The odds against people named Suzuki are not good, at least in the classes I teach. In my experience, at least at the school where I work, the odds of a Suzuki being bad are pretty high.

Now, I’ll grant you that this may be a math problem. Suzuki is the second most common name in Japan therefore the odds of encountering a Suzuki are high and given the normal distribution of good and bad then, well, um, no, that doesn’t explain the past at all.

About a decade ago I taught a class that had four lads named Suzuki in it. They were all bad. (Given the normal distribution of good and bad then at least one should have been good.) What was funny about them was they were all bad in different ways. Suzuki A (not his real name) was lazy and had to be coaxed into doing work. Suzuki B was noisy and had to be stapled to his chair (metaphorically, of course; the school wouldn’t buy me a stapler that large); Suzuki C was distracted by games and work from other classes and, if he had a book, it wasn’t from my class; and Suzuki D was all of the above forms of bad plus a few more.

While I was teaching the Four Bad Suzukis of the Apocalypse, we had an open class where other teachers could observe our classes. A young teacher observed my class.

Unfortunately on that particular day, Suzuki D’s usual partner was absent and he felt this meant he had the day off. He leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms and fell asleep. I woke him up and told him to get a partner. He pointed to the empty chair, mumbled something and went back to sleep.

I woke him up again and he pointed to the empty chair again and once again mumbled something and went back to sleep again.

I woke him a third time and pointed to another lad who had no partner and Suzuki D mumbled something and went back to sleep.

I woke him up fourth time. This time he threw his arms out and shouted “nani?!” (Which usually means “what” but given his tone, was Japanese for “now what the fuck do you want/will you fuck off”) I told him to get out and he left without much more coaxing than that.

The young teacher was both horrified and impressed and, because Suzuki D was well known there were no repercussions. I don’t know what happened to him. I vaguely remember him not passing the year, but that might be my imagination.

Now, when I have students named Suzuki I ask them “are you a good Suzuki or a bad Suzuki”? They usually say good. I’m not sure I believe them. You are Suzuki until proven innocent.

No, this post is not a repeat of last week’s post on the same subject; rather it’s a post on the similar events as happened last week.

Today we got rain and that means the weather’s about to turn hot and the changing weather and air pressure is messing with lots of people’s heads. I got to school mostly soaked and in a bad mood.

That was the perfect setting for teaching my worst class.

Once again, they started off with the “Jason’s” and this time were more persistent about it. Once again I ignored them and went on with the class.

Things went reasonably well after that until I checked answers by having students stand up. (If you answer you get to sit down and last brat standing starts the next row). At one point, three students decided to play a game by refusing to answer. One guy even turned away. This not being my first rodeo, so to speak, I made three rows stand up which suddenly inspired faster response times.

Towards the end of the activity, a different group of three brats decided to try the same game. This time I just let them stand. I told them I had no problem making them stand until the end of class. (I stand for hours a day as part of my job so half a class is no big deal for me, but it’s torture to them.) One of the brats then tried to lead the class in the “We Will Rock You” beat. I let them do it and started working on my notes for my next class which stopped the music (although they tried it a couple more times).

When they finally realized they couldn’t out-stubborn me or piss me off enough to yell, they answered questions and got to sit down. (Note: the ring-leaders did this to their teacher last year, too.)

Their final gimmick was to refuse to memorize the conversation I told them to memorize. They took great joy in getting help or blatantly reading from the book. In this case the joke was on them, though, as I actually got all but one of them to perform the conversation, which they wouldn’t have done unless they thought they were making a game of it. (See, I know a few tricks.) Everyone who read (which was all but two pairs) earned a zero for the day but at least they spoke English.

One boy in a group of three didn’t perform the conversation as both his partner’s refused to go twice. I told them to come in at lunch (flash forward: they didn’t, but I’ll get them.)

As I left the room, I heard someone say “Fuck you” (Remember, the school where I work is nominally a Christian school). The good news is the homeroom teacher is on my side. I told him to warn them that if I hear another “fuck you” I’ll keep the class after school every night until final exams. It’ll be my own little English club as they write “fuck you” 10,000 times or spell all the numbers from one to ten-thousand.

If they think I’m joking, well, I’ll be the only one laughing. I do this kind of stuff for sport.

