And then all hell broke loose

Wow, I feel like I'm living in an episode of the Twilight Zone.  This week was the all exciting "Parent-Teacher-Student conferences".  Every student and teacher met to discuss the student's attitude, motivation, and performance in class.  In Japan, students stay in the same classroom all day while the teachers rotate.  Each class has a homeroom teacher that keeps a class notebook of behavior notes for all of the students in each class.  Teachers also meet daily to talk about concerns.  These concerns are then delivered to parents in the most honest, but sensitive (Japanese) way possible.  I really wish I could have been present for some of them.  I expect to see a lot of gifts in the teacher's lounge next week from embarrassed parents.  So, what's happened this week?

Monday - wow, oh wow...a busy day of reading tests.  I have to admit the students are improving, but gosh, listening to 80 Japanese kids trying to read English is near painful.  And then listening to them complain when they get a B, because "please" became "place" and "try" became "nantoka" (UH....) and every word was read in robotic fashion...sigh.  I quickly learned the phrase, "kimochi wo komete" (insert feeling).

Later in the day, I was heading upstairs to the 1st year's floor (4th floor).  As I passed the 2nd year floor, I suddenly hear, "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!" and then spotted kids running up and down the hallway.  Then a group of girls start in on "Old McDonald..."  which was more like: "Uh huh uhhh huh nanana E-I-E-I-OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...heheheahahaha."  Then came the banging and a group of boys shoving each other up against the wall.  It's like the 3rd floor psych ward.  Continuing up to the 4th floor, I walk into class 1-1 and stop dead in my tracks.  It's about 30 degrees outside and they have every window and balcony door open.  Students are sitting on their desks, some boys are throwing paper airplanes, a group of girls are trying to grab one another's private parts, as are a group of three boys who are piled on each other's laps in a single chair.  To top it off, the two smallest, nerdiest boys in class are fighting, literally. One boy had the other boy in a choke hold (limply) and was punching him in the stomach (probably to little affect).  OH DEAR GOD!  What the hell has happened here!?  I stop and just stare for a few seconds upon which they notice me and stop.  The English teacher walks in and I say, "It seems all hell has broken loose."  She just looks at me and asks what that means.  I then give an impromtu lesson on the phrase, writing it on the board so she can see it.  She then says, "Recently, all hell has been breaking loose in class 1-1 and I don't know why the kids have become crazy" (taught her crazy last week).  Shoganai ne (it can't be helped).

Tuesday - Elementary school.  The real highlight of my day was receiving this picture, for the 6th grade yearbook, drawn by the secretary.  I  am the one on the right swinging from the stem.  Totally awesome.  She asked me to write something and not knowing really what to write, I spent about 1 minute writing "nantoka nantoka...blahblahblah" and then gave it back.  She looked at me and says, "You're already done! That's fast...it took me 3 days to draw the picture."  Uhhhh??? And? Am I supposed to take three days to write a note to a group of kids I see once a month?  Probably not the best response I could have come up with.

