I once spent 20 minutes of a 50 minute class trying to get Japanese students into groups. This only happened because I refused to accept the groups they already had.

My plan, simple as it seemed, involved putting the students into one of four groups. To do that, I implemented a simple system of assigning numbers: You’re 1; You’re 2; You’re 3; You’re 4; etc. I encouraged the students not to forget their numbers. After everyone had a number, I pointed to various corners of the room and said “Ones here; Twos here; threes here; fours here.” and stood back with my arms crossed a sense of smugness.

Twenty minutes later I had no fours; three ones, four threes, and everyone else was a two.

The Japanese teacher working with me translated into Japanese and after another five minutes we had something resembling groups but little time to do the activity.

My mistake was misunderstanding the importance of pre-made groups. Basically, all Japanese Junior high classrooms, especially in public school, are organized in alternating rows of boys and girls. With various magic words, the teacher can quickly organize the room into pairs (Anál nathrach); groups of three (orth’ bháis’s bethad) and groups of six (do chél dénmha). Something like that. (Bonus points if you are old enough to recognize the spell and know what movie it came from. Don’t tell your parents you watched it when they were asleep, though.)

I also misunderstood the managed teenaged politics involved with the groups. This month Maki doesn’t like Koji and will never be in a group with him but she does like Ami but Ami doesn’t like her but also won’t be in a group with Akiko. Next month all that will change and everyone will hate Ami.

When I used basic randomness to assign groups I was putting people in groups who refused to be together.

The best part is, because I didn’t use the activity, I already had the next class planned.

Today I let other students vote on the fate of one of their classmates. It didn’t go well for him.

The class I teach comes under various names depending on what grade I’m teaching but it all amounts to “English Conversation”. Basically the school where I work took regular English classes and split them into a grammar/government approved textbook part and a spoken English part.

Because my classes typically only meet once or twice a week, it’s common for my students to take them lightly and work on other homework.

This week there must be a test in Japanese because many of my students arrived in class with my textbook and a Japanese textbook. I gave a blanket warning reminding them of the rules and then let them get to work on the day’s project.

My rule regarding homework from other classes is quite simple: Strike One: I tell you to put it away and you lose a lot of points. Strike Two: You lose a lot more points, I take the homework and promise to give it back next week. There is no Strike Three. However, I also allow students who finish their work early to study other classes while everyone else finishes the project.

Today I seized a book within the first ten minutes of class. The student made up for it by eventually working and attempting to get bonus points for the project.

At the end of class I held up the seized textbook and put the students’ fate up to a vote. The question was “Should Mr. Lively be nice (for once)” Yes or No.

I took a vote and of the students who were actually listening to what I was saying, two, including the man whose fate was in question, voted Yes for be nice. Five voted for No for not nice.

This created a small crisis, though, when one student apparently realized I’d seized the book he’d lent to his friend. He complained he didn’t get to vote and/or had hanging chads and I held a second vote. The second time the Yes be nice vote won.

I gave him “his” book back and told him I wouldn’t be nice again.

One of the things that happens where I work is that, after we come back from summer, we’re a bit rusty but refreshed. The first couple days your legs are sore from standing all day and you begin to seriously reconsider your footwear choices but by the end of the week you are back in the groove. The second week is when it all begins to fall apart.

The second week is when you begin to remember how boring the groove actually is and, well, so do the students. When you come back from summer they’ve 1) forgotten your name 2) forgotten your tricks and 3) forgotten your rules. A lot of energy is spent getting them back into the groove and once they get there they 1) remember your name 2) remember your tricks and 3) remember your weak spots.

Last week I spent a lot of energy getting 8th graders to complete their speech contest speeches. This involved giving them the opportunity to come in at lunch and let me check the script and then me dragging them to detention to write them whilst I paced around glaring and rolling my eyes at everything they did (basically I became a teenager for an hour or so).

This week, even though Monday was a national holiday, it’s already been a long week. The higher level students have begun to push pressure points. My “new” student (he was “somewhere in North America, eh?”–not a real place–last year) doesn’t yet know that I make a sport out of giving returnees low scores. (Just ask the guy who requested a meeting to discuss his 9 (81-90%) and why he didn’t get a 10 (91-100%).

Next week, the real problems will start when the first big projects come due. We’ll hear some interesting excuses: I was absent the day this was assigned and am therefore exempt. I don’t like giving speeches. I hate English! I hate you! (And that’s just from other teachers.)

Luckily, we’re entering Awesome, which means the weather will be getting cool and dry. In fact, it’s already beginning to cool down, which is awesome.

A short one today in honor of bad students. This is the first full week of class after summer vacation and that means that we are now reintroducing ourselves to our students and reminding them why they are supposed to fear us and/or why they think we are jerks.

