This week we got the “performance reports” back from the students, which was rather humorous. When I was in High School and I filled out those class evaluations, I always wondered if they did anything. Now that I’m on the other side, I can safely say no they do not.

The numbers for the classes in which I co-teach were rather high. This should come as no surprise to anybody because I’m awesome. They ran the gambit from 68.3 percent approval rating to an unheard-of-for-a-class-that-isn’t-P.E. approval rating of 89.8 percent (that one, not surprisingly, came from my smartest class. I affectionately refer to them as my “Little Einsteins”).

I was disconcerted to see that the lowest approval rating in my grouping came from the class I co-teach with Obata, which I really enjoy. I wondered how that could possibly be, until I took a look at the number of students that reported in. Then I realized that the whole thing was ridiculous.

My 89.8 percent approval rating had the highest number of returned surveys, and it was 50%.

In the class I teach with Obata 14% of the students replied. That works out to three kids.

The class I least enjoy teaching because of the mouthy bastards that sit off to side of the room and cock-off all period had a fairly high approval rating, which also disturbed me, until I saw that 5% of the students returned the survey. Or should I say student. 5% works out to one dude. Whoever he or she was, their opinion will now go down as that of the entire class. 75% aint bad, so I appreciate that, fella. It got copied into the books and was distributed to the entire teaching staff.

Of my other two classes, in one of them 5 kids reported in, and in the other 4 kids reported in.

Ridiculous.


While we’re on the subject of ridiculous, I have a few other things to report of late, sort of like my rendition of Bill O’Reilly’s “Most Ridiculous Item of the Day.”


The first is this. I came across this when I was checking notebooks a few days ago. Just so you know, the Phrase of the Day was “It’s a long shot.” So close. So very close.

Ridiculous? Hilariously so.



Two weekends back we had a potluck party in Takaoka city, Toyama city’s baby sister. The party, held on the roof of an apartment building, was a lot of fun, and quite relaxing. A great idea on behalf of the two paying JET tenants that live there. They got the idea back in the summer when they saw that random construction workers would use the apartment's easy roof access for a few beers and a smoke after working.

No dice for us whiteys, though. We got kicked off.

“But we saw construction workers doing this all summer! And they don’t even live here!” One of the JETs told the landlady.

“They’re Japanese. This is their country. This is not your country,” she said in retort.

Nice. Real classy.

Ridiculous? Clearly. Uncommon? Not Exactly.


And last but not least, we have this:




Mountain Dew in bottles. Unbelievable? Surely. Ridiculous? Only if you don’t Do the Dew.

And I Do the Dew.