Wednesday - Start of parent conferences, only 4 classes.  After which I was asked to help tutor slower students.  3 girls. The first girl is clearly slower, back in America she would be in a resource classroom.  She really struggles in school, but all the teachers say is: "she just doesn't have any motivation to learn." Hmm, even when she does try she gets 15 out of 100 at best.  She's a sweet girl, but the only thing I ever hear from her is, "zenzen wakaranai" (I don't understand anything).  The second girl walks in with a CRAZY look in her eye, almost like she wanted to eat me alive.  She turned to the English teacher and says, "I don't want to work with Jones. She's scary." ME!?!  Crap this girl always looks ready to beat someone up.  At that moment, another student came in to ask a question and the little girl turns to her, in a gangster like voice barks, "Wadda ya want? Get outta here." WHOA!? The girl ignores her and keeps trying to talk.  The little girl just keeps saying to get out, she can't be in here.  Then a 3rd student trails in.  She's the smallest 2nd year student.  This girl spends the majority of her time in the nurse's office or standing at the entrance of the teacher's lounge.  Last week, her other classmates were screaming at her in the middle of class, while she wildly drew dark circles through her textbook.  A couple days later she called 119 to come get her from school because she didn't want to go home.  They couldn't get any information out of her, so she ended up spending a few hours at the police station.  Crap and I'm supposed to do what with these girls?  Teach them phonics?! WHAT!  At first the little gangster girl wouldn't even look at me, the slow girl immediately forgot everything the second we moved onto another letter, and the little girl...she honestly didn't really seem to need any help, but was there probably just to have something to do so the other kids wouldn't pick on her.  All in all it was pretty fun.  I taught them that calling a teacher, teacher, in America is rude and I'd prefer Miss Jones.  When I got up to leave they all said, "Thank you Miss Jones."  AHH!!! so cute.  I guess it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

Thursday - Not so cute.  This time I was asked to help 4 boys...oh lord help me.  From the very start one boy would only say "poop" to every question.
Me- "A, A, Apple"
Him- "A, A, Apple poop"
Me - "D, D, Dog"
Him-"D, D, Dog poop"
Sigh...then he made the sentence (in English) - "Poop in pasta rice."
Me - "Wow, impressive...next"
We then get to F
Me - "F, F, Fish"
Him-"F, F, F*ck You"
Me - WHOA! I don't think so!  In America that'll get you hit, you don't say that."  The boys were genuinely shocked that people will hit you for saying that.  Here it's about as casual as any other greeting one might use.
After F, he goes back to poop.
Me - "S, S, snake"
Him - "S, S, sh*t"
OH COME ON!  SERIOUSLY!? Quickly finishing the rest of the sounds, the boy stands up and goes...no joke, "All this talk of poop.  I want to go poop now.  Wait a second."
Upon returning, he begins spelling memorable words like, sex and hentai eros (perverted love).  Of course right at that moment another teacher comes in and sees this and to my suprise says absolutely nothing!!! No wonder the kids go nutty in his class.
I try to move on to teaching verbs.
Me - "Eat"
Boys -"I eat girls" (NO JOKE)
Me - "Play"
Boys - "Boys and girls play sex" (Here they teach the kids that the verb "do" also means play)
Me - Okay, I'm done. You guys seem to know everything you'll need later in life.  Good luck. Bye bye.

Friday - I was in a 3rd year class helping students translate sentences.  One of the boys in the class was just sitting there, so I went over to help him figure out the first sentence.  As I was squatting near his desk he throws his hands up to his face and shouts, "GAIJIN OPPAI! AH! Oh NO! Oh My GOD! SO BIG! OH OH OH!"  WHAT THE HECK! I don't even have large breasts.  He finally calms down and I try to help him.  At the end of class, as I'm leaving and he stands up and says, "Thank you VERY much Mr. Jones."

Yes, I'm not a big breasted man.  Doesn't get much better than that.  Just 3 days left before break.  Should be interesting to see how things go from here.

And just when I thought things couldnt get any nuttier...

they do.

This week, 6 2nd year boys thought it would be entertaining to fight in the hallways after school...5-on-1.  Needless to say the 1 boy was pretty banged up.  Teachers were pissed because that meant they had to stay late to talk to all of the boys and their parents.  And what exactly came of this 2 hour 6pm meeting?  NOTHING!  The very next day every boy was back in class with nooo consequences and according to the teachers 1/2 of them didn't think that they did anything wrong!!!! What the heck!? 

