The Pumpkin Carving Debacle

I get it. I do. It’s just deeply frustrating.
At one of my schools, nearly every activity I’ve planned goes great. The kids are into it, they listen more or less attentively (or just babble excitedly in my direction) and because I am there infrequently, the teachers and I have little time to talk, but the activity clicks anyway. In the last two months, I can only think of one or two activities that were a little shaky.
But at my other school…it’s as if every activity I have is a disaster. The kids either stare me blankly (it’s incredible, they bounce off the walls and down the hallways until you sit them down in a desk, and automatically, their eyes glaze over before you’ve even started talking) or they turn in their desks to talk to their friends behind them. I’ve tried using the same activities-but maybe the kids at my 2nd school are just not as flexible in English, so I try switching out activities. I even try throwing in some Japanese-and nothing.
It doesn’t help that one or two bad students in my 2nd school can somehow control the entire class. At my 1st school (designated from here on out as the School of the Rotten Lunches, tSRL) there are a few bad apples, usually in the way of class clowns. They chatter, the kids laugh at them, but they participate and are generally enthusiastic.
My 2nd school (designated from here on out as the School of Fifty Fity, tSFF) is either well behaved, but silent as a tomb, or totally undisciplined and in the iron fist of control by two to three bad students.

Any JETs who happen upon this blog are already aware of this, but for the rest of you, here’s a little background about the education situation in Japan. It is against the law to force a student to leave class. There is no such thing as detention, and I still haven’t gathered what sort of punishment the students do receive, beyond a harsh talking to. I’ve accepted “bad” students who sleep in class, for whatever reason-I’ve come to the conclusion that while I wish I could get them excited about English, it may just not be their cup of tea, and as long as they’re sleeping, they are not being rude or disruptive. And heck, maybe they were up all night studying for their math exam, which they need a good score on to get into high school. Maybe even talented and otherwise dedicated students can fall asleep in class.
But other bad students, well….
At tSFF today, I tried to teach a Halloween lesson to one of the grade’s selection classes. Unfortunately, this class contains two of the worst students, in regards to English; the Bad President, and Above-It Boy. They literally turned their backs on me during the, what, 8 minute Powerpoint presentation… Refused to participate… Shot me dirty looks any time I came near them. The JTE and I had planned to carve pumpkins and do a mummy wrap game, but the students just refused to do anything. Even the reward of candy wasn’t enough to motivate Above-It Boy. (After discovering she could get something to eat, which seems to be her sole goal when investing any time in English, the Bad President participated without further harassment.)

I know, two months in, it’s not the enlightened and teacher-y thing to do, to say I give up on some of the bad students. But I only have so much attention and motivation. Should I push all of it into “connecting” with bad students, even if that means neglecting the students who are actually trying? Should I spend my time being ignored and spat at by Above-It Boy, or should I give my attention to Tall Mouse, whom while not an exceptional student and with obvious struggles in English, stills says "Good morning" the loudest, always raises her hand, and really makes a titanic effort?

In my opinion…I’ll concentrate my efforts, and my rewards, on students who are trying. For instance, another student, who I call Shortman, had previously been one of the students that irked me the most. During last week’s class, however, I made sure to give stickers to him when he displayed any kind of participation, and I shot him thumbs up whenever I saw he was taking notes. To my surprise, by the end of the class Shortman was actually semi-paying attention and, while granted my Japanese is miserably poor, I think he may have even told off the Bad President for talking loudly to her friends instead of studying (or he could have been saying it in a sarcastic way… hard to tell.)

I’ve heard it suggested that the reasons students aren’t listening to me is because they don’t respect me… which is all well and good, I suppose, if I could find the hidden lever somewhere in the school with each teacher’s name on it, and switch it from “rude” to “respected.” But we all know that’s not how it works. Who in the world can tell why students respect me? Maybe it’s because I’m a woman, and from my modest observations, female teachers have a much tougher time gaining respect and admiration from students than male teachers. (It seems as if, just by virtue of being male, you are cool in the books of most students.) Maybe it’s because I don’t fit the image of a gaijin… tall, blonde, foreign-seeming. Maybe it’s because I didn’t dress in a bear costume on the first day of class. Who knows? I can make up hypothesis that are impossible to check until the end of time.

For right now, I guess all I can do is keep encouraging those students who are trying.