I survived teaching at the elementary school with no injuries and it’s got me thinking about if enjoying something, more or less, and being good at it, is worth being forced to do it.

I was lucky to have good train connections and, much to my surprise, the trains I was on were not crowded even though they were major arteries to Tokyo. In fact, the platforms and stations were more crowded than the trains. That put me in a good mood as I expected to be quietly killing people in order to get air. (Not that I would ever do that but if you’ve ever been in a train crush, it does cross your mind…)

Getting to the school was also easy, even though I went out the wrong exit.

I discovered, once I got to the school, that all the materials I was expecting to have weren’t actually available so I had to improvise a few things on the spot.

I taught four classes in a row (with fourth graders and third graders) and the school has had enough regular English lessons that the students are reasonably well behaved (although my first class began with a teacher yelling at a student and escorting him out of class) and the homeroom teachers know how to help and, because of the nature of the contract, they are actually able to help. (Long story.) The students are also able to follow English instructions, within reason and do not attempt to harm the teacher by attempting to insert fingers in his rectum or testing the ability of his genitals to withstand blunt force trauma.

Students approached me to ask my name and only one expressed disappointment I wasn’t the guy who taught yesterday. One student played an impromptu game of red light-green light with me in the hallway while I was waiting for my next class. Whenever I tried to talk to him, he just stared and didn’t move and when I looked away, moved closer.

I also had fun eating the flavorless school lunch with the second graders. Two girls tried to avoid choking while the class clown put on a show.

Even though I had fun, I couldn’t get over the nagging feeling that I should have been at home wasting time and making Christmas plans. I still feel as if I’ve lost a bonus. It doesn’t cost me money, just time and effort. I also can’t help but feel that today was some kind of compliance test. (How will DL react when he discovers that we’ve replaced his day off with a day at an elementary school?)

The vice principal let me go early, which was nice of him as I was scheduled to be there until 4:45 but only had classes until 12:30. That said, I’m also betting I catch a cold from being in trains full of people and shaking hands with lots of students.

Today’s speech contest started with a half hour delay. A train line that doesn’t even reach the school where I work stopped working for a while and that slowed things down.

Strangely enough, I arrived early and texted everyone else and a few minutes later two of everyone else arrived and I delivered the message personally. We then had that awkward moment where they checked their phones and thanked me for sending them the message.

Eventually the speeches began and for complicated reasons I was scheduled to be head judge for the first set of speeches (the JHS 3s/9th graders) and then demoted to ordinary judge for the second set of speeches (the JHS 1s/7th graders). I actually like being ordinary judge because that means I have no responsibilities. (More on that later.)

The main thing I liked about the speeches in this contest was that I don’t teach those grades this year which means I haven’t heard the same speech again and again. This meant I got to hear them fresh (granted, we have been using the same topics for 15 years but, well, yeah, I hadn’t heard them recently).

During the first set of speeches, as head judge, I had to stand up, read certificates, hand out certificates, shake hands, give a coherent speech (not always easy for me to do) and pose for pictures.

For the second set of speeches all I had to do was stay awake.

The problem was, for the second set of speeches the top three speeches of the first set of speeches were added to the program. Since the winning speech was almost five minutes long this added a lot of time to the already delayed speeches. (Oddly, the winner actually did better the second time, the second and third place winners did worse.)

Luckily, I was able to leave before the hunger games started. The hunger games were the third set of speeches (the JHS 2s/8th graders). They were being pushed back into lunch time and would have to listen to the top speeches from the first two sets of speeches. Being 8th graders they are naturally restless. Add in hunger and I’ll bet it got dangerous.

I’ve heard from one of the judges since then. I’m not sure what happened to the other one.

At the school where I work one of the rituals we go through is pass back classes for exams. This ritual involves teasing with scores, handing out answer sheets and exams, fielding questions and correcting mistakes and rejecting appeals for higher marks. That all takes about 20 minutes.

Unfortunately, the pass back class is 50 minutes long.