It seems that by this point in the year, everyone in school, including the teachers, have become afraid of ONE boy.  I'm going to call him flowerman...1) because I'm not creative enough to come up with something different and 2) because part of his name is flower.  Flowerman isn't even that intimidating.  I've seen much more threatening 1st graders back in America.  But for some reason, some of the bigger boys, manchildren really, in the 2nd grade are also afraid of him.  I guess the teachers and students think he's actually crazy.  And by crazy they mean that he doesn't care about anything; which probably sounds awfully familiar to most teachers in the States.  His parents have given up and the teachers won't go near him, so that leaves him and his pea-sized brain to run the 3rd floor of the school.  It's like promoting the craziest patient in the psych ward to ward director. NUTS! ABSOLUTELY NUTS!  I'm tired of this crap.  My voice can't take any more screaming over the animal house that is the 3rd floor.  Next week I'm going to implement my solution.  It's called PROJECT ESTABLISH DOMINANCE.  Just give me a few more days in the gym and my biceps should be ready to challenge him to the time-tested gauge of manliness:  an arm-wrestling competition.  That's right, I'm going to challenge a 13 year old boy to an arm-wrestling contest.  Since I don't know enough Japanese to talk to him, I figure the best I can do is drop his ego a few notches.  Fortunately, there aren't any laws in Japan against such methods and people here don't sue.  Unfortunately, there aren't any safety regulations either and all the students are allowed to carry box cutters.  Yeah, that's right, in the madness that is Japanese education they actually let each kid carry around their own box cutter...CRAP! That's like giving the people in prison a knife upon entry.  Where the hell is the common sense!?

On a happier note, kids are finally starting to talk to me.  These conversation range from being asked, "Do you know something something Nightingale?" This was actually sung to me by a group of 4 1st year girls...I had NOOO idea what it was until one girl pronounced EVERY phoneme of the word.  I've been asked if my glasses are fashion glasses (people actually wear fake glasses over their contacts here).  I get asked daily if this is my real hair color, eye color, etc., etc.  My favorite conversation today was with a second year boy who caught me jay-walking.  This is the same boy who screams, "NAN DAIYO!" every time I look at him...(what/why are you doing that!?).  He felt it was his duty to tell me that it was wrong and that I should wait until the light turns blue.  Yes, in Japan the traffic light is blue, not green, even though it really is green.  I was impressed by his attempt at using English to chastize me about illegally crossing the street (especially since the same kid sleeps through class every day).  But nothing was better than the naughty 2nd year boy who seems to have learned English by osmosis....

Class 2-2 (the LOUDEST class in school) Start of class -

Naughty boy at the back - "Stand-up.  Please say Stand-up!"
Teacher - "Stand up please. Hello, class"
Class - "Hello Mrs. Tabiti" (they really call her that)
Naughty boy- "How are you class?"
Teacher...looking annoyed - "How are you today?"
Naughty boy- "Imfainsenkyunu and Ms. Jones?"
Mrs. Jones - "Good afternoon everyone"
Boys - "Good afternoon beautiful teacher Jones" (HELL YEAH!)
Mrs. Jones - "How are you today?"
Naughty boy - "I'm fabulous senks" (this is my line)
Mrs. Jones - "I'm super thanks"
Naughty boy - "Tabiti teacher what's super?"
For the rest of the class the student continued with all the teacher's lines, "Please turn to page 35." "Please repeat after Ms. Jones." "Okay, good job class now I'm Yuki and you're Mike."  "You are listening to English Radio...."

Ahhhh, that explains it all.  But I'm not going to complain.  The last last 10 minutes of class I was left by myself with nothing to do.  Standing at the front of the class, I suddenly find myself alone with absolutely NO idea what I'm going to do, when the naughty boy at the back yells, in English "Quiet everybody this is English time, Ms. Jones is trying to teach.  Listen to her."  He then says it in Japanese and when everyone gets quiet he goes, "Okay Ms. Jones."  We went through flashcards a few times...still time left....stalling stalling... losing the kids...but the kid in the back once again shouted for everyone to shut up.  HALLELUJIAH!!! Where the heck did he come from?!  Fabulous!!!  I don't understand what all these teachers are worked up about.  The 2nd years are so bad really.