This is How is Starts
This is How is Starts
“Good morning”
“え？”
“Good morning.”
“あ～”
“Ah?”
“あ～”
“….Good…morning.”
“あああああああ”
“…Good….morning.”
“あ”
I wish I could say that this was a transcript for:
A conversation with a student who is currently getting dental work done.
A conversation with several different students.
But no. I cannot say that. For this was a conversation with a student I wss just introduced to today, who I will lovingly call (Chinpira)チンピラくん.
Can you spot the チンピラ?...if not...then you did not just pick one at random.
20 Minutes Earlier.
Twenty minutes earlier, I had been running a somewhat smooth class. The topic was horrendolously boring…but I was managing to get the kids to have fun doing it. What was the topic? The months and days. Yep. Months and days. Aren’t you so excited you could pee your pants?*
I was given this horrible topic to teach about 1 minute earlier, when a teacher, who I shall lovingly call (Teacher GiriGiri)ぎりぎり先生 decided to tell me what the class was about. She opted to grade papers in front of the class while I got to teaching the months and days.
So I taught them that cheesy month song, had them playing games to remember it..and we were actually getting to a point where they were enjoing the class. The kids were laughing and activitely trying to answer questions. Things were good. A teacher’s “high” was occurring if you will. Then…a THWACK happened.
Followed by this Katwack was a great deal of laughter. I did the slow head pan to my left to see that, a student I had yet to set eyes on had entered the room. Well enter isn’t the right word. What I mean is to grab a sliding door and slide it hard enough to make a loud THWACK occur. Were the room chocked full of TNT, I guarantee you that it would have exploded sending me flying through the air John Woo style......
...this is all I could find due to my school's filter...leave me alone!
However, it wasn’t. It was a normal classroom. Now…..I may have returned to fun Nick teaching mode immediately if as soon as I panned over, I didn’t hear another THWACK.
Doing the slow look yet again, I saw that he had decided to drop his bag…which apparently was full of bricks. This caused more laughter.
ぎりぎり先生 responded to this by going over to this new entry student and talking to him as if he was a 3 year old. In typical fashion for チンピラ君、used a rather rude form of you and told her to go away. This somehow got more laughter. If you know my past history with jerko….I mean….God’s Chosen Ones, you can probably guess what was going on in my head.
However, I decided this time would be different. I would try something new. As he sauntered to his chair in the front of my class (turns out, he was the one student who was missing that day…go figure) I played out several scenarios….
*Ignore him and continue on with the lesson: By doing so I would be showing him that he had no power in the class and would have to act like everyone else. Not be phased by his shenanigans.
*Give him the Nick angry stare until he got all his materials out for class: The problem with this state, is that if I use it, I find that it makes this Adorable Rays of Light become confrontational…which usually always ends with them causing a scene and stalking out of class.
*Try to be adult and allow him to join the class: This is an approach I almost never use….but if you are going to induct someone into something by giving them a choice…this is usually the good way to go about doing it.
I decided that I would somewhat combine one and three this time. Which is why when he sat down and started immediately talking to the girl ACROSS THE ROOM in a loud voice…I waited until he was finished then started the following exchange:
“Good morning”
“え？”
“Good morning.”
“あ～”
“Ah?”
“あ～”
“….Good…morning.”
“あああああああ”
“…Good….morning.”
“あ”
Now here is the thing. I have been around long enough to know when a student genuinely just genuinely cannot speak a lick of English. I know it when I see it. I also know stubborn laziness when I meet it. Now, old Nick would have kept up this whose on first game until the student cracked…but in the spirit of trying to be nicer, I decided to let is slide and would great him in Japanese. Just something to let him know he was indeed welcome to join our lovely institute of learning:
“お早うございます” (Good Morning)
“あ”
“。。。。まだ 「あ」か?” (….you are still saying Ah?)
“あ”
I decided to bail out on this one and go about my class. From entry to this point at least 2 minutes had been devoted to this one student..which is, in my opinion, about 119 seconds too long. Besides, by continuing class….we could once again achieve the pace we were at….right…right?
…Nope.
The class became boring. The games that my kids were actually enjoying, were now tanking horribly. Everyone looked bored. Timid. Why?
Because anytime anything of importance was said at all, チンピラ君 had some snide remark to say about it. Which would either get maybe 2 or 3 chuckles or make the student who answered the question shrink away. He just refused to participate in anything…and when he wasn’t, he was running his cakeho….Talking About Lovely Things to His Far Removed Lovely Compadres.
As the end of class approached, thought about what I should do to handle this situation. I have never seen this joker in class before…..and I don’t wanna sacre him off…but that said…I don’t want him making smart students feel stupid and….other students feel cool about not paying attention to the class.
That’s when I looked over to my right..and noticed that ぎりぎり先生 was still grading papers.
…
Now why hadn’t SHE done anything to help regulate this? Isn’t this, ideally her job? Isn’t her job, in reality, to be doing the job I am doing right now. IN reality, aren’t I paid to help her out…couldn’t she at least handle チンピラ君?
Apparently not.
Doing something I usually do not do….I said nothing to the kid. Nothing at all. I decided that if it happened again, I would do something about it.