Today I taught a class that’s the same level as my worst class. Unlike my worst class, though, they are bad in a better way.

First some history: A few years ago, the school where I work changed the way it divides junior high school English Conversation classes. It added an extra section to the grade to make class sizes smaller, then divided the classes with the “S” class having 20 students and the lower level “R” class having 14. The idea was that 14 students would be easier to control than a larger class. (Note: the classes used to be divided more evenly with about 17-21 in the lower level class and, yes, 14 are a lot easier to control than even 17.)

Because the “R” classes are lower level, and because no one can fail, they are often rowdier than the “S” classes and usually more trouble. The worse they are, the more likely they are to get a nickname: Class 2A (Second grade, A class) becomes “2 Awful”; 2B becomes “2 Bad”, etc. (Note: the others are “2 Crappy,” “2 Damned/Dammit,” “2 Evil” and “2 F@#ked”.)

Today’s class was loud and the students have a typical “I don’t understand, therefore I now have free time” attitude but they actually listened and actually did work (most of them). It was only in the last 10 minutes or so that things began to collapse. Some gave up; some finished and started playing; everyone was talking; no one was working. This is typical of an “R” class. I’ve always maintained that if “R” classes were 40 minutes long they’d be great; unfortunately they are 50 minutes long.

Also unfortunately, my worst class tends to skip the first 40 minutes and starts well after the collapse and goes downhill from there. Those classes tend to get lots of worksheets and they often make me recite the mantra (it’s only 50 minutes, it’s only 50 minutes) and start counting how many more times I will have to see them.

The better bad classes, though, tend to be more fun to work with and they often surprise you. Today a student who got in trouble stayed into lunch to help another student finish his writing assignment.

This class doesn’t have a nickname yet, but it’s still early in the year.

Today I had to teach my worst group of students. They started the class off by insulting me.

After I entered the classroom, the bad student with the “whatta ya gonna do aboudit?” attitude muttered that he’d been informed by his homeroom teacher that if he didn’t turn in his homework at the beginning of class he’d have to meet me at lunch and do his work. I also tried to remind him but he tried to ignore me.

After got his attention he said “nice joke” and that that prompted the rest of the class to start saying “joke” and to start calling me “Jason,” after Atsugiri Jason, an American in the IT industry who’s become a popular comedian by poking fun at the absurdity of the Japanese alphabets. (For example, the kanji for one, two and three are 一､二､三 and the number of strokes match the numbers in a nice pattern. But four 四 has five strokes. After he points this out he shouts his catch phrase “Why, Japanese people!”)

They called me Jason, I guess, because I’m a white foreigner and we apparently all look alike.

The name Jason stuck most of the rest of the class. They even tried calling me over for help by calling me Jason. I entered a blissful zen state (a very, very rare occurrence) and I ignored them until the used my name. (I also don’t respond to “teacher” or “sensei” so I had a lot of practice at this. I also ignored the three “fuck you’s” that were muttered. I caught one student and told him if he said it again, the entire class would get homework and I’d keep them all after school until they finished. (Note, because this was a junior high class, I can’t send students out of the room for things like that.) (Second note: the “fuck you’s” and most of the “Jasons” stopped after that.)

Somewhere in there, most of the students actually got work done. A few others adopted the usual “I don’t understand therefore it’s free time” attitude and did very little.

I collected all the worksheets and then reminded my bad student about our lunch appointment. I then reminded his homeroom teacher about it. (Long story short: the student showed up, eventually and eventually finished his homework.)

Now I have to back off a bit. I don’t want to keep dragging the homeroom teacher into the battle (and will probably buy him lunch to thank him) and I can’t pull the homework card all the time.

The precedent, however, has been established and that’s often all I need.

All my students were pretty much brain dead today, but it wasn’t actually my fault. That said, my brain wasn’t much better.

The school where I work is strange in May. There are lots of school trips and lots of disrupted schedules and lots of partial days. During mid-term exams we focus on our final exams and making lesson plans for the final push whilst everyone else is administering and marking exams and they don’t care about anything else. To give an example of what happens, on the day before exams I told one of my homeroom  teachers I had a junior high student who was sitting back, doing nothing and daring me to make him work with a “whatta ya gonna do aboudit?” smirk. The homeroom teacher’s reaction to this news was one part “why is this my problem?”, one part “why are you telling me this now?”, and one part “yeah, how about that.”