There then ensues a dilemma: do I waste paper and provide some sort of activity, do I only provide an activity to the class with the lowest average to punish then for doing badly, or do I let them do their winter homework whilst I mark other exams and/or write and/or simply waste time.

Today I opted for the latter with my junior high school classes. Unfortunately, for two of my classes, I was one of their first pass backs and they didn’t yet have homework. This meant I told them to relax with the caveats “No fighting, no kissing, no sports”. At least not while I’m in the class. (Note: the first and last are more common; as for the second, well, some guys have done things that might as well have involved kissing.)

Left with nothing else to do, the students fall back on games. There are brief rounds of Bloody Knuckles, which I stop because that counts as a sport. There is also a game involving groups of boys making fists and raising their thumbs whilst each takes turns guessing how many thumbs will be raised. There is a countdown and at “zero” one boy says a number as the others raise one thumb, both thumbs or no thumb. (It is possible to guess “none”.) If the guesser is right, he stays in the game and the guessing moves to another boy. This goes on until someone makes the final guess.

There is also a game involving flicking erasers around the table that is one part shuffle board and one part paper football. As near as I can tell–the rules seem to change every game–the winner knocks everyone else off the board. There is also a version involving coins. However, I always remind them that house rules are that any money that falls on the floor belongs to me, er, the house, and that’s why they switch to erasers.

Eventually, the bell rings and I go off to do this with another class in another room.

The test pile this year is smaller than in years before but it never gets any smaller. It is very much like a plate of pasta or a car trip across Nebraska. The more progress you make, the less progress you seem to have made.

Relatively speaking, I have already made a lot of progress: I’ve finished one batch of exams (my smallest batch) and am almost halfway through my second batch, although it seems to have taken a long time to get there.

The third batch taunts me.

Complicating matters are an evening class that steals away some of my official time-wasting time (because I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t actually be marking that quickly even with lots of time to mark) a piano recital this coming Sunday, the arguments affiliated with piano recital practice/lack of practice, and in-bound in-laws.

Although I like my in-laws their arrival will involve a lost Saturday night filled with lots of food and beer. There will also be long explanations of why She Who Must Be Obeyed has not been feeding me properly when they see that I’ve lost almost 33 pounds since the last time they saw me. This will be made worse by the fact that most of my clothes are now baggy as I’ve been putting off shopping until I reach my weight goal (which is more-or-less what I’ve just done).

The only good thing will be that I’ll actually be able to go this year, unlike last year., which will earn me back some Good Graces Points. (I will probably lose those, though, if I decide to take exams to mark for when our girls aren’t performing. It might actually be worth it to try.)

I will have Monday to finish, but by then I’ll have failed to establish any rhythm. Until then, the test pile, no matter how hard I work, will always be the same size.

And the third batch will keep taunting me.

Today’s post is a follow up to yesterday’s in which a teacher ate my students’ homework. Sort of.

In my classes at the school where I work one of my rules is that if I see work or books from other classes (including English classes) I give you a warning to put the stuff away and dock you a few points. If I see the stuff again I confiscate it and, if you are lucky and I’m in a good mood, I’ll hand it to your homeroom teacher to pass back to you at the end of the day. If I’m not in a good mood, which is more likely this time of year, I’ll keep the stuff until the next class.

What I never thought of doing, though, was confiscating the stuff and throwing it away. That is a level of hardcore teaching I can only aspire to. (Mostly because I don’t have anything even resembling tenure, unless momentum counts as tenure.)

What strikes me as odd about this situation is that the posters that were confiscated were of Fukui Prefecture which is not the kind of thing you’d expect teenage boys to be playing with in class. If the posters had been of, how shall I say, augmented scantily clad women, I can understand the posters ending up in the trash (especially since the teacher in question is married) but since they were obviously some sort of homework (unless there are some very, very odd fetishes of which I am unaware–call me if there are) throwing them out seemed very hardcore. (Granted, Fukui does kind of look like “Fuk U I” but not to a Japanese.)

