Japanese high school students' behavior

Students’ behavior

Another day at a Japanese high school…

During one of my lessons today, some students seemed to think that they were not a part of the whole class and that rules didn’t apply to them. I usually have the students come to me to take a “speaking test”. This means, that they have to memorize a short dialog from the textbook, and then role-play it in front of me. I give them sufficient time to practice during the first lesson and tell them that they have to do the rest at home or after school in preparation of the second lesson. These two boys today were at the end of the line and were chatting about other stuff and fooling around. When they finally came to me to take the speaking test they couldn’t remember much and were trying to cheat by holding notes in their hands. They failed the test… and will come after school today to re-try.

On top of this, I caught one student using his cell phone during my lesson. In Japanese high schools (as well as junior and elementary schools) students are never allowed to use their cell phone on school ground. In this case I was obligated to take the cell phone away from him and keep it for one week. When I went over to confront him with this news, he wasn’t too happy about handing it to me and actually refused to give it. He put the cell phone in his pocket and started to make up excuses. I’ve been there before and just let him be for the moment. After the class I asked him to follow me to the staffroom where I got his homeroom teacher to talk to him. He soon admitted to using his cell but gave a brilliant excuse. Unfortunately his homeroom teacher wasn’t falling for his excuse and took his phone, then scolded him for a few minutes before returning him to the classroom.

Was I satisfied?

No!

This student’s behavior has been insufficient from the beginning when he entered this school as a first grader and it hasn’t improved much. Now, he’ll be pissed-off with me for taking away his cell phone. Therefore, during the next lesson he’ll probably be even less enthusiastic to participate in learning English. But I had to set an example for the rest of the class otherwise all students will be using their cell phone the next lesson. I’ll probably go to him at the end of this week to have a friendly chat to try and patch things up a bit…