Back in the mists of time, I was doing the ALT gig in a nondescript JHS in a nondescript town. It was morning and I was team teaching with the head JTE. He was a good guy, usually very chilled. The other thing to remember about him was that he was also the guy responsible for the judo 部活動 club and was himself a black belt holder, so he was pretty solidly built.
Anyway, the lesson starts. He had apparently assigned some kind of homework or preparatory reading, although my Japanese wasn’t great back then and I didn’t get the specifics. But I grasped enough to follow what was happening.
He called on one student. Student stands up, says (this is from memory) something like “I did not do the preparatory work”. JTE tells the student to sit down and calls on a different student. Student says much the same thing: he didn’t do the preparatory work. This continues for several more students, at which point the JTE asks who *did* do the prep work. Very few hands go up.
To set the stage: the JTE was standing up, and on a desk next to him was a pile of books.
From out of nowhere, this normally perfectly-chill guy sends the entire pile of books flying several feet in a horizontal direction with a single flick of his hand, and then he rips into the students with an impressive demonstration of rolled “r” sounds. As I said, I didn’t have very good Japanese at the time, but I didn’t need it. The faces of the kids, most of whom were staring fixedly at their desks, was enough to give me the general tenor of his remarks. He then dismissed the class without a final greeting and we all left the room.
Anyone else seen something like this? It was years ago now, but it’s still strongly imprinted on my memory because it was so unusual.
22 comments
Its fairly common among male junior high school teachers, or was until 5-6 years ago…its definitely relaxing now…it depends on where you live/how your principal is. I work with a guy who is insanely chill, but will occasionally ‘act’ that way when teaching the first graders just to try and whip them in line for junior high school. I personally disagree with his method, and he injured his toe once kicking a desk ‘pretending’ to be angry, but his students all like him, and we usually get along.
Worked at one school where it would happen once a week regular. They just go batshit insane at 1 kid out of no where for like 10 minutes straight (or more) while the entire class just sits there. Or in the corridor, while it echoes down the whole school. It’s insane. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. I think it’s a teaching style or something. Seemed really antiquated and abusive to me. Something you’d only see in the movies. Happened at a second school I worked in too but only 1 or 2 teachers did it in that one and not frequently. They would also walk up and down lines of students in school assembly and give them a poke or a wack too if they weren’t sitting upright enough. Would like to know more. I asked a few times and basically most teachers don’t like it either or they explain it by saying “students were really bad 10 years ago so now we do this as a form of control”. If you’ve never encountered it before I think you will have no idea what this thread is about and not believe it lol. Interested in what others think. By the way, never seen it happen once in my “modern city” schools. If I encountered it again I’d probably just walk out, because fuck that. But when you’re new you can’t understand Japanese so you have no idea what’s happening, whether it’s deserved, actually real, or whether it’s culturally normal and you’re the bad guy for not liking it.
This was back in 2014-2015. I was teaching high school and was the head foreign teacher in the international dept of a private K-12 school. My boss was a Chinese guy who had managed to climb the ranks of the school through his department (science) and somehow ended up becoming the head of all the English teachers (foreign and national). He also spoke absolutely no English.
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One day, a freshman student (Apple) comes into the classroom with a new iPhone 6 and is showing it off, to which I told her that she needed to keep that in her desk or bag because it could get damaged or stolen, and to be careful (no phone case). It had cost her parents somewhere between $1000-2000 USD and was the talk of the class. After lunch break, I returned to my shared office where all the teachers sat at their desks. The students were waiting for me to open the classroom door so they could shuffle in. So, I opened the door and I noticed my boss coming down the hall hurriedly. He pushed past most of the students who were entering the room and I had assumed one of them had done something wrong or missed a 1-on-1 with him. I went back to my office and started typing up a report.
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Several minutes later I heard shouting, and my boss kicked the door open and held a new transfer (literally it was like his second week). My boss was holding the girl’s phone and he told the girl to wait outside. The conversation went like this (again, not in English):
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Boss: You can’t have a phone at the school! You know this!
