Venting Steam

Being a parent has given me the patience of a saint, which comes in handy when teaching (although I fall quite short of sainthood in most other areas of life). But just because I'm patient doesn't mean I'm a pushover--I have been known to hassle my students for not paying attention during class, confiscate distracting belongings, and even pull books out from underneath the faces of sleeping students. However, I have never come even close to losing my temper with a student...until today.

The student that almost caused me to lose my cool is a female student--the type that pretends to be brainless for the sake of cuteness. She had been chatting with her friends in Japanese for most of the class when I introduced some new English phrases and instructed the class to repeat them. Absolutely no sound (English, anyway) came from her section, so I told her section to repeat alone. When I did this, she stared directly into my eyes in defiance, without moving her lips. So I made her section repeat again. Again the defiant stare. I then told her to repeat the phrase by herself. Nothing. I stood by her desk and insisted. Still nothing. By this time, she was looking down, defying me with giggling instead of staring. This continued for a couple of minutes, after which I decided it was not worth wasting classtime on her. So I told her that if she wasn't going to speak English in my class, she'd better not be speaking Japanese in to her friends during class, either.

I picked up the lesson where I had left off, but soon she was giggling and chatting to the girl next to her again. I ordered her to go sit by herself at the back of the classroom. She did nothing but glare at me. I repeated myself. Nothing. So I began to physically move her chair with her in it (it had wheels on the bottom). She then realized there was no way I was letting this slide, so she stood up, let out a hmphf!-like sound, and picked up her things and headed to the back of the room. I embarrassed her in front of her friends, so I don't think she will be challenging my authority again for a while.

I think the most frustrating thing about students' misbehaviors in Japan is that there is very little to punish students with. In the States, teachers can give students tardies, detention, send them out of the room or even to the principle's office for such behavior. Here, things like that just don't happen.