What’s your worst experience with a school?

16 comments

1. A student threw a desk at me when I was pregnant. I was able to turn so it hit my back and I didnt fall.

   Sadly the school did nothing as the kid had issues, but eventually he was removed and sent to city school for naughty kids.

2. a bunch of kids stopped wearing masks, not just pulling them down just straight up weren’t wearing them, and when I complained to kouchou-sensei I was told it was “難しい”

3. Went as an emergency substitute at a school one day and got screamed at for atleast two minutes by the Japanese “English teacher” in a room full of people because I didn’t see her note that the schedule changed ( because I wasn’t allowed inside the ALT room by the staff) then that staff pretended it wasn’t her fault for not allowing me to enter the ALT room lol I asked her twice if I can enter and she blocked the door both times. Had she let me enter I would’ve seen the note. I wish I screamed back but I was so shocked and al the other teachers and staff were also shocked the faculty room went super silent and all eyes was on me. Crossed that school off my substitution list..

4. My lady boss head teacher man handled and power harassed me in front of the whole teacher’s room. Oh and the elementary kid who made a mess and threw stuff while disparaging both myself and my coworker. Thankfully the other kids recognized he went too far.

5. Having three third graders in JHS start playing with themselves and without flinching or laughing ask me for sex.

   Luckily I was close to the toilet so i ran and vomited.

   The year before the ALT was moved for apparently touching and kissing a kid. Wonder if that was the same student(s)…..

   Edit: This isn’t a brag or a a troll, far from it. Seems like some of you thought I was somehow bragging or trolling. Smh.

6. Why do Japan lifers always love the worst stories? Why can’t we do best or something geez

7. I was working at a technical college for a few years, and had a class scheduled for the period after lunch, so I put the videotape (yes, this was years ago) in the player, and had my lunch.

   After starting the class, I informed them that we would be watching a short video, and blah blah blah. There was some unusual twittering at this piece of what I considered to be fairly innocuous news, so I paid it no mind. I turned everything on, pushed play and…

   Somebody had been watching a porn video during lunch and had replaced my videotape with theirs. It took me about twenty seconds before I realized that I was showing some sort of bondage porn to my class.

8. Yeah, that Santa thing is rude as fuck.

   For me it was probably when I had an inflamed herniated disc in my back could barely walk but had to see students off at the airport as they were heading off on a study abroad trip. I explained before, during and after that I’d only be able to stay at the airport for a couple of hours (was my day off) because I was in pain.

   Left early as stated then a couple of days later got screamed at for “disgracing the school” and failing to perform my duties. When I told the principal I was quitting a couple of months later I got a “Whaaaaaat? Whyyyyy?!”

9. [deleted]

10. A few years ago I was working in a small JHS out in the countryside. I was there two to three days a week and got on well with the staff and students. I had been there over a year and it was my favourite school by far. I often joined in their after school cross-country running practice with the students. One day a staff member told me to come to the gym because they were about to start a ceremony announcing which teachers would be the leaders of which sports team for the upcoming sports day.
    So I came into the gym which was filled with all of the students separated into “white team” on one side and “red team” on the other side and lined up with about 20 or so teachers.
    One by one the teachers names were called and it was announced which team they would be on. The students were cheering and the teachers were running through tunnels made by the students and high fives all around. Teachers were putting on comedy wigs and glasses and other props and giving mini speeches and mini comedy routines for their teams. Slowly the teacher pool got smaller and smaller until I was the only one left standing without being assigned to a team. As they prepared to move on the students were looking at me and several of them were saying “what about Tanikushokutomu sensei? What about Tanikushokutomu sensei?”. I wasn’t assigned to a team and I was left standing there watching the students and teachers excitedly celebrate their team placements and start team building exercises.
    I have often heard stories about people in American schools lining up and getting picked last for sports games and how bad it feels but imagine being the last person in the lineup and not getting picked at all.
    It was not a great day.

11. I think I had it pretty easy during my three years in Tohoku. The teacher I spent the most time working with was super motivated and an outside-the-box thinker. Crazy, I know.

    There were a few snubs of varying degrees from other JTE’s, but nothing I considered too egregious.

    However, in my first year, there was one teacher I worked with who just couldn’t be bothered. I understand his lack of motivation, even if I don’t agree with how he acted on it. He was clearly a PE teacher who drew the short straw and had to teach English class. His English wasn’t very good. He didn’t want to be doing this. The school was going to close down and merge with two other nearby schools at the end of the year anyway.