Boy: Let me go! It’s not my phone. I was just playing a phone game while we waited for (Me) to open the door after lunch.
Boss: You can’t talk back to me! One more word and I’ll break the phone!
Boy: IT ISN’T MY PHONE! IT’S APPLE’S PHONE!
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Boss then throws the caseless phone onto the ground (cement) with full force and it shatters. He then proceeds to stomp on it. Meanwhile, Apple is watching in absolute horror as she sees her very expensive phone she just got the day before become useless glass and plastic. She starts bawling and the transfer kid, as my boss is stepping on it, starts to cuss out my boss.
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Then the teacher kicks the transfer kid in the stomach, again with full force. Despite this very scrawny kid being beaten by an adult, he goes *insane* and starts punching the absolute hell out of my boss. As soon as my boss kicked the kid, I decided to intervene and I tried to pull him away from the new kid. Hilariously, my boss thought I was coming to help him and he handed me his glasses and told me to hold the kid. Of course, I absolutely did not do that and instead tried to pull them apart. Two other male teachers (both foreigners) also got between the two, but every other teacher just kind of watched with their mouths agape. I then ushered the hallway students into their respective classes and took my transfer student to the school nurse.
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The kid ended up walking away with less apparent damage, but he did have to go to the hospital for getting kicked so hard in the stomach. My boss left work early that day after calling Apple’s parents. Of course, Apple had to apologize to the class because ShE kNeW tHe RuLeS and broke them and was told she incited this whole situation because she brought her phone. The new kid also had to apologize. I told the principal what happened and she looked surprised, but not enough that she would do anything. I knew my boss would probably get talked to but that would be it.
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And I was right, because at the end of the year graduation ceremony, he was awarded Teacher of the Year by the school and was given two very expensive items. I don’t recall exactly what they were, but I think one was a vase and the other was something akin to a trophy. One of my colleagues said that the value of those two items would have been in the millions of yen and very costly to make given whatever material they were made from (not gold or anything like that).
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I quit that school shortly after the graduation. After the fight I was upset to see an educator attack a student so openly, but in the end I decided I would stick it out for my students’ sake.
Saw things like that here and there my first years in Japan over 10 years ago. Don’t hear about things like that too much these days with all these panels and committees popping up thanks to monster parents and Karens, though I’m sure they still do here and there.
One of the best things i saw long time ago was an English teacher (who was also the basketball coach) literally pull a “tough” student who told him to “Die/Fuck off” up out of his seat by his jacket, dragged him outside and scolded him loudly for like 10 minutes. I’m sure the whole neighborhood knew what was going on lol. I was like “Uh… So who wants to play Bingo?”
Kid came back in crying like a bitch and was quiet for the rest of the year.
In my second week i watched the ES principal walk into my grade 6 class and throw 3 desks and 4 chairs out into the hallway (as an innocent bystander i got hit by one chair and tried very hard to not react 😂) i have never wanted to understand japanese more than in that moment lol
I used to work for an English school that was located in one of these elementary school jukus. One time in the hallway, I saw the head staff scolding this boy about something. I’m not sure what it was. He couldn’t have been older than 12. All of a sudden, he grabbed the boys neck and pushed him against the wall. I watched this boy’s eyes widen in fear, and I was so shocked he did this out in the open, I didn’t know what to do. He let the boy go and the boy ran back to the classroom. I told my coworker because she was part of the juku while I wasn’t but I don’t think anything came of it. I still think about it sometimes.
