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Oh my Dear Lord. Again. And again and again and again, xInfinity +1. Squared.

I think that might come close to my frustration at this moment. It's about 1/3 what it was earlier in the day. As this is my journal, I'll tell you all about it, and in no succinct terms, since that would be entirely unlike me.

I arrived at work today an hour or so early. I actually called Yumi at about 12:45 to make sure that I did in fact work at モラージュ柏 Mallage Kashiwa today. After clearing that up beyond a doubt, I headed to Bic Camera, and returned the repeater I had purchased in my ongoing attemp to purloin reliable internet access from the neighbors, whose network is becoming increasingly fickle with the weather becoming more overcast, or they themselves more aware of my evil scheme.

Thankfully, there was no confusion about where I should be, and I asked Yumi to please make copies of all the remaining cover sheets I had for the rest of the month, so I could make absolutely sure there would be no further error or tardiness on my part at least until January. Hopefully never again. Here was my schedule for today:
3:10 - Kids - Kinder
4:05 - Lesson (7A)
5:00 - Kids - Junior
5:50 - Lesson (7A)
6:40 - Free Period

So, I had over an hour really since getting to work to prepare for my first kids lesson. I looked over the plan carefully, acquainted myself with the activities, and made sure I had an idea of what exactly was supposed to go on so I wouldn't just sit there and be dumbfounded.

Class actually went pretty well, aside from the awkwardness of having lots of parents staring in on the room, until Aika started covering her forehead and looking like she was going to be sick. At that point I called the J-Staff in there and her mom told her to take off her coat, because it was getting absurdly hot in that room. It was at this point that I think the class started to deteriorate, because I accidentally skipped a transition activity, and I had kids putting their heads down, despite my apparent enthusiasm. When Aika came back, she was singing this one single note for the entire rest of the lesson, which made it all but impossible to focus the attention of the remaining students. I tried to get her to stop by using her name, busting out the "Hands on heads" maneuver, and many other things, to little avail. Thankfully that lesson came to and end, and I went and wrote the incident in the logbook.

My lesson after that was pretty much fine, but it was a little frazzled and a little bit shallow given how scatter brained I was after the stress of that last lesson. Little did I know what I had in store for me to later.

Junior lesson was Hell. Literally. The three girls in there were absolutel angels, and were my saving grace. They were the only reason I dind't lose it entirely, because at least they understood what we were doing, even though one of them was a sit in lesson observer, which I will talk about later as being one of the biggest reasons I was so frustrated with that lesson.
There were four boys in that lesson, and little did I know at the time that two were brothers, and all of them were friends. This is a recipe for disaster, that somehow Sean had been previously able to avert through knowing them all for so long and the heaps of experience he had as Kids Coordinator for the branch.

From the very start of the lesson I knew there was going to be trouble. I attempted to seat the students after they entered the room to wait for the rest of the 7 students to come in, but they would have none of it. Despite repeated attempts to get them to sit down or do something other than kick one another and run around, they continued. After they were all inside, they quickly decided that the four of them were going to do whatever the Hell they wanted, and whenever I tried to get them to stop, or do what I wanted, I managed to hold their, or, a small portion of their attention for a couple of seconds before lossing it again to whatever it is they thought was more interesting, which usually was something like kicking, running, jumping, talking to one another, and at one point singing a Japanese song which everyone knew and then started to sing, including the girls.

I called Juri in to watch them to make sure things weren't completely out of hand, and they seemed to ease up a little bit, until she stopped looking and then quickly made up for lost time.

Everything I did pretty much worked for all of three or four seconds until they realized that relatively speaking, nothing I was doing really mattered. As soon as they decided that my appprival or disapproval was, to them, trivial, there was nothing I could do any longer to control them. High fives as positive reinforcement or negative punishment worked for the first maybe ten minutes of lesson, until they just decided they didn't care.

See, the lousy psych degree I have lets me know exactly when I've lost all control in a situation. You would think it would give me tools to better work the crowd, and find a way to reestablish authority in a situation like that, but, alas, there is something of a point of no return, especially when all your disciplinary techniques are strictly forbidden in the context of the classroom, especially with parents watching. And especially in light of the fact that they don't understand English enough to recognize my discipline outside of the tone of my voice, which I am, apparently, under no circumstance to use in an aggressive or angry way.

So then, after that lesson, I thought I had the next lesson free, so after the bell rang I saw someone come in late, and I thought, do I have a lesson? Which I did, so I had to grab a book and just kinda go in there and hope he hadn't taken it before, which luckily he hadn't.

My last period I attempted to call Leigh to ask him advice, but he was at another branch, and even there was otherwise unavailable, so I will have to talk to him tomorrow when I go to work at 新松戸 Shin Matsudo. Vinny, the other teacher there today, gave me a list of things to do to help get control of a class back, but the thing was I had done all of the things on the list, really. Of the 6 or 7 things he suggested, there was only one I hadn't done over and over to try to get them focused.

I'll figure this out though, I am going to master this fine art. These kids are going to be putty in my hands soon enough, and I will orchestrate these classes into something beautiful and amazing. This is good practice, because one day I'll have my own little pack of rascals running around my house, and after this, if I can't keep them under control, I'm just going to have my tubes tied. My frustration lies in that I came here to work with kids, I am so excited to work with them, and it's the one area that as of right now, I am apparently incapable of doing well. I need to buy some hipnotic glasses I can wear in class. I think that would be great.

I just got off the phone with Leigh, he helped clear up a lot of the issues I was having, and I made some facts very clear about my NOT being hungover at kids training Wednesday. That was all in all a great phone call. He cleared up that I am, in fact, supposed to be a disciplinarian. Mwahaha. These kids are now officially kittens who've pissed on the rug. Smell it. Look at what you just did.