…..
Now why have I spent a few pages of your time regailing you with this tale? Because I think it’s important to bring these kind of stories up to counteract the “every student is sacred and can do no wrong and there are no bad or disruptive students” that I often get. I attend a school where:
Chairs are thrown out of windows
Firecrackers set off in the front entrance
Girls and boys call teachers “Bitches” and get away with it.
Students fight each other to the point of injury.
Boys break 1500 dollar windows due to a game of tag.
Boys and girls sit int eh back and carve 死ね into the desks in the back of the class.
These are all things that happen that I witness on a nearly daily basis. To be honest, these things cause me to look forward to elementary school like I never did before. It’s not the students actions…as it’s the apathy that a majority of the teachers show.
“But Nick…..that kid you just told us about…he was just being rude in class….that’s not that extreme?”
Here is the thing…I had kids like that last year who were 2nd year students who acted that way….and the teachers let them go. Now they are 3rd year students who are doing the activities that I just mentioned to you. The 2nd years, this year….are even worse than THOSE 2nd years were last year. This type of behavior starts somewhere.
ou know…I sure have said a lot about this…I really wish there was some example of a class…that said happened….3 periods later…..that had the exact same problems, but was solved. Wouldn’t that be awesome? Wait…What…what’s this?
***
So After writing this entry during lunch, I went to a 5th and 6th period 1st year class. They both went awesome. However, I am going to pick the 6th period class to prove a point.
This is How is Should Start/End/Be
So the teacher for this class is (Akiyama)秋山先生. That is her actual name btw. Not a nickname. I don’t mind writing her name here because, quite frankly, she did a magnificent job.
This class is half filled with チンピラ who have, thanks to her become チンピラLight as I like to call them. They have a lot in common with that earlier kid I mentioned. Some of them, I think if left in the kind of environment that ぎりぎり先, would in fact be captain “あ” from earlier. From the goofing off in class if allowed, to showing up late if you let them, to walking around as if they just finished riding a horse….for umpteen hours.
However, this class was a blast. Why? This is why: 秋山先生 does not take any guff from her class. Yes, I said guff. She is not a whip cracker (which is obvious from the previous story I told you about the violent kid I almost uppercutted), but when it comes to 1st years, she has the…..guff? Yes. Guff. Let us continue using guff.
The minute that any student does anything in her class distracting…anything..she is on it. She points is out. She acknowledges it. The minute it happens. She doesn’t let students keep blabbling for 3 minutes then acknowledge it. She doesn’t let students come into her 1st year class and create a ruckus. The very minute something happens, she stops class to address it. She treats them like adults. Yet, the students love her. Why?
Because when her students do well, she tells them they do well. When they deserve praise for something, she freely gives it to them.. If you goof around in her class, she is on ya like a wild cat…if you do something well, she is on you like a wildcat…but…a wildcat of…um..compliments. A complimentcat. Just roll with me on this one.
And she does the same for any student. If a normally quiet student speaks up, she gives them credit…right there in class. If a student who gives speeches in class usually stutters along…but does well, she acknowledges to them after class that they have really improved. The point is that students have an impetus to learn and not act like jerkoffs….regardless of their nature.
Today’s class was an excellent example of that. The students gave small speeches about their daily life. Usually, these are a snore as every other teacher I have insists that we do these in the hallway….where it is negative degrees Can’t Feel My Soul during the winter.
However, 秋山先生 had her students do it in front of the class. While ぎりぎり先生 has her students do handout during the tests (quite noisily) while she checks papers (quiet ambiguously), the entire class is involved during our speech giving days. These were just 30 second speeches about a student’s daily life…. Yet 秋山先生 made sure that all the students acted as if we were watching small recitals take place. No talking, write down what your peers did well and what they could do better, applaud for them when they finish. It sounds ridiculously cheesy, but they ate it up. All of them. And keep in mind, as I said before…the class makeup here should be more prone to shenninigans than the horrible class I started this journal off with….but it wasn’t. I really hate to compare teachers…or people when I don’t have to…but there really is no other way to make the point here.
I said before that this type of bad behavior starts somewhere. It does.
It starts, with チンピラ君, the first year, acting like a tosser in class. The moment a teacher decides how to handle a student who could be troublesome, dictates how a class will be run. Will it be ignorance and treatment as if they are a naughty elementary student? Or will they be treated as adults, punished when deserved. Praised when deserved. Am I wrong here? Am I off base? Is this not a good time(1st year students) for a teacher to say, hop in…and do something about it? Anything? Why not solve the problem NOW and save yourself 3 years of pain? Why not solve the problem now and have classes that students enjoy attending? Where students who want to learn can learn..and the ones who don’t can learn HOW to enjoy learning? Yeah…I said it. Learn how to enjoy learning.
…
Did I just say learn to enjoy learning? Am I actually turning into a bad 80’s motivational speaker. Ballocks….I think I am. This is bad news bears. Heck, I just said bad news bears.
…..Now if you excuse me, this entry has run out of steam and I am going to look up the movie/TV series Bad News Bears. About time I knew what the heck that was about…..