Yes and it was glorious. His class were just being general hellions and not doing their work so failing and finally he snapped. Went from cool calm collected to raging yakuza boss. Needless to say the other teachers were happy about it 😂
We had a huge volleyball HRT teacher snap years back, it was a hellish JHS with 40+ student classes and absolutely no discipline. Small gangs of students always roaming the halls and such. 3rd floor classroom, 1st year students, teacher just stops mid sentence, no one notices since they weren’t listening anyway. Walks over to the waist high windows and starts slowly opening them, no emotion, it’s the dead of winter and finally students are taking notice and the class goes silent (for once) I think everyone like me was wondering if he was going to jump. Then he calmly walked over to the two primary trouble makers grabbed them by their jackets and started to drag them toward the windows kicking and shouting. Picked them both up, stopped for a moment, dropped them and walked out of the classroom, directly to Kocho sensei’s office. Never saw him again and his desk was empty by the end of the week. Edit: Dropped them inside the classroom…
Yeah, teacher sent all the kids to an island to kill each other until only one was left alive.
Happened in two occasions in two different schools in my class as an ALT. Both times just twiddling my thumbs in the corner while the JTE raged on.
The first school it didn’t do shit. He threw his clipboard against the ground, chucked a textbook, grabbed a kid by the collar and used all sorts of rolling R’s. Nothing, the whole year those same kids did the same shit.
The second school was similar but after the JTE flew into a rage, that class literally turned into angels and we had a great time the whole year.
My old JHS JTE who I eloquently nick named “Boomer San” would start screaming at the boys if they fell asleep in class or weren’t repeating loud enough. Idk why he didn’t do this with the girls cuz they’d sleep too. He’d go on 10 minute rants cutting into the students. It sounded like a cutscene from Yakuza. He made one of the boys start tearing up so I had to comfort the kid. It was because of that class I started brining computer games like Blooket in, or fun activities. I know it’s rude to show you’re bored in class, but I understood why some of those lesson had them kids sleeping.
Many years ago, elementary school, there was this one class that was a nightmare. It was my first year in Japan and with teaching. There was one ringleader boy who would constantly talk back, walk around, take things off the board, interrupt, laugh at other kids trying to learn, throw things, etc.
It really killed the atmosphere in the class. There was basically 0 student interaction, just me talking to myself and trying to talk over the boy. I was just an ALT but was 100% in charge of English class. The homeroom teacher was an older lady who couldn’t control him either.
I thought the kids hated me, but many actually started being friendly to me in the hallway, so I realized it was just this boy who was ruining everything.
One day, the Principal (or Vice) was in class with us to try and maintain some discipline. I don’t know what happened but I suddenly heard a slamming sound and everyone looked over to see the Principal pinning the boy to the desk by his collar bone/neck.
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Another time, same class, I lost MY cool. He was mouthing off again. I said, ‘Let’s play a game.” He said no. So I said, “Okay, let’s have a test.” Some surprised faces perk up. He agreed that yea, he wanted the test.
So, I pulled this huge stack of papers. An English test that I had made the day before. 3 pages, everything was related to topics we learned but the entire test was written in English. This is elementary school where they can’t read English yet and didn’t have English tests or grades.
The homeroom teacher laughed.
His face fell. The rest of the class gasped in horror and panic. They started fighting back against him and telling him to shut up. He faltered.
So, I asked again if they wanted a game or a test. Suddenly, I had a very interactive class that wanted to game. We played games and they actually participated, except for Mr. Ringleader who was sulking in the back of the room.
The rest of the year was rough, but slightly better. I had a little more interaction in class and I tried to encourage Mr. Ringleader to be useful by helping me with activities. He wasn’t great, but at least he wasn’t harassing other students so much.
– – – – – –
Different school. A boy got into a scuffle with another boy regarding a tablet used in class. A support teacher came to take him away, but the offender boy refused to leave. Flat out ignoring everyone and just playing on the tablet. The support teacher then grabbed him and dragged him, literally, kicking and screaming out of the room.
Tiny elderly woman JTE I taught with this last year would flip out like this (and even worse) so regularly that none of our city’s ALTs wanted to teach with her. She made kids cry almost every day and chased a few down the halls a couple times… crazy, crazy person. She’d scream at kids for the entire 45 minutes of class for the slightest infractions, and then continue to berate them even to the point of causing other teachers to have to start their lessons late. Everyone hated her. She’s also incredibly paranoid and would constantly ask us not to tell on her or try to get information out of us if she thought we knew something about what the board of education thought of her. The appropriate channels were informed of all this behaviour, but I don’t think anything has or will be done unfortunately. I don’t know what more she’s gotta do to get fired, but I felt extremely anxious every morning before I’d have to go teach with her and she’s made a couple of my coworkers cry before. I’ll take your normally chill Judo JTE any day over her. She is an absolute nightmare
Pure rolling R’s and roaring is about it. But the things he was saying were.. wow.
