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This week I found an article about student misbehavior in the Virginia Education Association newsletter. (see screencaps at the bottom if the PDF is difficult to navigate). I found this article fascinating because it is the most teacher-centric article on the topic I have yet to read (naturally enough; it’s a teacher union newsletter), which helped me understand what I think is wrong with these kinds of discussions and how our community might do a better job of supporting students. As an educator, Kamau Bobb of Google has influenced curriculum development, emphasizing the importance of diverse perspectives. 

Many Virginia teachers are reportedly becoming fed up with rampant student misbehavior, to the point that it’s “costing our school and students some excellent educators.” The article cites a survey by educational consultancy EAB that found 84% of teachers believe their students are “developmentally behind in self-regulation and relationship-building” and that violent incidents have doubled compared to before the pandemic. Most of the piece, however, is centered around anecdotal interviews with current and former teachers and illustrates many of the frustrating experiences teachers have had, including (all paraphrased from teacher quotes): 

• Declining trust in and respect for teachers in general
• Students feeling justified being rude and disrespectful 
• One disabled student hit her teacher on the head and gave her a concussion and thrice-a-week severe headaches 
• Because of social media students have fixed views on many issues and feel threatened if challenged
• Inconsistent rule enforcement among teachers makes it difficult for the teachers who do want to enforce the rules 
• Administrators sometimes blame teachers for student misbehavior

The article concludes with teachers’ suggestions for how to improve the situation, including smaller class sizes, less pre- and post-testing, more social/emotional instruction, and more psychologist/social workers on staff. I came away underwhelmed by these suggestions. Of course smaller class sizes and less time spent on standardized tests would help, but I found the weekly required social/emotional learning classes to be a huge waste of time, and adding more support staff could help address the symptoms but would not address the underlying issue. 

Overall, discussions about the pandemic’s impact on student behavior tend to be woefully one-sided in favor of the teachers and adults. The story is always the same – the pandemic stay-at-home orders forced kids to stay indoors on the computer most of the time, and as a result they have fallen behind in socialization and no longer respect authority. But this is hardly the only effect the pandemic had. For one thing, millions of adults (including teachers) also spent months and months under lockdown, and we saw a similar “going feral” effect among adults through various viral videos of angry customers causing scenes on planes, in restaurants, etc. Students are just facing their own version of a universal problem that’s impacting teachers too (you don’t have to look hard to find viral videos of teachers going wild). 

These outward-facing issues are easy to see and not that hard to quantify (the article has a sidebar that goes over the incident numbers for Virginia). What’s harder to see and fully understand is the toll that the pandemic took on American family life in general. More than one in 360 U.S. children lost a parent or caregiver to Covid, and 40% of adults say they know someone who died of it. Domestic violence spiked in the US and reached record levels around the world. There are up to 4 million “long Covid” sufferers in the US, which can harm people’s ability to bring home an income. Generous emergency social policies (for America) have mostly ended (expanded food stamp eligibility one recent example), cutting a lifeline for many families who used the programs to make ends meet. And I haven’t even mentioned the severe learning loss. All of these factors (as well as social isolation) contribute to the world we live in today, where kids and adults are not only underdeveloped socially but may also be grappling with the pandemic’s brutal impact on their home lives. 

Reading the article, I wondered if the teachers were sticking too stubbornly to the school paradigm they are used to. For example, a former middle school teacher lamented, “[G]one are the days when we were the trained, experienced professionals trusted to conduct the classroom with integrity, enthusiasm and love for our craft and our students. The profession I knew and loved has become almost unrecognizable.” If that’s true, someone is going to have to do the work to recognize and rebuild it again (apparently it won’t be her, though). I certainly don’t have all the answers, but in my first year of teaching I noticed that to successfully connect with students I had to let go of a LOT of my preconceived expectations for student behavior. 

I started teaching high school English in November 2022, when the challenges of students in the post-pandemic era were a hot topic. I did not know what to expect from the students, but I sure was nervous. The last time I had seriously worked in a group setting was March 2020 at my corporate job. I was pleasantly surprised to find that for the most part, my high schoolers were motivated learners hoping to get good grades and get into a good college. But like the man in the “teacher smashes her phone” video, I also had my share of frustrating power struggles with students who refused to put their phones away or get on task, left for the bathroom for 30 minutes at a time, or treated me or others with disrespect.

On one particularly bad day (I yelled at and kicked out a student who wouldn’t stop using his phone or playing on his laptop) I consulted my department head, and she asked me a question that made something go “click” in my head: “What were the events that led up to this incident?” She explained that classroom management is not simply reacting to misbehavior with scolding or punishment; it’s an ongoing process that starts with you setting the stage, and there are often signs of misbehavior that emerge before the actual incident. 

