stretches to three. There’s more food and more drink and lots of silly, drunken games. I’ve played drunken Twister; drunken rock-paper-scissors; and guess which poor sap got the big chunk of wasabi in his sushi. (This game involves lying and pretending and guessing who’s not really lying. Long story.) I’ve also heard stories of a naked principal climbing a beam and pretending to be a cicada. (I’m never invited to those kinds of parties, though, so I’ve never actually seen anything like that.) I have, however, seen men dance around while dressed as ballerinas. (I used to have a hat that proved it. Now I think I might have imagined the hat. Long story.)

The other thing that happens at the Forget Year Party is that once people start roaming around and talking in pairs, all their complaints come out. I remember one of my English teachers berating the principal about life in general and all the extra BS the teachers were expected to do that had nothing to do with teaching. The principal just took the berating and nodded in agreement.

At another Forget Year Party I was seated next to Ms. Yamazaki (not her real name) who taught home economics or something like that and who was mostly famous for her skill at dismissing the male teachers’ interest in her. (Let’s just say she had tremendous “tracts of land”.) She also had a dismissive “are you serious?” look that was part smile, party wince and part hiss and was scary even if you saw it from across the room. (And yes, she would get hit on in the office. More on that some day.)

We got along well but by then I was dating She Who Must Be Obeyed and had been scared away by that “Are you serious?” look so didn’t consider trying anything. Later, as people started moving around and mingling, the principal came up to me, poured me a beer and got very serious. We then had this conversation:

Him–I see you are sitting next to Ms. Yamazaki.
Me–Yes I am.
Him–Good luck.

At that point I felt as if I’d let down the entire school.

After the main party, there’s almost always a second party (also done on the clock). For this party whiskey and karaoke are involved. In my first year in Japan, at the Board of Education after party, my boss dragged me up on stage to sing “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” I didn’t actually know the words or the tune, but I did my best.

Later, I’d learn that my boss didn’t remember singing with me. But that’s sort of the point of the Forget Year Party: You vent your frustrations and drown them in alcohol. Then you forget them and move on. (Or at least you pretend you do.)

 

 

Move Here Go There Drink This Do You I Do

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Back when I was in Albania I was invited to a Catholic wedding in Northern Albania. The wedding took two days and involved lots of alcohol.

Because I had visited my friend Eddie at least once and had met his host family, I was invited to his host sister’s wedding. This started on Saturday afternoon with her getting dolled up and then sitting in a room that had also been dolled up and stocked with sweets and booze. Guests would then arrive and pay their respects and eat some sweets and drink some booze.

The tradition is that the bride should never be left alone which meant each visitor would stay until the next visitor arrived. Eventually the groom arrived and escorted the bride to the “Bride’s Family’s Party.” This party took place in the courtyard of a relative’s house, featured a band, lots of jokes, and lots of food and alcohol. The alcohol was served in courses with Raki being first. That was followed by wine, more Raki and, finally, beer. At some point everyone was expected to guzzle a glass of Raki. Or two. Or three. (Luckily, I guzzled one less than some of the others and managed to guide us all back to Eddie’s.)

The next day we weren’t hungover so much as trapped in perpetual slow motion. (More on Raki and its effects in another post.) We then took part in the procession of cars to the restored Shkoder Cathedral  where the bride and groom joined an assembly line of several other brides and grooms for a ceremony that involved the priest walking down the line and going “Do you? Do You? You’re married.” to all the couples.

After that was more driving around and honking of car horns followed by lunch. Sunday night was the Groom’s Family’s Party, which was a smaller, more exclusive event I wasn’t invited to. I stayed at Eddie’s place and relaxed.

There are Usually No Stupid Questions

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Every now and then, during exams, students ask questions that are so stupid it’s all I can do to keep from laughing in their faces. I have, however, on occasion, openly expressed my disgust and contempt.

What usually happens during exams is the first 10 minutes or so of the 50 minute period are taken up by the listening portion. Lately this has me worried as a result of an incident that wasn’t even my fault. (Today, to make matters worse, the sound technician kept playing with buttons as if there was something wrong with the CD, and that had me stressing out.)

After the listening, those of us teaching that grade assemble in the teachers’ room to await questions and as a rapid reactionary force if an actual mistake is discovered.(Which happens every now and then.)

Usually the junior high first years (7th graders) have the most questions: do we have to print or should we use cursive?; can we use numbers or do we have to spell them? These are understandable as, for most of them, this may be their first exam in English.

