When I was finishing marking exams tonight, I heard a song that distracted me and took me out of my marking rhythm. This isn’t as bad, though, as the song that kind of made me feel high.

One of the things that happens when you’re marking exams is you eventually feel the need for music to provide a little background noise or/and to block out family sounds. The problem is, at least in my case, the music has to meet certain criteria.

It can’t be too ballady and slow because, eventually, I will wake up to find my head and a spreading drool stain on my students’ exams.

The music, however, can’t be too catchy or familiar because then I start enjoying the music too much and not marking. Tonight I’d chosen a good radio channel on iTunes (more on that in a minute) when all of a sudden The Vapors’ “Turning Japanese” came on. This led to chair dancing and lip-syncing but very little marking.

Usually, a punk channel is safe. The music is fast-paced but not terribly distracting. Also, although individual punk bands can be fun, a one-after-the-other stream of punk songs sounds suspiciously the same which also helps keep the marking pace going.

The oddest moment happened a few years back when I’d put on headphones for reasons I don’t remember, although I suspect that blocking out family noises was somehow involved. The headphones did their job until Santana’s “Black Magic Woman” came on. At first I was fine, but, then, once the lyrics were finished and the long instrumental section started, I suddenly felt really groovy, man, like really groovy. And the colors around me started moving and pulsing and talking to me and I could see my bones through the skin of my hands. And I could fly.

Something like that. I felt kind of dizzy and got weirded out enough that I had to stop listening to music.

I did finish marking, though. I just did it with family noise in my ears.

None of us on the native speaker staff at the school where I work are sure what day it is or what day is coming. Our only motto is “trust no one, especially yourself”.

Because the schedule at the school where I work is weird in January and then gets crazy in February when different grades end at different times and some seem to never end, it gets difficult to keep track of what is happening when. This often leads to confusion and misinformation.

Yesterday, for example, one of my colleagues said that she though classes ended next Wednesday and three of us assured her that, no, classes actually ended on Tuesday.

The trouble is, we all seemed to think that next Tuesday was next Wednesday or that yesterday was today, which was Wednesday. Something like that.

That was all corrected today, though, when those of us who’d given the false information suddenly realized what day it was yesterday.

Part of the problem is that we are still teaching some grades even though final exams have started. We will also be marking final exams before we’ve finished teaching. This makes it hard to keep track of where we are supposed to be when, even when we exploit modern technology such as Google Calendar or older technology such as “legible notes on paper”.

Hopefully we will all remember to show up for our exams when they finally happen. I have two exams on Friday, including the exam I’m responsible for, but before that I have a junior high class. I then have to remember two more junior high classes.

In the past we’ve had people confuse what day was which and they ended up missing their last classes before exams.

Truth be told, I have at least one class I’m tempted to miss. It may be time to play dumb. I’m sure I’ll show up, but I won’t know until the last minute if I will or not. I’ll also be questioning what day it is until I do show up.

Some classes just don’t get it. It’s rare, though, for the same class not to get it three times in the same year.

At the end of every term, depending on what days they meet, it’s possible for a class to have extra days compared to other classes of the same grade. In those cases, I usually follow the same plan: The last two class meetings are reserved for review. The first of the two usually follows the rule “Study my class today and I won’t look at what you’re studying next week”.

I phrase it this way because I’m not, technically, supposed to allow what you might call study hall classes unless the students are studying my lessons. Every now and then, though, some goodness and kindness enter my heart and it becomes .0003 times larger.

Classes that get it understand that while on the last day I might state that they should review my class I won’t actually be looking at what they are studying, unless they start sleeping and playing, in which case they must review my class.

The class that didn’t get it though, failed three different times on the next to last day. In each case I had groups of students who:

Didn’t open the book.
Opened the book, but to the wrong unit.
Opened the book to the correct unit but never turned the page after that.
Open the book to the correct page but had a different text book set on top of it.

All that, of course, happened in Japanese with nary a word of English spoken.

I reminded them a few times about what was going to happen and they either ignored me or, in case of the worst students in the class, acted annoyed and muttered bad things about me and my heart became 3 sizes too small.

That earned them a special assignment for this week. I made a nice review worksheet that, in theory, should have taken no more than 20 minutes to complete, however, several students spent the better part of the lesson working on it.

I suspect some of the worst students hadn’t actually been working on it until I started collecting the worksheets. That inspired the worst students to finally finish, but the worksheets from the best students were already in my possession making it harder for the worst students to cheat.

Now, I’ll just make sure I have them all and then throw them away without grading them.

I told you my heart got three sizes too small.

Yes, I really am that kind of teacher, although I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be. I’m also not sure if I should bothered to try.

Because we are in the week before final exams at the school where I work, new rules suddenly apply. Clubs have been cancelled and students have adopted an air of invincibility as if there’s nothing that can happen to them if they misbehave.