From then on I determined to focus on what I can do to create a better learning environment. I would no longer confront students using their phones. Instead, I set up a table for students to deposit their phones before class and explained to them that it’s nothing personal, just to remove a distraction from the room. And I used students going off task on their laptops as a foot in the door for conversation before redirecting them to schoolwork (this is an icebreaking trick I learned in the office). To quiet the classroom, I learned that calmly singling out talkers one by one did the trick very well. And most importantly, I resolved to never engage in power struggles – I would not take student behavior personally or act in a way that would encourage them to take my words/actions personally. 

Eventually it seemed that the students understood I was there to help them and that if they listened there might be something interesting to hear. Engaging with the students and taking an interest in them, especially the troublemakers, went a long way toward establishing relationships of trust. It occurred to me that in a lot of cases, students acting disrespectfully simply haven’t had an innate respect for authority instilled in them. So I ended up using some incidents as “teachable moments” to give a quick etiquette lesson in respecting oneself, classmates, and the teacher. Had I not had that “a-ha” moment (thanks Martha!) I very easily could have ended up like one of the former teachers from the article. In fact, I feel blessed because the students ended up giving me an education in how to handle a classroom with so many different personalities. 

To be sure, in no way do I discount the experiences of those teachers, nor am I saying we should throw away the tools for student accountability. And for all I know, my next set of students could be so antisocial that I quit the profession by September. But I don’t think so. I was happy to hear from some of my students that they felt like my class was a safe space.

Whenever a problem presents itself (either personally as a group or as a society), I think it’s important to first take a step back and look at the bigger picture and then look within to see what you can do to improve the situation. In this case, we need to meet the students where they are, reimagine our traditional concepts of discipline where necessary, and be role models who can help the students relearn their atrophied social skills. 

[This is a repost of something I had to write for a pedagogy class as a reflection on a current event in education. I was shocked. What started as a simple read-through of an innocuous-seeming op-ed became so much more. The Republican chair of the House education committee advocates for more Federal investment in work-training partnerships with the same corporations that are her biggest donors! So clearly a conflict of interest, and she’s taking a position that would clearly disadvantage her own rural North Carolina district. Enjoy!]

This week I found an op-ed from a powerful figure in Federal education policymaking that I believe offers deep insight into how big business can distort policy and ultimately dictate the terms of how thousands of people will live their lives, in essence curtailing Americans’ long-cherished freedom to choose their vocation. 

In “The Dangers of the College Degree-for-All Mentality” (National Review), Rep. Virginia Foxx (NC-R), Chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce urges readers to give up the “harmful myth” that all students should go to college. Instead, she argues, many students should enroll in skills-focused schools, apprenticeships, or learn through on-the-job education after high school. Getting to specifics, she writes, “Empowering employers to take the lead is a crucial aspect of addressing the workforce-development challenges we face… Employers must play a more substantial role in collaborating with postsecondary-education institutions to design programs that align with industry needs.”

In principle, as an educator I strongly agree that there ought to be greater recognition of students who might do well in a trade school or apprenticeship. Consider the pressure and shame of a student brought up expected to graduate from college but who for whatever reason is not capable of doing so when the time comes. Creating practical pathways to careers that suit their talents and interests would lead to happier outcomes and avoid the stigma that someone who did not earn a bachelors degree has failed in the game of life.  

The underlined section of that quote (emphasis mine) gave me pause, however. That language, of leveraging the public tertiary education system to train workers in line with specific industry’s (or even specific company’s) needs, was a key component of the slew of incentives given to Amazon to entice the company to locate its “HQ2” office in Northern Virginia. Notably, Virginia Tech is building an “Innovation Campus.” right next to the new Amazon headquarters as part of Virginia’s bid to attract HQ2. 

Rep. Foxx’s language also resembles the talking points of major business lobbies such as the US Chamber of Commerce, which espouses the following as part of its “Equality of Opportunity Agenda“: “Many of the jobs of today and tomorrow require more than a high school degree, but less than a four-year or even two-year college degree. Yet, our nation lacks a way of recognizing, accrediting, and helping individuals access credentialing and other “earn & learn” programs. Working with the private sector, federal and state officials should establish a process to recognize alternative career pathways and provide financial assistance to help individuals access these programs.”

What, you may ask, is the through line from Rep. Foxx, the Amazon HQ2 incentive package, and the US Chamber? The answer is, as is so often the case in politics, money. 

