Disclipline Unraveling.

Discipline
Woah, it doesn’t happen that often but one girl is getting just screamed at in the teacher’s room right now. I don’t know what happened, but it always leaves sort of an awkward vibe among the rest of the staff, especially since you can hardly talk over the screaming (probably meant to humiliate the girl and teach her a lesson). The girl is look at her homeroom teacher, obviously trying not to cry and mostly just looking down while other teachers shyly stand up to see who is getting yelled at. The few other students in the staff room right now (it’s currently lunch time) scooted out, knowing the severity of this conversation was something they didn’t want anything to do with.

Wow, I remember when this happened my first year and the other foreigners (working in public schools) and I would discuss how we handle it, mostly agreeing that it’s best to keep your head down and eyes the other way when it comes to discipline in the schools here. It still shocks me after over two years, though.

Whatever happened with this girl must have been pretty bad, though. I am guessing something along the lines of stealing, drinking or cheating. Our staff room is literally set up like a police precinct and laid out like an organizational chart, with the highest ranking people in the middle (or toward the windows) and the rest branching out from there. The girl has now been sent to the Vice Principal, who sits next to the window in the very center of the long staff room. Our VP barely talks and he’s now screaming at the girl, a second-year (so about 16 years old), along with the guy that does the schedules. Yikes.

Grading
On the topic of surprising cultural differences, I finished writing my first year OC final today which brought up one of the other really big difference that comes up with the structure of school systems in the East and West: grading. As teachers, write our tests with an aim of a 70 – 75% average. I was horrified when the average on my first test was about 65%, but have come a long way since then, learning that that is actually a good score in Japan. A 60% does not mean fail here. Half of whatever the average is (just a straight cut along the percentages) is fail. So you can get 25% and still be OK if nobody else studied either… you get the idea, so let’s just attribute it to a group-oriented society mentality (all for one – pass – or one for all – in failing... or something like that).

So my first year tests are generally about 30 or 40 points and always include four sections: some kind of visual/monologue section (menu, schedule, map, etc), a dialog, a monologue (telephone message, self intro, etc) and a short, 5-question dictation. Well, this round, we spent a lot of time (literally two full lessons) working with money, so I thought it was fitting that

We have talked about the different places people use dollars, looked at real dollars that I’ve brought back from home and other places, learned different slang words used for dollars, practiced calculating the difference between dollars and yen, done math problems with dollars, done a dialog with dollars, played the Price is Right with dollars (where they watched the actual show, had to write a price on the board and then all had to read their guess as a group) and even played a giant, team-version of Monopoly, where they were buying things with dollars. These kids have had some experience with how the whole dollar thing works, right?

So I hand out my exam (the teacher I wrote about earlier seemed relieved) and everything looks good, except one of my coworkers comes over to raise a concern on behalf of the other staff members. They really like the test, but they talked about it and think we should change the last line of my dictation, “Ten Dollars and fifty cents / $10.50” (Ten, fifty is also acceptable). I am open to changing and appreciate feedback, but I didn’t think it was a hard question so I just asked why they thought we should change it. Then the teacher told me it wasn’t fair because some of the “smart kids” will know to use a dollar sign while others will think they need to write it out, and we needed it to be more even. After a few minutes, I asked if we could just compromise by reminding the kids ahead of time (maybe during the interview tests?) that

The bell just range and the sound of voices is starting to return to the staff room now that the girl is done being yelled at. I know people don’t talk about this stuff often (why would you? It’s not a pleasant cultural difference and doesn’t happen that often so there’s no need to dwell), but I’m shaken up a bit everytime it happens. I hope the student is OK, too. I asked a coworker and I guess she was just in trouble because she got caught eating her lunch before the chime (bell) rang. Wow. I guess it goes to show there’s some truth to that old Japanese phrase. When the nail sticks up...