My Middle School Mutiny

Most of the people with whom I talk about my life at school are of the opinion that Japanese children are some of the smartest, most attentive, and most respectful students one can find. It is a "truism" regarding most any student of Asian descent. However, social psychology teaches us that there are similar, "common sense" statements to cover most any sentiment. In this case, it would be the following:
Kids are the same everywhere.
I have to agree with the latter. My students aren't awful, but they aren't the angels many would have had me believe before I came here.

The past few weeks have been stressful in this regard. As I have mentioned before, the second years are generally thought to be little demons here. Now, I teach 8 classes of 18 second year students, and I can fairly well say that there are maybe one or two true troublemakers in each of those classes. There are a few others others who, because they are the cool kids, laugh at the antics of the troublemakers, or talk in class, or ignore the teachers. However, all of this I see as being fairly normal for any middle school setting. (It's one of the reasons why, when I was considering being a teacher in America [waaay back when], I decided I would never teach in a middle school. [I followed that decision ever so well...]) The last two weeks, however, have shown me quite a few things I wasn't expecting.

All of the worst second years hang out together, and they have adopted a first year into their midst. A few of them came into school last week with vicious cigarette burns on the back of their hands. I asked one of my English teachers who had done it to them, and she gave me the strange look I'm growing ever-so-accustomed to that means I'm missing some obvious point. The answer: "They did it to themselves."
It made a little sense, once I got over the instinctive horror at it. In Japan, the gangsters (yakuza) wear signs of pain as badges of strength, covering everything from having massive amounts of tattooing to missing fingers. As these kids are the ones who most admire the "screw you" sentiment gangsters hold toward authority figures, it's not surprising that they'd mimic their manners of showing strength.

After that, two of the (male) troublesome students showed up at school wearing earrings. This is clearly against the rules, and yet both refused to remove them. This caused a commotion amongst the staff, because one of the two, the adopted first year of the group, disappeared, and his whereabouts were unknown until well after dark. My teachers considered this a very serious issue, especially for his homeroom teacher, Tanaka-sensei, who is my supervising English teacher at the middle school. Tanaka-sensei had yelled at the kid after he refused to remove the earring, and the student's disappearance was blamed to this strongly negative response. That evening, there was a teacher's meeting until 6:30 to discuss what had been done and what should have been done ... and it started at 4:30. (I, thankfully, had left by that time and didn't have to take part.)

Since then, there have been more attempts at playing hookey, more battles over earrings, destruction of school property, and, to top it all of, parents being called into the school to discuss the behavior of their children. One of these parents started yelling at the vice-principal about the whole affair, insisting that there be infinite justification for every school rule her son had broken. The idea of yelling at the vice-principal makes my entire insides cringe in a way I can only associate with someone scraping their nails down a blackboard. (One of my teachers reacted by saying the mother "must be a little crazy.") More meetings have been had, and these trouble students have been a fairly constant presence in the staff room. As a first year is involved, my "island" of desks is often taking part in these difficult moments.

Now, all of this being said, I'm not directly involved myself. In the first place, my position as an ALT is one that is explicitly defined as one "not taking part in any disciplinary actions," as it hurts our ability to associate with the students. We aren't teachers - we are there to inspire multilingualism, and we do that in being friends with the students, not by being disciplinarians. On top of this, there's little I could do, were these rules regarding my position not in place. My utter lack of Japanese, as well as my smaller physical size and strength, make me a poor player in the discipline role. To a certain extent, I'm thrilled by this excuse - it lets me turn a blind eye to things with which I have little ability to deal. On the other hand, however, I feel all the stress of my coworkers, and I feel guilty that I cannot help minimize their stress. Again, my lack of Japanese makes me unable to even understand what needs to be done, much less offer to do it in any tactful way.

On top of this ... I don't know that I feel the way the teachers are handling this situation is the best way. For example, the Japanese thought that "all students should have an equal chance at learning" means that students must always be in the classroom. This means that troublemakers cannot be "sent to the principal" for discipline; they must, at all times, remain in the classroom in order to have a chance at learning, even though this means they are hurting the potential learning of others. So, whenever the aforementioned students played hookey, the teachers went on a full-out manhunt. Two teachers making three or more phone calls each because three students left school after lunch...it still seems extreme to me. I can't help but feel that, were these kids allowed to miss class every once in a while, they would get some of their rebelliousness out of the way. So it's hard for me to see a kid get yelled at, forced to sit in the staffroom and eat his lunch, when I can't help but feel that this is exactly why he's trying so hard to run away from it all. It's not my place to voice these opinions, especially when I don't have a solution of my own, but it does add to the stress I feel regarding the situation.

I decided last night that I would try to start doing nice things for the teachers in my own way, as I am of little direct help in this situation. I'm going to give a try at making some sort of nice treat this weekend to bring in on Monday, and I'm working on other ways to give my teachers a smile. It's all I can do, at it may help my levels of stress a little, even if it isn't a help in the situation.

All being said, though, it's an interesting time to be at Ikushina Chuugakkou.