    Classes frequently became English self-study or “just do this worksheet” kind of classes. Sometimes he would just abandon class without much warning, telling me he had such-and-such meeting to attend (in the middle of a class period?) or some urgent matter to handle. Whenever I tried to meet with him to discuss the plan for the next couple classes, he was nowhere to be found.

    Until I did find him. Well, I asked some students where he was, and they knew. It turns out, he was disappearing to his vehicle. I don’t know if these things are common outside the countryside, but he had one of those mini-not-a-van-but-kind-of-like-those-old-VW-micro-buses van… car… things, one with a little TV on the dashboard. He’d semi-surreptitiously slip off into his car, smoke cigarettes, and watch TV, leaving this greenhorn alone to edu-tain the students in his absence.

12. A friend of mine got accused of cyber-stalking a student. The Mum said he was sending sexual photos and calling her (yes the story changed from the student to the Mum so thats how we caught her in the lie). Police came to the school and interviewed my friend – I was horrified with what happened, how could my friend do this. I was called in for an interview because they wanted to check some information.

    The Mum said that she was going over to his house for sex etc. Could not describe his house or where he lived. Said it was between a certain period but he was having a baby and his folks were in town staying at his house.

    Turns out Mum did not have his number or email address and admitted to the police that it was a lie. Friends career destroyed so he left Japan for good. Police did nothing to help him and the lawyers said it wasn’t worth it going after her.

    Quit my job in disgust (we worked for the same company)

13. One day a kid, who had punched female teachers at the school before, snapped one day and decided to punch basically every teacher he came across. Eventually he was hanging around the school gate and got into a confrontation with the elderly vice principal. Teachers were going out one by one to either see what the commotion was or to try to talk this kid down. Finally it was just me in the staff room all by myself. This was the second day of term exams so there was fuck all for me to do.

    So I decided to go outside, too, and see what the hell was going on (bad idea). About a minute after I got there, the vice principal turns and walks away. Apparently this was completely unacceptable to this kid, who waits about 5 seconds before running after the vice principal. I happened to have been standing in between them and when he ran past me, I grabbed and restrained the kid (also a bad idea).

    That night I got a call from the principal informing me that I should go down to the school the next day (a Saturday) and together we’d go to the police station because the police wanted to get my side of the story. She stressed that I wasn’t suspected of wrong-doing but it sure as hell never feels that way when you talk into a police building (not just a koban). That turned into a day-long retelling of the story in meticulous detail while the principal and a supervisor from my dispatch company looked on. Then came the stupid reenactment, where a bunch of cops put signs around their necks and you act out what happened. I cannot overstate how stupid of a police procedure this is to me.

    The kid got suspended for two weeks and came back well-behaved. Other male teachers had heard about what I’d done and would ask me to go on patrol after finishing my lunch in the hopes that I’d, I dunno, find kids doing something bad and snitch on them which is not at all the role I wanted to play as an ALT.

    So, moral of the story, always stay at your fucking desk and never do anything you don’t have to.

14. I had a 5th grade kid throw a dead frog at me. The nearest teacher came over and said “He can’t help it. He doesn’t understand” (understood enough not to throw it at you…), put his arm around his shoulder and said to apologize. Kid said sorry, which carried no meaning, so I asked him why he was sorry.

    Wife has more interesting stories, which is why she quit.

    One being the JHS girl from the year level she was HRT for getting it on with a HS boy in a karaoke box with others around. When the parents were informed they went balistic at the teachers.

    Girl in wife’s class graffitied a playground. Wife had to go supervise on a Saturday while the girl cleaned it off.

    In her first year of teaching she walked into a situation where a student was holding a first-year male teacher to the wall by his throat.

    There are others she hasn’t told me beacuse she doesn’t want to have to think about them.

15. I worked with someone who gave the students math problems to do. By his logic, if they spoke English while figuring them out, that counted as learning. Other times he would print out 50 grammar questions and just hand them the worksheet to do in pairs. Again, in his eyes, this counted as speaking practice and of course, grammar learning.

    But that is nothing compared with some of the stories here. Holy shit…

    But one of the worst stories I’ve ever head from someone else was from a friend of mine, who told me that there was a male student at her eikaiwa who would masturbate under the table during classes with female teachers. The teachers complained, but the school didn’t want to do anything because MONEY, so the way it was handled was to always give him male teachers. Can you IMAGINE working for a place like that?

    I honestly don’t understand why anyone works in eikaiwa. The industry is rotten to the core and irredeemable.

16. This is so sad. If only we can just leave early and they can do whatever they want.