(For the record: now that mid-terms are over and I can keep students after school, my student’s about to discover what I’m gonna do aboudit.)

The final push, as I’ve mentioned before, is June. We’ve been at school since early April but still have about half our classes to go because of the strange schedule.

Today, though, was especially strange as it fell after two days of mid-term exams. To a student, in three different grades, the students’ attitude was “Whoa? You’re still here?” and “Why the hell are you making us do stuff?”

I had students sleeping; students pretending to use their phones as dictionaries whilst “secretly” texting; a student who walked in with a smile but no text, no pencil and no paper; students who didn’t bother to bring the handout; students who ignored me when I called on them because they weren’t ready; students who did the wrong assignment when it was their turn to speak and had to do it again.

Granted, they are coming down after an intense couple days, but my class doesn’t have mid-terms exams which means, quite frankly, I don’t care about their previous problems.

June is coming and things are about to change. If they think this ends happily, they haven’t been paying attention.

Shout.

That pretty much explains this morning.

As a rule, although I’m not afraid to let fly an angry “SHUT UP!” that echoes down the hall, I try to avoid shouting at students, especially those in lower level classes. This is because 1) the Japanese tend to react to angry outbursts with laughter that 2) leads to a larger angry outburst and 3) if it’s a lower level class, most of them don’t understand a word I’m saying anyway.

Today my high school classes went well but one of my junior high school second year classes was in a mood from the moment I stepped in the door. They didn’t get sat down once the bell rang and then some of them kept walking around during the warm up. This led to a very rare seat change and the first ever that occurred during the warm ups.

I’d been warned about a few of these students before school started during the traditional annual “Commiseration of the Class Lists” when we look at each other’s class lists and wish each other strength to get through the year.

To this point, the class had been noisy but usually did the assigned activities and work. When this happens it usually means that a day of reckoning is coming, which is what happened today. When I spoke several students turned and mocked 1) that I was speaking 2) that I was speaking English and 3) that they couldn’t understand me in English. (Note, this is somehow a joke on me.)

At one point, the boy who had to change seats was talking with the people who got him in trouble. This led to a Level Seven Shut Up–this one goes to eleven–which led to laughter in three different classrooms down the hall. (Note: Teacher’s leave the doors and windows open because this is the time of year when it’s just warm and humid enough to need air conditioning but before the air conditioners are turned on.)

I kept plugging through the book and the plan until a student asked me a question in Japanese and I answered in English. It suddenly dawned on them that I might actually be able to understand them. This prompted another boy to mumble something about me speaking in Japanese. I reminded him he was at a top tier school and there were plenty of public schools he could go to if he wanted to speak Japanese.

At this point they were openly discussing the fact I could understand Japanese. They then tried to press to see if I’d speak Japanese. I shrugged and said my classes were always in English.

Then I told them to shut up and get back to work.

Today I felt as if I was being called in to work to substitute for myself.

To understand this you have to understand that every now and then, at the school where I work, classes get cancelled because of trips and we end up teaching a reduced schedule. However, although I do a lot of planning at home, there’s no real reason for  me to be at the school on these days until I actually have a class.

This often leads to the strange act of going to work around lunch time. Now a colleague of mine insists that a day of work is a day of work and it doesn’t matter if you’re working in the morning or the eventing. I respectfully disagree. There’s a big difference between finishing at lunch time and starting after lunch.

In the case of the former, you can look forward to relaxing at home or at a coffee shop in the afternoon. In the case of the latter, you can’t relax because you have some place to be. In fact, at best, it feels as if you’re interrupting a day off because you’ve been called to work.

I once volunteered to teach extra classes if I could get all my classes in the morning. The person in charge of scheduling said it was impossible and ignored all pleading after that.

There’s also the problem of going to work during the hottest time of the day. I walk to the station and by the time I get there I I’m sweaty enough that might as well have not bothered to take a shower and/or suddenly desperately need one.

This schedule, however, is only a May phenomenon. By June we are back in the grind and the days come without mercy.

It’s almost like having a job.