However, my favorite questions have all come from high school students. Two happened today. First, my student wanted me to spell a word for him. I told him I could neither confirm nor deny the spelling. He went huh? Later, in the same class, a student asked a question that amounted to “Is it necessary for me to follow the instructions on the long writing?” I said “of course.”

At that moment, my student took a second shot at getting me to spell a word. I just smiled and left.

Last year a student pointed to an entire section of the exam and said “I don’t understand.” My reaction was “That is why you fail.”

The best, though, was a high school second year student (11th grade). That term was speech contest term which meant every 11th grader had written and memorized a speech appealing to some authority figure to change something in the school or in the world. Because that took up a large portion of the term there wasn’t a lot of material for the exam. The long writing, therefore, involved person A appealing to person B to change something. (I don’t remember if it was a dialogue or an essay.)

Thirty minutes into the exam time I was called upstairs to answer a question. One of my worst students pointed to the long writing and said “What is ‘appeal’?”

Given how I felt, my look must have been something between “Is this a joke?” and “You are a moron”. I told him I couldn’t tell him but told him it was just like his speech contest speech and left him to his own devices.

He ended up not writing very much. (Which actually makes my life a bit easier.)

So Productive It’s Scary and Must Be Suppressed

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Today I was productive enough that I almost finished marking one batch of exams. I’ll bet the last little bit takes me all day tomorrow to finish.

Today I had three basic tasks: pass back exams to 3rd year high school students and have them laugh at me about seeing next terms (long story) and then hand in their final marks; collect 2nd year exams; and sit around waiting for final marks to come back for final approval.

This plan left me with a couple choices: bail and go home and never come back leaving one colleague to check my final marks and correct any errors based on my notes; go home and come back around 4:00 and wait for final marks (which typically arrive an hour after deadline); or stay at school, mark exams and wait for final marks.

I chose the latter, which actually surprised me. I started with the worst part of the exams (the long writing on the back) and then marked the rest. By 3:45 p.m. I was 90% done marking when a shocking thing happened: the final results came back early. I quickly texted my colleague who appeared right as I hit send. (And you doubted my wizard powers.)

The final check involves making sure the OCR machine scanned our sheets correctly. If it did, we just write “OK” and run away as fast as we can.

I checked the marks, packed my tests and ran into the cold. Now I’m at home not finishing marking. Unfortunately, the quick arrival of the final marks interrupted my flow and it’s scientifically impossible for me to get it back until tomorrow.

To make matters worse, the devil over my left shoulder is reminding that because I don’t have that much to do there’s no rush. The devil over my right shoulder is going “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.”

My goal is to finish all that in the morning and be done for the weekend until the next batch of tests arrive on Monday. Before that, I’ll probably find a few other things to do.

Our Time Cometh Thrice

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Final exams start this week which means we’ve been recording and editing and psyching ourselves up for the slog. Part of what keeps us going is what one colleague calls “our time”.

Basically, three times each year. even in the junior high school, students have to take our classes seriously. The rest of the time, especially in lower level junior high classes, students will talk and cheat and “forget” their book and basically make a lot of noise.

In their defense, junior high students can’t fail except on paper, and are always promoted to the next grade. Only at the end of junior high, when they want to go to the high school, do their grades matter. Think about your worst behavior in junior high and the behavior of the worst person you knew in junior high and the worst grades you ever got and the most boring teacher and imagine how you would have behaved knowing you couldn’t fail and could always play sports.

However, often at the end of each term, some students begin to realize they need to study because a test is coming. At this point, we have certain amount of control over them and we confer about how difficult to make the test. This is our time. We also decide how much to help the students prepare.

For the most part we help the students out quite a bit. We give them a review day and in junior high we even tell them what the long writing question will be and give them the opportunity to practice. (Essentially that means we give them up to 25% of their possible points for free.)

However, the compulsion to make noise and ignore the teacher often overwhelms the students. I’ve been in the middle of writing test information on the board only to turn around and see students wrestling or doing homework from a different class. I’ve been explaining what to study and had every student in the class talking in Japanese. My response is usually to erase the test information and wish them good luck on the test.

I’ve done this in high school as well.

I also let them know I don’t care if they actually study or not as it’s not my test, it’s theirs. I almost never get angry during review time (unless students are fighting) and just let them waste their time.

As I tell them, if thy get a zero on the test, it makes the math easier for me.

Note: the lowest score ever actually was a zero by a student who didn’t even write his name on the test. My lowest high school score was eight.