Because after school activities have been cancelled (including, apparently, baseball practice which usually meets every day possible) students have assumed that means that they cannot be held after school. They also seem to assume that they cannot be given homework and, if they are, that there will be no consequences for not doing it.

Part of the problem is that they don’t seem to understand, or have forgotten, that they need a higher score in their English classes than they do in other classes in order to get automatic recommendation to university. In the past, when I’ve reminded students of this, they suddenly developed an interest in studying English.

However, there are a couple things they don’t understand. 1) I’m not afraid to assign homework during exams because they can finish on test pass back day when they think they will have some free time. 2) I’m not afraid to keep them after school because 3) I can always play the “I didn’t understand because I’m a foreigner card” 4) I really am that mean.

The only problem with being that mean is that if I keep them after school I have to stay after school, too.  If I assign homework I have to either actually mark it or go through the motions that it’s actually going to be marked. Neither of those possibilities interest me. The latter requires hypocrisy; the former requires actual effort.

In the end, I often err on the side of just letting the year end and moving on to the next year. I’ve taught them all they’re going to learn from me and there’s no point wasting any more time or energy on them.

That said, sometimes it’s fun to be mean though, even if it involves a little hypocrisy.

I thought was going to get to see a young man’s head explode today. Luckily, more or less, it didn’t happen, but I was pretty sure it might.

One of our number at the school where I work was sick and the company I work for sent a substitute teacher for him.

The problem is, the company I work for knows nothing about the school where I work–in fact, they seem to have a willful blindness and deafness about the school, but that’s another post–and that can lead to complications.

First, although I was informed of the young man’s name, the head of the English department hadn’t. It was also no known when he would arrive. Also, when I was informed of the young man’s name, the person giving me the information used the wrong name to describe the person he was replacing, which did not instill confidence in me.

I was also informed that he’d never taught either junior high school or high school.

Second, the young man arrived but had been given no instructions on what to do upon his arrival. I only found him when one of our number (from a different company no less) pointed out there a was a lost looking young lad down on the ground floor.

Third, this left us with 10 minutes to get him ready (we all had class at the same time) and he was in full panic mode. His voice was shaky; he was trembling; and we could tell that he was hearing what we were saying but not actually comprehending it. I was pretty sure he was either going to catch fire or his head was going to explode.

I escorted him to his junior high class and picked him up after. He looked slightly more relaxed and still in possession of all his limbs but he did not look very happy. It turns out he didn’t know, and we didn’t know that he didn’t know (see my earlier comment about willful blindness and deafness) that he’d be teaching the class solo. He said he’d waited for someone to arrive and then realized he was on his own. As students can smell fear about as well as animals, they hadn’t given him an easy time.

Right after that he had his second junior high class. Once again I dropped him off and picked him up. That class went better, though, and he seemed relaxed and ready to do more.

A few hours later I escorted him to his first high school class. When I picked him up the unhappy look had returned. It hadn’t been a good group of students and he’d been nervous.

Now, we don’t know if our colleague will be back tomorrow, but we do know the young man won’t. This means we may get the chance to see someone catch fire or explode after all.

It is the time of year, at the school where I work, where everyone goes slightly mad.

I, of course, go fully mad.

In my first period class, I was the only one in the class when the bell rang. One student had been there before the bell but he asked if he could go to the restroom, and per a strange school policy, I allowed him to go. Several other students quickly arrived and by two minutes after the bell, I had a full class of students. A few minutes later, the restroom student returned and he was followed by a late student who announced he’d also been in the restroom. (The former was forgiven, the latter was counted tardy. Long story.)

After the warm up, I told them to take out their prints from the last class and the tardy student asked if he could go get his print because, if I understood him correctly, he’d either never been to my class before and/or had been dropped on his head as an infant and was still suffering from the brain damage.

Yes, that perfectly sums up my mood. That and the fact I gave him only a minute to get to his locker and back.

Then, third period, my worst class returned to bad form until I started making plans, complete with specific times, that they’d have to meet me during lunch time. When they mocked me about this by saying I’d never get them there, I reminded them that their homeroom teacher was 1) an English teacher and 2) a friend of mine and that I’d have little trouble getting them to the teacher’s room at lunch. Every day until exams.

Suddenly work got finished. Badly, but it got finished.

My fifth period class was actually okay and I came out of it feeling surprisingly positive. However, this was just a way to set me up for my sixth period class.

My sixth period class had, to a student, all apparently suffered some sort of madness inducing brain damage. They payed dumb and, in some cases, actually played and ended up getting homework per my “play now work later/work now play later” rule.

The fun happens next class when half of them don’t turn it in. What happens will depend on the level madness I’m feeling.