Classroom chaos

Yesterday I taught the grade 3 class right before lunch. They were an absolute joke. Right from the start there have always been a couple of the boys who just seem to do whatever they like during class and everyone ignores them, including their homeroom teacher. Well yesterday they must have had something bizarre for brekkie because they were going cuuurazy! While we were singing the Hello Song they started tearing through the cupboards at the back of the classroom pulling stuff out and bending it, ripping it, throwing it. So Outani-sensei goes up the back to try and get a grip on them and leaves me to divert the rest of the class away from the fact that their teacher is chasing one of their classmates around the room.

I like Outani-sensei, but I have to say that she has very little control over her class. All through Aim Time she was yelling at this kid in the corridor and yelling at all the boys who go out to see what is happening to go back in the classroom and I am up the front attempting to silence everyone so we can all say "Hello, my name is OO. Nice to meet you." Eventually it all gets too much for Outani-sensei and she uses the class phone to call for back up which arrives in the form of the school nurse who takes the naughty child away for a "checkup". Come Game Time the class is back in some semblance of order, but they are still not listening and talking over the top of me so I told them no games until they shut up. So they shut up. It was kind of risky, because if they didn't shut up, what was I supposed to to with them? But thankfully it worked that time.

During Game Time the boys starting mucking around under the blackboard, one of them knocked the greeting times board and it started to fall. Instead of just putting his hand up and stopping it, he decided to run away and leave it to fall on his classmate's head. Nice. While it was obviously pretty painful for the boy whose noggin took the rap, it was a VERY effective way of silencing 29 ratbags. I should remember that...

So the nurse gets called again and takes another casualty away leaving 28 kids for Impression Time. This is where the kids get a chance to say something about the class. Usually they say something like "During game time Hiroko's pronunciation was very clear and I could understand him easily." or the very lazy but common, "I liked game time." and then the teachers get a turn. I am supposed to say something about the kids' pronunciation because technically I am the only one there qualified to judge that area, but yesterday I just gave them a lecture. It is so fun being a teacher, you get to talk to people like they are kids! For example, instead of saying "Don't talk when the teacher is talking." you get to be MEGA condescending and say, "What do you do when the teacher is talking? Do you face the back and talk to your friends? Do you run around? Do you hit people? No. Right? What do you do?" and then they all have to say "We listen quietly." And then just to rub it in and try and make them feel bad you say something like, "I didn't think Nishi children behaved this like. I am very disappointed." And remind them that they have a reputation to uphold (and they do, apparently Nishi has the most well-behaved kids of all the schools).

So, not sure if that is going to make them behave better next time. I think they don't tend to see the CIRs as real teachers, mostly because the previous CIRs couldn't speak Jap so couldn't tell them off even if they wanted to. Mostly they seemed fairly shocked to have been told off by me and were very quiet for the rest of the class. Much more of this though and I might start to feel like a teacher!