100% Ichigo

100% Ichigo means 100% Strawberry, and it is the name of the manga that one of my students chose to read instead of paying attention in my class. Now my rule for kids that insist on playing with their mobiles or reading manga during class, is that if they do it under their desk, I will ignore it and pretend I don’t see anything wrong. If they do it out in the open, calling attention to themselves, then I have to do something about it. In the case of strawberry-boy, he was holding the comic book up in the air, pointing out pictures of the lead girl (think strawberry shortcake with implants) and reading passages out loud. Well now there is nothing I can do but take it away from him. How was I to know that his response to my taking away his precious manga would be so violent (I guess I am the first person to do this to him, most of the teachers just ignore him). First he stood up and started yelling at me in Japanese, in which I responded in english by telling him to “chill out, I’ll give it back to you after class.” Then he and his buddy, got up and walked out of class. I thought, great, now I don’t have to deal with them anymore, and thought that would be the last of it. Of course not, Strawberry boy returns (sans his buddy, who opted to stay out of class) this time he picks up the wooden desktop off his desk and starts swinging it in the air. One of the other boys throws a wadded up sock at him and he uses the desktop as a bat and hits the sock across the room. Finally the teacher says something to him and he puts the desktop down. Only to pick it and the metal desk bottom up 10 minutes later, and bang it together with the wooden top. Holy cow, what a great loud noise it made…totally inappropriate for the classroom, but pretty cool none the less. The teacher finally stepped in at this point and took his entire desk away…I was so happy to hear the bell ring.