In case it doesn’t go without saying, having anybody asleep in your class is not okay. It’s not about being a more entertaining teacher. I do find that running cold-call drills at the beginning of a lesson, using ping-pong balls is a good way to head off any early slouching,

But I don’t care how boring you are, either the sleeping student is being blatantly disrespectful, or the student is genuinely fatigued, and unable to keep his or her eyes open. In the latter case, the student should be at the nurse’s office. This an institutional-level issue. It should never be handled in an ad hoc manner.

You as a foreign teacher need to take every opportunity to assert that you are an artist, and that you won’t stand to have your artwork ruined.

HAVE A RESPONSE PROTOCOL AND FOLLOW IT RELIGIOUSLY.

Be really clear in your mind what your protocol is. For example:

• STEP 1, move close to the student, call on the student, wake the student
  
• STEP 2, ask if the student needs to go to the nurse.
• STEP 3, direct the student to go to the nurse

Execute that policy without emotion. Discipline should never be a form of emotional expression. Students may infer that you are angry about the sleeping classmate, but they need to see that you are enforcing a policy, not expressing anything about your interpersonal relationship with them.

WORK YOUR PROTOCOL OUT WITH YOUR JAPANESE COLLEAGUES.

You want at least to know that you will be backed up if you make a decision to send a sleeping student out of the room. Definitely let the homeroom teacher know when a student sleeps. Homeroom teachers are powerful in Japan, get them pulling in the same direction as you.

If a lot of other teachers are allowing students to sleep , you want to shine sunlight on that. You can do that just by checking with your colleagues and making sure that they know what your policy is. Or striking up a genuine conversation that might go something like “just curious, how do most teachers at the school deal with sleeping kids?"