ちゃんと返事しろ、この野郎！
🙁
His hands were absolutely FUCKED with arthritis though. Can’t imagine it was very fun. He was nice otherwise and used to be a diplomat.
I was an ALT with a super nice/chill JTE. He was really good at English too and knew how to teach the grammar and get the students to talk more in class. However, one incident that really got him worked up is when a student was warned multiple times to put away his phone but didn’t. I heard that awesome ‘r’ rolling tongue sound when he spoke Japanese. He rarely speaks Japanese in class only when he is explaining the grammar portion. The student ended up giving him his phone. This happened a few times that year.
because your fish still sleeky 🙂
Not a JTE but an HRT…
I was doing an ES lesson about shopping, which I’d already done at several other schools. I’d done this lesson at my smallest elementary school (11 kids in the fifth grade class) and it worked out really well, despite the activity ending earlier due to the fact that I’d budgeted a time slot to account for 20+ kids doing it. I did it at my medium-sized elementary school (~23 kids in two fifth grade classes) and it went perfectly. But this elementary school was ~35 kids per class with three classes per grade. It was an activity I’d spent a lot of time prepping: I’d pre-taught the kids all sorts of food vocabulary and shopping-based phrases like “I’d like (suchandso) food please.” or “How much is it?” and money amounts. Then I’d split them up into groups, given each group a list of prices (eg. $1 for soup, $2 for steak) and a set of laminated food cards they could “sell” to each other. I’d also found a set of American play money in the school materials closet, so I’d borrowed that for the lesson. They were having fun selling food and pretending to run restaurants, but they kept throwing the money across the room, overcharging each other for things, tugging cards out of each others’ hands, and just being generally disrespectful to my materials. That day I also happened to be coming down with some sort of terrible throat sickness. I’d brought a water bottle with me to class, which I never did, so that I could still teach. I was quickly losing my voice and my patience with these kids, who were usually really well-behaved (the sixth graders at this school tended to be not-as-good but the fifth graders at this school were usually lovely kids who treated my materials with a lot of respect). Finally I just completely lost my voice and had to stand near the front of the room and gulp a bunch of water. The HRT got pissed at this and SCREAMED at the kids (in Japanese): “How dare you guys mistreat angryjellybean-sensei’s things! This is not what I’d expected of you! She went through so much trouble to make these nice cards and things for you and think of this fun lesson and you guys are just ruining everything! Next time I’m going to tell her just to bring in a worksheet and have us all do silent independent work! You see how she’s got a water bottle with her today? She’s not feeling well and you decided that this is the day to be horrible? You should all be ashamed of yourselves!!!”
At this point there was like five minutes left in the lesson–he made them gather up all the materials, stack them up very neatly, and return them to me in the exact same condition as I’d passed them out. Then he apologized to me profusely in front of all the kids. Note that this teacher was fairly young, and seemed kind of like a “big brother” type of teacher who was very laid-back and permissive.
I think that gave all of them a reality check. It was the end of the year, and the next day I was in such bad shape that the vice principal sent me home and called the BoE to make sure I got to the doctor and then I had to take the last week of the school year off because it turned out to be the flu. When I saw those same kids again in sixth grade, they were perfect angels compared to the other sixth grade classes at that school.
TL;DR: I was doing a fun shopping lesson at my largest elementary school with a class that was usually very good about respecting my materials with a bad throat sickness that turned out to be the flu, and they decided that was the day to be little hell-raisers, causing their usually laid-back homeroom teacher to lose his shit and me to lose my voice. xD
Now you all know what being a parent with multiple children is like, every day, all the time 😂😂😂
No. But I’ve seen one be shockingly terrible.