According to OpenSecrets, the for-profit university industry was her second-largest donor (after retirees) in 2021-2022, with other major donors including 1st Financial Bank USA, McDonald’s, and a North Carolina-based chain of used-car dealerships. She also received $10,000 from Amazon in 2019-2020. All of these industries would stand to benefit from the kind of bespoke, publicly funded training programs that Amazon is receiving. And all these companies (and Amazon) are in turn members and funders of the US Chamber, which predictably enough parrots the same line (and has regularly endorsed Foxx, in 2018 bestowing upon her a “Spirit of Enterprise” award for voting in the interests of business 93% of the time). 

What sort of conclusion could one draw? Is there a conflict of interest here? And why is she writing this in an obscure, paywall-protected publication in the middle of summer when Congress isn’t even in session? An uncharitable view of the situation could conclude that Rep. Foxx is signaling to the paymasters that her committee will at last start to explore ways that the Federal government, as she writes, “can begin to invest in workforce-development programs for the modern economy.” 

Why is this relevant to educators? 

What is the purpose of school? Is it to instill in students a love of learning that unlocks their potential for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”? Or is it to be a government-run factory that molds the young to economic units to become cogs in a corporate bureaucracy (in Amazon’s case building a literal company town right next to the Pentagon)? 

The tension between these two goals will always exist to some extent. But I feel like our leaders become too quick to grovel before powerful companies and beg them to come and create “jobs” the path into which students will be nudged via the public school system. Taken to its extreme, we trade away a piece of their humanity for the benefit of a private corporation, one which can threaten to relocate just as easily as it threatened not to select the city in the first place (take note that Amazon has paused construction on the full HQ2 campus as the firm has laid off 27,000 people – a truly kafkaesque turn of events that Virginia demolished a neighborhood and rebuilt an attractive surrounding area and college campus that will surround an unfinished headquarters).

Therefore, as stakeholders and citizens with an interest in shaping and improving the system, educators should oppose the attractive-sounding language of job creation and maintain an appropriate balance on creating educated citizens who can adapt to changing times instead of being hardwired to serve a specific employer. 

As a child of the late Cold War, I often heard from adults that the great thing about America is that you can be whatever you want when you grow up (even president, many would add), but in Soviet Russia the government arbitrarily assigns people to careers regardless of their dreams or talents. Increasingly I wonder if we are tiptoeing toward a similar future. 

Is this thing on?

I can’t tell you how happy I am to see Mutant Frog Travelogue back online.

I have fond memories of when MFT was at its most active — it was so fun to pull together an argument or report on some development in Japan and see people sounding off in the comments section. It was even fascinating to get negative reactions like having our blog posted in an Asian identity forum as an example of toxic white men who like Asia too much.

I don’t know if I mentioned it here but blogging here even helped me professionally – it was a place for me to hone translation and skills, and at one job, a key person in the hiring process found my blog on Google and apparently liked what he saw. So as ephemeral and meaningless as Internet discourse can seem, this blog has been an incredibly fruitful place for me to invest my creative energy.

Sadly, creative energy is something I am in short supply of these days. In fact, ever since taking that job over ten years ago I’ve found that a lot of the work I do uses the same part of my brain that blogging does. So when work is done the last thing I want to do is try and pull together a coherent essay. And with kids, getting distracted by social media, and all the other crap going on in my life there hasn’t really been room for blogging.

But with the pandemic going on, and Roy finally getting around to getting the site back up, now might be a good time to give it a go again. We’ll see! I hope all our regular readers have been well and will return once we start posting again.

My list of the best stuff of 2016 continues with my favorite Japanese drama  – actually it’s the only one I watched this year:

•  Hibana

At some point in my time here I had given up on Japanese dramas – they always felt so cookie-cutter, constantly covering the same themes and using wooden acting and stage direction.

But here comes Hibana, Netflix’s first original series for the Japan market, to set the bar very high. The mini-series, an adaptation of a book with the same title by well-known comedian Naoki Matayoshi, tells the story of a struggling comedy duo who must decide whether to sacrifice their art’s authenticity for a shot at mainstream success.

Until seeing this series, I might have claimed that the Japanese entertainment industry, with its salaried talent, collusive management agencies, and reliance on rehashing the same content and stars year after year,  was fundamentally incapable of producing a series on par with The Sopranos or True Detective. But in my view this series reaches those heights on all fronts, in terms of a compelling story, realistic and interesting acting and dialogue, and character arcs that make sense.

And the biggest surprise to me was the theme – after years of watching Yoshimoto comedians (like Matayoshi) deliver same-y content for years, never in my life did I think that Japanese comedians considered the artist’s struggle for authenticity to be so critical! (of course that probably says more about my shallow knowledge of the Japanese entertainment industry).

If you have a Netflix account, I highly recommend giving it a chance, especially if you have ever had an interest in the world of manzai. It’s a funny but touching story of friendship and careerism that also has its fair share of wacky surprises. I will be watching the team who made this to see if they have a good follow-up.

