This time of year, when most of our classes are on outings of various kinds, we often end up with a couple days off because all our classes are somewhere else.

In my case, I’ve got a surprising amount of time off (as does another teacher) and we spend a lot of time making jokes about how our classes are so terrible we’ve decided to take the day off or, in my case, the rest of the week.

Today, I had to modify the joke/form of rubbing it in.

My first class was noisy which had me worried as they are usually one of my better classes. This had me dreading my second class as they are my worst junior high school second year class. I was especially dreading that they were going to have to write an original conversation, albeit, with a lot of examples they could copy, as explanations of such things usually prod blank stares and fits of wakarimasen dekimasen.

Instead, although they were a bit noisy, my bad class actually started working right away and a couple groups were actually finished with the writing, but chicken out at the chance for bonus points by going early.

I came out of the class feeling positive which meant I had to change the joke/form of rubbing it in. Because the class was so good I didn’t want to ruin the happy feeling so I decided to take the next three days off.

These days off will come back to haunt me at the end of the year. Until then, I have some time to myself.

Today was better than I expected but there were some issues. Tomorrow, I suspect, will have lots of issues.

Because this is a week with lots of absent students and lots of school trips, my students were mostly worthless today. By an odd scheduling quirk all my classes were junior high school first year students who, as they are getting ready to head to an orientation camp, weren’t that interested in speaking English. They were interested, though, in complaining how they didn’t understand what I was saying.

Tomorrow I have junior high school second year students. JHS 2 classes are traditionally considered the worst classes because they’ve figured out the scam (can’t fail) and are smack dab in the midst of teenage boy puberty.

I have a writing assignment for them, but I’m not expecting much, at least from my afternoon class. After that things get better. More on all that in a future post.

My bad student stayed awake and actually did something resembling classwork, albeit all he did was draw pictures. Unfortunately, no one was there to see it, except a woman staring through the window.

I also got a compliment that I only get once each year.

Today was open classes at the school where I work. This means that if we teach first year anything we usually get observers.

The class with my bad student had no observers, except a woman who stared longingly through the window. My bad student got an assignment paper and then put his head down on it. I woke him up and explained the assignment and he seemed to have fun drawing pictures–the assignment required students to make a fake photo album and write a conversation. He drew some of the pictures but didn’t write the conversation. He did this whilst his classmates performed their conversations with their fake photo albums

In the afternoon, I had four observers. Unfortunately for them, they got watch the writing phase of the fake photo album, but didn’t get to see the actual performances. This meant a good portion of the class involved the students speaking Japanese and me running around helping people and putting out fires.

I’m sure the observers were befuddled, but they got to see real class. I don’t modify what I do for observations and that means that timing is everything. I do add a little bit of extra energy and I wear a tie, which usually earns me one compliment/reaction.

I won’t get another complement until next year.

No one was really interested, and I can’t say I was that interested either, but everything actually kind of worked out in the end.

Today all of my classes were either classes that are already turning bad or classes that won’t have class at all next week as they are going on school trips. This means that none of them were that interested in doing much.

As such, I either gave them a writing assignment to start, one to finish, or a review class. The writing assignment started slowly, but by the end, after much patrolling by me, everyone managed to produce something.

The one to finish actually finished early, with only one pair getting it horribly wrong.

The review class started out slowly, especially as it’s a lower level class that seems incapable of 1) understanding that they were reviewing something they’d already studied and 2) would look back one page in their textbooks to get examples.

By the end of class, though, they’d all managed to finish the assignment and I kept busy checking their work.

Next time I’ll owe them a game of some sort.

My students assure me my bad student is bad in all his classes, but often in different ways.

Today, my bad first year junior high school student finally gave in to boredom and fell asleep. I kept waking him up, which annoyed him.

I also asked the other students if he was like that in other classes. They said he was bad, but chatty in other classes which means what he’s doing in my class is an act. This means the devils of my worse nature are stretching and getting ready for a useless battle.

Today, my students were preparing conversations/presentations for Friday when parents will probably arrive. (Actually, Saturday will be the busiest day, but a few mothers and grandparents will show up for my classes.) My worst student did nothing other than use his textbook as pillow.

At  the end of class I told him that if he fell asleep again I’d take his chair and make him stand/sit on the floor and that I had no problem doing that in front of parents. (Note: in my time at the school where I work I’ve been seen shouting at students; sending students out into the hall; and thrown high school students out of class during observations.)

My bad student responded by shrieking as he was being stabbed. I responded by shrieking even louder. This surprised him and I reminded him that I’d take his chair. He snarked off at me, in English (See you; good bye) and left.

Next class, depending on how many parents are around, I’ll encourage him to get involved and slowly try to set him off. Eventually he will explode and all the sympathy will be mine.