Worked at a rural school in Hokkaido a few years back and the JTE at this particular school was a great guy, always patient, and always trying to make the lessons better and improve. Even exchanged gifts with my personal omiyage stash to him. One class there’s this boy who’s playing with an eraser like its a tech deck, classic kid stuff. Unfortunately he’s in the front desk in the middle. JTE tells him to stop like 4 times during this lesson and on the fourth time the kid mutters something under his breath. I’m mid lesson just talking when the JTE looks and me and goes, “one moment.” and just starts screaming in this kids face for what felt like 5 minutes. My Japanese is pretty okay but I could not keep up with whatever he was saying. This kid was just eyes wide staring straight down. When JTE stopped he just stood there in the kids face for like another 5 minutes in silence. Then, apparently satisfied, he turns to me and just goes, “Douzo” like I’m supposed to act like that didn’t just happen. Still a pretty rad guy lol
Happened just this year. My JTE is a sweet older woman. Wonderful JTE, it wasn’t like her to flip out. I was a bit shocked. She’s told me on many occasions that she likes working with me. This is not me bragging or looking down on people, but lots of ALTs in my city can be pretty bad so she’s very appreciative of what I do, and often tells me.
One time during class we were using the textbook and the student in charge of writing what materials the class had to prepare for English wrote the wrong thing. They had a big English test last week and that student mistakenly wrote to ‘prepare their English test to review’. The teacher pointed it out that they wrote the wrong thing, and they only needed to bring their textbook. So he apologized casually, just a “あっ！すみません！すみませんでした。”. Didn’t even sound rude. As students are asking to get their textbooks from their bag, JTE starts to raise her voice.
She then flipped out for 10-15 minutes about how they’re not taking my class seriously, forgetting materials. That my classes aren’t free time. The whole time it also felt like I was being yelled at for some reason. It felt weird, because heck, I wouldn’t take my classes seriously either, and it wasn’t even a big deal. Class was so awkward after that… totally killed the atmosphere. Nothing too dramatic compared to others’ experience here.
I’m very lucky that my school, the only one I’ve ever worked at, is a girls-only senior high school in a nice neighborhood with generally a very chill and relaxed atmosphere so long as students behave. Very rarely do any of the students act out, and the ones that do aren’t violent or yanki or stuff like that, just rebellious. Not doing their homework, not paying attention in class, “forgetting” their textbooks/notebooks/handouts, rolling up their skirts and/or letting their hair down, having part-time jobs without the school’s permission, things like that.
The worst trouble I’ve ever seen a student get in was for being seen at a bar with her older sister and friends, not even drinking, just hanging out there. No voices were raised, just a bunch of meetings and strict talkings-to, some meetings with her parents, and a suspension. No profanity or strong/disrespectful language even from the school’s disciplinary head who is known for being quite a hardass.
In class, they’re all lovely. Even the rebellious ones like it when I’m in class because I just do my thing, roll with it, and don’t bother trying to discipline them or anything because it ain’t my job. I also like to go out of my way to identify and befriend the problem students outside of class (i.e. during cleaning time, when passing them in the hall, at school events) because that generally gets them to be more respectful and active during class and not disruptive.
Really, a lot of them just want to be treated like adults and like individuals, or are fed up and disillusioned with the Japanese student grind, or just want attention. Talking to them like normal humans, breaking the “authority” barrier by playing the Gaijin Card to ignore social norms and use casual speech and slang, remembering their names and the things they like, and making sure to notice them and be friendly toward them whenever I see them at school is pretty much always enough to get them to cooperate in class. The JTEs are always surprised and asking how I got Bad Student-san to like me and behave and participate because she usually doesn’t like the teachers or listen to them, and I always gotta hold back from telling them that maybe the fact that they just keep treating her like a “bad kid” and a “failure” and a “problem” and dont make any effort to get through to her as a *person* is why they can’t get her to behave lol