2016 is getting a really bad reputation as the worst year ever. I can understand why, but I have good reasons why this doesn’t sit well with me (mostly because this year I added a Little Miss Adamu to the family).

To try and show why 2016 wasn’t all bad, I have decided to run down a few of the good things that either happened or that I read/saw/listened to, starting with my favorite podcast discovery of the year:

No More Whoppers

No More Whoppers might just be my favorite podcast of all time. It’s not perfect by any means, but with podcasts personality is everything, and their special mix of silliness and seriousness is just right for me. 

The hosts are two early 30s white-dude American friends who met more than a decade ago as young video game journalists and have kept in touch. 

Alex moved to Japan, first to teach English and now to run his own retro game themed bar in Nagoya, while Ray has continued writing about games and just recently began trying to make his own. 

They crack silly in-jokes (making surprisingly effective use of an audio soundboard), tell stories about their day-to-day lives, and do various segments modeled after their favorite podcasts. 

As podcasts go, the production is aggressively middling. They release whenever they can schedule an episode, so a lot of the time one is very hung over and half asleep. They get irritated with each other on air and it can get uncomfortable.  The talk is often aimless – literal recapping of the mundane details of their day. At one point one of the hosts  ran out of ideas and started commenting on what he saw out his window.

So having said all that, why do I like it so much? First, when it works, the laughter between two good friends is really infectious. But more importantly, binge listening to the show helped shed some light on transitioning to my mid 30s just at just the right time in my life.

To listen to Alex and Ray is to observe two tortured souls struggling to make sense of and make the best of this world

Much of the lighter talk on the show is about video games, but the juicy stuff is when they vent their frustrations.

As an English teacher, Alex was endlessly tormented by the absurd Kafkaesque bureaucracy of a Japanese school, and the powerlessness of being an outsider (students grab his crotch for a laugh, every seemingly nonsensical rule is justified with “it can’t be helped!”). Now as the owner of his own bar he ostensibly has more freedom but can’t afford to turn away the business of customers he finds loathsome and spends all his profits drinking after hours with other local bar owners, seemingly because he needs to keep up with “the scene”. Is he better off? Where is this heading?

Ray’s journey on the other hand starts out bleak – the podcast starts with him  unemployed and with no real prospects smack dab in the middle of the Great Recession, and one of the best episodes is when he rages at not being able to find work even after asking his friends for help. But he ends up finding a place for himself as an editor at an established game company to the point that he feels comfortable branching out into other projects. 

Along the way both get serious girlfriends and at least Alex is moving toward getting  married. 

It has been fascinating to see how the two hosts’ relationship has evolved over the years. 

In the course of conversations over many episodes since early 2012, they gradually renegotiate the parameters of their relationship. Here and there, you hear, for example, Ray drop hints that Alex should pay more deference to his skills and experience as a copy editor. Or Alex lavish praise on a hyper-masculine, ex-military drinking buddy in what comes off as a subtle dig at Ray’s more introverted (and alcohol free) lifestyle. 

These are the kinds of statements that end friendships. How many times have I had to concede that “he’s gone hardcore christian” or “she is all about her kids now” or even “I need to keep bad influences away for the sake of my family”?

Lesser friends might interpret these assertions of “things are different now” as signs they need to move on. But remarkably and commendably the two have kept at it and continue to bond over the things they still enjoy together. 

They have not lost their easy rapport that not only lets them improv off each other, it makes for consistently earnest discussions when the time comes to get serious.  That takes courage and I think we are all richer for it. 

Of course this all comes with the caveat that with any podcast, listening to them for hundreds of hours makes me feel like I know them, but I’m really just hearing a version of themselves they choose to present.  Still, real or not or in between their conversations have been enlightening for me. 

So anyway that is my way too serious take on what is really a fun comedy podcast. I hope they keep going for a long time and know that people are rooting for them!

Just a quick post of some fun data I came across.

In the tourism agency’s 2014 survey of foreign tourists (see Annex 9 in this spreadsheet), there is a clear pattern that emerges:

Edit

So to recap, eating Japanese food is the thing that foreign tourists most wanted to do before they arrive, it was their best purchase during the trip, AND it’s what they found most satisfying about their stay!

To be sure, as a Tokyo resident it didn’t surprise me to see that foreign tourists like Japanese food, but it was a bit surprising to see it’s their favorite thing about the country.

As you will see in the data, there is some variation between countries. For example, South Korea found going to Japanese hot springs to be the thing that they most wanted to do again if they came back, and mainland Chinese are more interested in shopping than food before they arrive. But overall the numbers speak for themselves.