I’ve been enjoying classes so far!
We’re in the early days, like the first day, where I get students to ask me any questions about anything, and the second day, where I get the students in Conversation type classes to give 3-4 minute self-introduction speeches, and I’ve been learning a lot of interesting things about the kids and they about me I suppose, and I think we’ve mostly been having a good time (despite the classrooms being VERY hot the second week). So, I’ve been learning or hearing things like this: One girl has a big brother ten years her senior and really likes him in a special way. When she was in junior high and struggling with math, he coached her, though he was no math whizz and had to read her textbook to learn enough to help her. One girl has a little sister ten years her junior and really likes her in a special way. One girl has an identical twin sister and said that sometimes their parents confuse them and call her by her sister’s name, so I teased her by asking if she and her sister ever switch places/roles, she going to her sister’s college and her sister going to Fukudai and posing as each other (she chuckled and said no). One girl said she has a little brother in Junior High School and likes playing basketball with him, so I asked who wins, and she said with a nice smile that he always does. One girl said she likes movies like Harriet (about Harriet Tubman) and The Chicago Seven (about the unjust trial of the organizers of a demonstration back in the sixties), and a boy asked her in Q&A time what is a boring movie that she’s seen, and she said after a pause to think, “Star Wars,” because it’s too long and is just fight and chase scenes. A boy asked me how I met my wife (so I could tell my driving school story), and another boy asked me what I’m good at (so I could say I’m good at forgetting bad things and remembering their names and faces), and another boy asked me what is my best memory with my wife (so I could tell about the time when we were dating and romantic and my wife taught me how to say the Japanese words for body parts (nose, ears, chin, mouth, arm, etc.) by touching those parts so I could then touch those parts and say the words (the kids got a kick out of that, and so did I as I remembered that time thirty-seven years ago to tell them about it!). So all that kind of thing was neat. There were some painful speeches, to be sure, where a guy said maybe fifteen words in three minutes, spending the rest of the time looking down trying to think of what to say (and this was a HOMEWORK assignment I’d told them about the week before). There was a girl who was SO quiet-voiced and spoke so fast and had such weird intonation that neither I nor the kids could understand much of what she said. But overall, in all the classes (first-year English majors, first-year law majors, second-year commerce majors), most of the kids were on the ball and did fine, really. Oh, and my usual practice of learning their names and faces worked OK for the most part. In classes of up to 30 kids (four of my five being like that), I memorized their names and faces as I called roll, then took a few photos of each class, then practiced their names and faces with the photos after class, and generally got them memorized, so the next class I could greet them one by one by name, with just a handful of tricky ones (who got new hairdos or changed to glasses or no glasses or sat in different places, etc. etc.). I like learning interesting names, like one guy’s name that means Galaxy, one girl’s that means Beautiful Sea, one boy’s that means Horse Crossing, and so on, plus the names that sound similar in one class, like one class with Miyu, Miyu, and Miyuu, one with Kouta, Souta, Koki, Shoki, one with Ami and Mimi (sitting right next to each other), one with Honoka and Honoka (sitting right next to each other), one with Rio and Rio (sitting right next to each other), one with a lot of R starting names (Rintaro, Ryohei, Rento, Ryota, Ryoma, Ryo, Rikuto), and so on. And of course my graduate school classes are stimulating and pleasant, though… though… this year will be very challenging because I have three graduate students, one first-year Master’s student, one first-year PhD student, and one third-year PhD student (those last two are little sister and big sister), which means that I have four graduate school classes overall (three for those three plus one for any of our graduate students), which means that when combined with my university classes, I have nine classes overall, three Wednesday, three Thursday, and three Friday. Yikes! And all those classes are back to back (2-3-4 Wednesday, 1-2-3 Thursday, and 2-3-4 Friday). All that talking means that after my last class today (Friday) of our second week, my throat was rather sore, and I was worrying a bit as to whether I’d caught a cold or, gasp, corona! **By the way, our school has followed Japan as a whole in relaxing the mask requirements, so now a handful of students in each class are maskless, so that although I am still wearing mine, I worry that someone’s going to get me sick… Anyway, the only class I’m worried about is the big introduction to American Literature and Culture class for all of our first-year English majors plus repeating students who’ve failed it in the past, plus a about a dozen law majors and a handful of French or German or Japanese majors, a total of 113 students in one class. One problem is that the room is very snug for 113 people (plus my three TAs), so it gets warm… Another problem is that a not insignificant number of the students are taking a class taught mostly in English for the first time and have trouble understanding things I tell them. I have faith that most will start getting used to the class, but I also fear that a handful will remain clueless and zoned out, and I must find a way to not just lecture at them for 90 mins, the way I basically did today, well, 80 mins, cause I gave em a google forms quiz the last ten mins… I also want to learn their names and faces, but it’s tough cause there are so many, and I can’t take time to go around the room taking roll and learning each name and face. Well… I suppose I could do something like the first quarter one week, the second quarter another week, and so on. Anyway, what I did today was have them hold up pieces of paper with their names and numbers written on them and take photos of them, nearly thirty photos in all, which I now have on my computer, so my homework this weekend will be learning their names and faces that way! ANYWAY, all this is to say that after two weeks of classes, I’m basically exhausted but feeling happy enough and looking forward to next week and the next, actually (though I sure love my four-day weekends!).
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Jefferson Peters (JP)
Can you find me in the picture above? Archives
December 2023
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