Today for example, one of my worst students spent the first few moments after the bell rang zipping and unzipping his trousers in front of his friend’s face. I told him “I you need to do that, get out and do it some place else.” He stopped zipping his pants (with the zipper up, luckily) and sat down in a huff and added, in English “I don’t understand English”. My inner snark monster, encouraged by the devils over my shoulders said “I know. Maybe if you sat down and listened you might learn something.”

I then gave out the assignment, which involved telling a summer vacation story by captioning a series of cartoon images. The students were encouraged to use their imaginations and dictionaries and I wouldn’t give any hints except to remind them it had to be one story. (I also don’t help them unless they ask for help.) The bad student didn’t understand and panicked quite spectacularly. Even lashing out at foreign teachers for not having Japanese instructions on their worksheets. I told him, in English, as the inner snark monster reached 50% capacity, that a lot of Japanese blamed their teachers for their bad English not their own unwillingness to study. “Your bad English is not my fault.”

Finally, someone explained the lesson to him (probably in Japanese). He started writing and after a he had a few sentences I peeked at his paper and he was actually doing the assignment. This surprised me because I assigned a punishment letter to a student with similar behavioral issues and, although he appeared to working, he turned in an expletive laden screed full of death threats to me and the principal and wishes that we both would die. In his defense, it was the most English he’d ever written.

Eventually, zipper boy finished the assignment. Oddly, this was the quietest he’d ever been in class and he earned a very rare full class marks.  I may have to give him more caption assignments.

Next class, though, the students have to present their stories as a speech. They get bonus points if they can do it without using the paper.

The inner snark monster never got past 50% today. it is still mad at me. However, history has shown that at least five students will forget their papers next class, including zipper boy.

The inner snark monster will then go full snark and say “Lucky you! Now you get bonus points!”

One of the fun parts about being a foreign teacher in Japan is that I can get away with a lot. One of the problems of being foreign teacher in Japan is that I can’t get away with a lot forever.

On rare occasions I’ve taken students to the principal’s office or to their homeroom teacher in the teacher’s office. With junior high this is rather risky, not only am I foisting my problems off on someone else and admitting I can’t control my class, but I’m also “forgetting” that education is both compulsory and a right until the end of 9th grade and removing a junior high student is a questionable legal act. It’s better to stick them in a the corner, or at a desk just outside the door. Also, in Japan, the Group is very important and being removed from the Group can be quite shocking. With high school students this isn’t as big a legal deal, but removing them from the group is.

That said, I’m also the only teacher I know who’s thrown students out of class during observations.

The first time happened in a first year high school class. One of my worse students, let’s call him Mr. Sato, was famously bad and the kind of student who immediately goes to sleep and counts on his friends to take notes. Since my class was a speaking class, that wasn’t possible. He had to be awake and he had to work with a partner.

However, on the day of open classrooms (during which other teachers in the school could observe our classes) Mr. Sato’s usual partner was absent and he believed that meant he didn’t have to do anything. After the warm up, he immediately went to sleep. I woke him up and he pointed to the empty chair next to him and went back to sleep. I woke him up again, he pointed to the chair again and I pointed the empty chair next to another student and said be his partner. This repeated a couple more times. Finally, the fifth time I woke him up, Mr. Sato snapped and said “WHAT!” which is Japanese for “leave me the fuck alone already”.

I told him to get out and, surprisingly, he left without any argument. This, in it’s own odd way, is telling. As I said before, In Japan, the Group, in all its forms, is important. Mr. Sato clearly wasn’t feeling a part of the group.

The teacher observing my class was visibly shocked, but he understood.

The second time it happened was fairly recent and occurred during open school when three mothers were observing my class. The open school happened to fall on a presentation day when my students had to get up in pairs and do an original conversation. The first couple pairs were okay, but the third refused to go up. I wasn’t too surprised, as one of the partners, let’s call him Mr. Kato, had been sleeping, trying to do other homework and generally being unhelpful during the writing phase (prompting his partner to declare “I don’t have a partner.”) I said they didn’t have a choice. They had to go up and do their conversation.

After some “negotiation” they finally went up and, well, first Mr. Kato tried to take his script (not okay) then he tried to cheat (also not okay) then he tried impress me with his attitude (fool). I pointed out I have a nine year old daughter with more attitude and better English and put him and his partner out in the hall to practice. I apologized to the mothers and, surprisingly, they stuck around apparently to watch the end of the match.

Eventually Mr. Kato and his partner went up and did a decent job, which earned me some points with the mothers. Although that’s exactly the kind of stuff I have to worry about and I reported what had happened to the homeroom teacher (I also told him the other students had done well). It’s also the kind of stuff I really ought not try a third time.