Like Oz (the KBCO dj, not the wizard) says, it's Finallyfinallyfinallyfinally a Friday. I feel I've earned it, and yet I know that even as I sit here writing, in a blink it will be gone. Today I taught two classes, one of them for (supposedly) one of the most advanced levels, and one of them for a not so advanced level. Now, I don't know who has the final say about which students go into which classes, but I'm not so sure they really have their head screwed on straight. For instance, today we did worksheets (created by me) about opposites and parts of the body. As soon as I passed it out, I had several students fill them both in quickly and correctly, and then fall asleep. This is fine with me, if they get it right they can sleep all damn day as far as I'm concerned, at least they're not running their mouths. The problem is, sitting right next to these whiz kids are several other students who cannot, for the life of them, figure out where a persons toe is, or what a knee is. In fact, with some of them, just a simple introduction is like pulling teeth. I suppose this is what comes with having a very small school, however. With so few classes, we are bound to have overlapping talent. Such is life.

We have trouble makers at my school. It is a private school, one that takes the dregs of Japanese academics; the kids that get kicked out of other schools, or that can't hack it in the public school system, or that have certain learning disabilities. Sometimes this fact is hardly apparent; i have my fair share of classes in which the kids seem genuinley interested to learn, and several students in particular that make you feel like teaching is a good thing. Other times, however, when half of the class is talking or sleeping, I go "oh, rightrightright... I had forgotten about the whole "private school" thing." No student is rude to me or anything, I think the fact that I am tall and male helps with that, but several students just don't give a damn about anything. Or, more precisely, make a concerted effort to get noticed as they are not doing anything, to impress other classmates. In this sense, I suppose the only thing they give a damn about is not giving a damn. The boys aren't so bad. They generally just space out, or sleep. The other day I tapped a boy and he wouldn't wake up, so i hit him softly on the head with some paper, and he wouldn't wake up, so I took out a permanent marker and drew on him. This woke him up. However, as we all know, you can wake a kid up, but you can't make him care.

Now, let me tell you about girls.

I do not understand Japanese High School girls. Quite frankly, i still often have a hard time understanding any girl, but High School girls are bad, and Japanese High School girls can be really bad. Once again, there are many well behaved and polite, happy to learn girls in this school. There are also the tramped out, glitz-girls that the Japanese call "Gal Girls" (a bit redundant, but whatever). These chicks blatanly and fragrantly abuse the good graces of the hard-working teachers at this school. They loudly chat over lessons, and repeatedly check their cell-phones for text messages. (Yeah, I see you, we all know people text you, we get it, Ho.) But worst of all, they will take the worksheets you make before hand, put them away without doing them, and take out their little mirrors and makeup and combs and hair-pins and do their makeup for a solid hour. Every period of class. Nobody, not even the vainest, most self-absorbed, conceited woman in the world needs upwards of four hours to do makeup. Nobody. They pluck their eyebrows, and apply base, and use that little thingy to pull out their lashes, and they put on a bunch of other shit, and then they start in on their hair, all the while giggling and laughing like a bunch of doped up circus clowns. Which is what they generally end up looking like after four hours of applying make up.


Oh well. If it was up to me, every student would be required to submit their cellphones and makeup and mirrors to an armed guard before class, and then sign for them after school to pick them back up, Folsom Prison style.

As it is, I'll just have to keep making the handouts, and keep reminding them of them as they sit staring into their mirrors, and keep sighing as their gerbil-like attention spans get the better of them and they go back to giggling like idiots. The worst part is, I know they could do it if they actually tried.