Once a month I teach students who aren’t mine so that they don’t get confused.

That’s the theory anyway.

On Sundays I teach students who are preparing to study at universities in the USA, Canada or the UK (with special appearances by Australia). My regular class meets, well, regularly three times a month. I teach the higher level class.

However, once a month, I swap classes with the teacher who teachers the lower level students.

These students are interested in studying outside of Japan, but live outside of the Tokyo area, which makes it harder for them to study in a classroom. Instead they study prepared videos and texts and trek down to Tokyo once a month.

The other teacher and I decided to swap because it gets confusing (for us and the students) trying to keep track of who’s studying what and which speech can be used for each class. (Note: all of my regular students have to attend, but a few others are added.

Unfortunately, many of today’s students asked their regular teacher last week about my class this week. His response was the appropriate “How the hell should I know?”\

I was worried; however, all but one student came through. They did their speeches and managed to stay awake for all six hours of the course (not including lunch).

I won’t see them again for another month. However, there will be new students present next time I see them. That gets confusing.

He had the nerve to act surprised.

I told this student–let’s call him Akuma–last class that he was going to his speech first today. He responded with this usual performance of turning to the rest of the class and going “Okay! Okay! Okay!” to everything I said.

Then, today, I started to explain the next lesson (for various complicated reasons the lessons are overlapping) and several students were talking. I stopped, passed out the assignment, and told the loudest student (not Akuma this time) that he was second. I also told the class that they could refuse to do their speeches exactly zero times. “If I call you name and you say ‘no’, you get a zero and have to do your speech later anyway.”

After a 10 minute practice, I told Akuma it was time to do his speech. He said “Okay!” I repeated what I’d said and he said “No. I’m not ready.” I said “Then you get a zero.” He said “Okay!” and I called the second student.

At that point, someone translated what I’d said for Akuma. Suddenly it wasn’t “okay!” But I ignored him.

The guy who went second did a good job, though, and then others started lining up.

Akuma hasn’t done his speech yet, and the longer he puts it off the less time he has to do part two. It will be interesting to see if that’s okay or not.

Today I found something in common with my students.

We’re all happier not seeing each other, even if we’re supposed to see each other.

I should probably be more dedicated, but any chance to avoid my worst class is a bon chance (that’s French for “hallelujah”. Something like that.)

This means, that after having a couple hours off thanks to a sports festival, my first question to the vice principal was “do we have junior high classes tomorrow?” It turns out we don’t, which changes my day a lot, and made me do a little dance. Well, not really, and I didn’t even smile, but I was smiling inside.

In the past, we’ve not only had classes on the second day–if the students don’t do well in the sports meet, they end up having regular classes–we have, on occasion, had the first day of sports cancelled and had to actually do our jobs, which is kind of annoying when you were already thinking about doing something else.

Note: normally all you lose is a couple classes during a jhs sports festival, but if you have enough junior high classes, well, let’s just say things get more interesting…

Although I make out well tomorrow, I still have my evening class, which steals from the day.

That said, I’ll enjoy the schedule changes when they happen.

Today’s post is brought to you by WordPress image upload errors that have forced me to delay the post I’d intended. Note: that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

They may have reconsidered.

It’s always ego-boosting when your students admit that they hope you continue as their teacher after the term ends.

However, after today, I they may have a different opinion.

There are two classes left in the current term for the class I teach on Sundays. This means that the next class, which, oddly, is three weeks away, will be the day they present their final project.

After I explained the project and all the requirements I could tell that they were less interested in seeing me continue as their teacher.

However, one of the games we teachers play is to turn each other into bogeyman. Because of this, the other teacher’s class is afraid of me and my class is afraid of him.

However, now my class may be afraid of me.

Oh well, that’s part of the fun.

It says a lot about today that I was the good cop. Sort of.

During yesterday’s “bluff” my students discovered that 1) I don’t bluff and 2) their club coach (soccer) is an English teacher (and a former student of my colleague). He promised to make them run, once he saw them with me at lunch.Today, although I wan’t there, I heard they were shaking when they turned in the homework they didn’t finish at QAlunch. (Translation: I own them.)

Then, during my first class today, one of my 3rd grade students (9th grade) invoked the “I think it’s impossible therefore I don’t have to do it” rule. He failed at his first attempt to do his speech contest speech, then put his head on his desk and went to sleep. This mean the had a lunch date.

Luckily, his homeroom teacher is awesome and guaranteed the student would meet me at lunch.

The student showed up and did his speech.