My techniques are not mature, but they can be effective.

The lower level classes at the school where I work seem to get lower every year. Today being the day before the Golden Week holidays didn’t help much.

After a ho-hum year of classes last year that even I felt were boring I’ve decided to add more games to my classes to add some competition and some fun. The problem, and this is why I stopped doing games years ago, is that lower level classes often require explanations that are longer than the games and I can only simplify my language so much before using Japanese, which I won’t do in class.

Today I thought I had the perfect game: it was based on something in the textbook and it only required the students to copy numbers printed in the textbook and show them to me. I would then state how many they had correct and send them off to make changes. (It was, in essence, a simpler form of Mastermind.)

However, after having it work in two other classes, albeit both higher level, I was surprised when no one in the class understood what I wanted them to do. Usually one student gets it and educates the others. This time I explained it four times and no one moved. I got a couple uncomfortable snickers but no one even bothered to pick up a pencil. (Note: that’s not an exaggeration; every student sat as if he was frozen in place.)

Also keep in mind that this is the kind of class that prefers to complain that they don’t understand what I’m saying when I talk rather than actually listening to what I’m saying. They are the kind of class that answers “How are you?” when I ask “How are you?” despite them having had at least a year of English.

I abandoned the game and told them to practice a conversation. I also assured them there would be no games in the class.

If they don’t want any fun, I promise I won’t give them anything fun to do.

I should be more tired than I am and in June I probably will be. Right now, though, I’m kind of surprised.

Although my schedule at the school where I work is nearly identical to last years schedule, it has a couple interesting changes that make it much better than last year’s. With one exception.

First, the schedule is front loaded. I have half my teaching schedule on Monday and Tuesday and then the other half is spread out over three days. Three classes on Wednesday, three on Thursday and two on Friday.

This means my schedule lets me relax toward the weekend. It also gives me lots of prep time to get ready for Monday and Tuesday. Because of this, although this is the first full week of work fr the school year, I feel fairly relaxed.

Of course, there are a couple problems. Both involve Friday.

First, I have my current worst student on Friday. As I also have him on Monday, that means he serves as an annoying bookend for the week. Second, although Friday has only two classes, they are second period and sixth period, which gives me a four hour break. Although this seems awesome and gives me a lot of prep time, the fourth hour is painful.

The real test, though, will be in June, when the weather is getting hotter and there are fewer days off. If I can get through that without being cranky and/or miserable, then I’ll be able to say I have a good schedule.

One of my colleagues mentioned today how the start of the school year has put her off her hobbies and any productive use of her free time. She feels tired and uninspired and can’t even be bothered to binge watch TV shows.

This is actually a common feeling this time of year.

The start of the school year brings a certain amount of dread at the school where I work, especially for those of us with all three years of junior high school. We pore over class lists to see if old problems have carried over and we cringe when our colleagues lookat our class rolls and laugh and say “Well, better you than me.”

The other issue is that unlike a regular 9-5 job, which can allow you to fall into a monotonous rhythm from one fiscal year to the next, the start of the school year brings a new rhythm of breaks, planning sessions, and classes. Your old planning schedule is now lost and you may or may not get home at a regular time. You might have to get up earlier than last year or you might have a day with too much free time. (Yes, as I’ve mentioned before, this can be a problem.)

Also, because the grades, and therefore the ages of the students change, the new year has a much different vibe then the old one. In my case I have exactly the same grades as last year, but they are in a different pattern and I can already feel the differences from last year.

We’re also in the testing phase where students see what they can get away with and we spend a lot of energy convincing them that they can’t get away with much. But, tricks that worked with one class don’t work with any of the new ones, even when it’s many of the same students, and we spend a lot of energy trying new tricks.

I think part of the problem is that here in Japan there’s only a couple weeks between last school year and this school year and our heads are still stuck in last year. It’s easy to forget that everything has changed.

Eventually we settle into the new rhythm. For better and for worse.

Today is brought to you by the number two. That’s because today all my classes where either second year high school or second year junior high school. By colossal coincidence, starting second period I taught two grade two high school classes and then two grade two junior high school classes.

The junior high school classes are the ones that worry me the most as they are the ones I can do the least about. I can make their lives unpleasant but only by making my life unpleasant.

That said, today’s classes were above average. The higher level class has a comedian who’s going to get lots of attention in the next couple weeks, but mostly they seem good. I’ll probably have to rearrange the seating chart at least once.

The lower level class consisted of the best of the students of the average students from my worst class last year.  (The best moved on to the higher level class.) They were in bad mode at first, and one student told me to speak Japanese. I told him why I wouldn’t.

By the end of the class they were doing work and being reasonably quiet. I don’t know if that will last, but I’m not dreading teaching them. Yet.