I suspect a number of warnings were involved, and since I’ve had issues with these two students myself I can imagine they didn’t actually listen to the warnings and that the teacher finally went past discipline to vengeance.

Either way, I now have a new threat: “If you don’t put that away, I’ll dispose of it like I’m a math teacher.”

No, that will take too long to explain. I’ll just take it and threaten to throw it away.

Well, maybe NOW I’ve seen it all.

For various complicated reasons involving the calendar, the second term at the school where I work is longer than the first. It feels shorter, though, because it has more, and better placed, days off. However, the end of the second term is also the time for lobbying and, this year, for odd things to happen.

Lobbying:
The lobbying occurs because high school third year students (12th graders) are finishing their classes, sort of, and finding out if they will graduate with a good enough score to get automatic recommendation to the affiliated university. Because of this, their classes end early and they have exams whilst we are still teaching other grades.

My one student suddenly became worried about his final mark during the last class and began a near epic lobbying campaign with all his foreign teachers. (I’m guessing he lobbied all his teachers, but I only have evidence of him lobbying us). I told him that the end of the school year is a little late to worry about his score and then told him what mark he needed on the final exam to get a “9” (81-90%). He earned the score with room to spare. I then had to spend the better part of an hour babysitting him at a test pass back until I could let him go.

He also announced that he would not be attending our one class together next term. (Note: the HS 3’s are finished and will receive no more grades yet they are scheduled for classes next term; however, if they don’t show up, there is no actual consequence except I get to sleep in or not.)

Oddities:
The odd thing happened yesterday, when two of my more troublesome students explained that they couldn’t do their final presentations because “A teacher ate our homework”. Actually, it turned out they meant “A teacher stole our posters.” As near as I can tell, they were practicing for my class during their math class–note: English requires a higher final average than other classes for automatic recommendation–and their math teacher confiscated the visual aids they were going to use for the Sell a Prefecture TV commercial.

After class, I led them down to the teachers’ room where they managed to track down the math teacher in question. They explained the situation and he looked confused, dumbfounded and then horrified. He explained he’d thrown the posters away. He then dug in the trash and, much to the relief of the students and my stifled, therefore painful snickers, he found the posters and the students were able to complete the assignment.

Of course, the tablet I was using as my timer ran out of battery right as they were finishing so I don’t know if they actually met the time limit yet or not.

Normally I’d torture them a bit by threatening to make them go again. However, since they’d shown me an event I’d never seen in 26 years of teaching, I decided not to torture them. This time.

One of my more troublesome students made monkey noises and beat his desk earlier this week when I reminded him he had two speeches to do next class. Today (the next class) he didn’t do the speeches which means he fails the term. My problem is, he’s already failed the term based on absences so there’s not much I can do.

Today was the last day before the last week of classes begin which means it’s an odd time at the school where I work. It’s the last day when clubs will meet and the last day when we can, technically, keep students after school.

The problem is by this point in the term we really couldn’t care less. We are making exams and walking the fine line between punishing bad students by making the exams difficult–I once told a teacher “if one of us foreign staff can pass this exam, it’s too easy”–even if it means hurting good students, or writing off the bad students and hoping they don’t do well on the exams so that the good students can do well on the exams.

This is also the time of the lobbyist. Third year high school students (12th graders) have already finished classes and are in exams. This allows extra time for them to take make-up exams if they fail. It’s also the time when they suddenly realize what final marks they need vs what they’ve earned and they start lobbying for higher grades.

In my case, I told my student what score he needed and told him everything he needed to know to get that score. I’m not sure he gets that I will give him a low score if he doesn’t do well. Granted, his score will still be pretty good, just not as good as someone who’s lived overseas was expecting. As I always point out, though: 1) I’ve failed returnees before. 2) am not afraid to meet parents to discuss grades and 3) the last week of school is not a particularly good time to worry about your marks.

Now I have a couple days to relax before the flood hits, or as the French say apres le weekend le deluge (something like that).