I wish this meant I was done with speeches–and done with speech related posts–but there are two classes left to finish, and they are all bad.

Three students from yesterday’s post tried to call my bluff which meant I had a lunch date.

All three tried to make a joke of it in class and in doing so made enough noise that they almost earned the entire class more homework. Instead, I delivered a memo that looked as if it had been written in blood (gotta love the Chiller font) to their homeroom teacher and they arrived on time and managed to eke out a few sentences.

To show I can be reasonable, I kept them 25 minutes and then reduced their homework by a small percentage before telling them they had until 8:30 tomorrow morning to get the completed homework on my desk.

If they don’t, I might have another lunch date. We’ll see if they try to call my bluff again.

Any careful consideration of the situation will confirm that everyone is going slightly mad at the school where I work. This is especially true of the students.

It doesn’t help that yesterday I broke one of my rules–don’t bluff–by telling my 9th graders that they’d have to stay after school if they didn’t start memorizing their speech contest speeches. I didn’t even require that they memorize all of it, just the first half. Keep in mind, I couldn’t actually stay after school when I told them that. Luckily I apparently have enough of a reputation that the remaining students managed to finish their speeches relatively quickly.

Then, today, one of my worst classes had to turn in punishment homework from last week. After much tension, they finally realized I was serious about them coming in at lunch time every day until they finished.

Enough put in enough effort (after they finished work in my class) that I made them a deal: if I get their homework by 8:30 a.m. tomorrow, I’d give them points. If they didn’t, they’d meet me at lunch.

Once again, I have enough of a reputation that only a few students are in danger of having a longer homework.

I’m glad it all seems to be working out, but I prefer a little less stress.

Any analysis of it, no matter what method you use, confirms that Wednesday’s suck.

When they try to call my bluff, though, it gets kind of fun.

For reasons I don’t understand (karma?) I somehow manage to have three bad classes on Wednesday.

It starts with a junior high first year class that, despite being “higher level” has fairly bad behavior. Today I played a yellow card/red card activity. This involves the students interviewing four other student under the rule “No Japanese”. If they use any Japanese, they get a yellow card. Three yellow cards equals a red card which equals 10 sentences of homework. (Long story.)

I then reset and they get a second set of yellow cards. A second red card means the homework doubles. Then they get another set of yellow and red cards and the homework doubles again.

The record is 160 sentences. Today’s class thought they, well, they weren’t thinking, and they ended up with 80 sentences of homework. They then mocked the notion that I would keep them during lunch or after school. They do not understand that I do this stuff for sport which means I expect a lot of surprised students next week.

After that, I have an hour to recover before I have my worse lower level junior high first year class. Today they were average. Noisy, but average.

Then, after lunch, I have my worse high school second year class. They were also pretty good, relatively speaking. The student who takes 20 minute toilet breaks thinks he’s being clever. I’m actually glad to be rid of him.

Please don’t tell him though. I’m afraid he’ll stay if he knows.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m in the middle of a long work push with no full breaks for thirteen days. I didn’t think I was doing too badly until the last couple days.

Suddenly I find myself irritable in class with a patience level somewhere between “extremely low” and “hair trigger”. Suddenly having new students in my JHS 1 classes hasn’t helped as they’ve changed the dynamic and they are in the “let’s test the limits” phase of class.

Granted, being irritable helps crush some of that testing, which, eventually goes away as they get used to my rules and my voice. Me being irritable also makes them long to be back in the class they just left. For that, I’m happy to oblige.

I told them all they have to do is get an 80% on their next exam and their former teacher will take them back.

This means, of course, that I’m stuck with them until the end of the school year.

I usually try to remain cheerful and friendly for a first class, but my students today were having none of it.

My worst students in my (current) worst class decided to live up to their reputation by causing trouble. One student didn’t have his summer homework but claimed he’d left it in another class. I told him to go get it but he seemed to think that the claim that he’d completed it was sufficient to count it as completed. He put his head down and tried to go to sleep. I woke him up and we had exactly the same conversation until he started at least pretending to write.

Another student tried playing dumb about what he was supposed to do until I pointed out there were Japanese instructions on the paper. He then acted as if he was being sneaky by copying the example sentences put there for him to copy.

I did manage to remain calm, but it’s a bad start to the week when your first class on Monday goes that way.

The rest of the day went better, but I don’t like Monday’s schedule: three classes in a row, then nothing for three hours. I get a lot of prep work done, but it’s still an oddly exhausting day. Then again, with the kind of start today had, it’s hard to keep the energy flowing.