Not only my strangest year, I'm sure, but probably the strangest year of millions of people in Japan!
Last Wednesday Thursday and Friday, I taught my last classes of the school year and in a way the first classes of the new year, because we had our last of 15 class meetings on January 6, 7, and 8. Classes went OK, I guess. At least the two that had final exam type big Google forms quizzes had most people attend and do the quiz who had been coming to the classes. Most people did OK on them. Of course I had made the quizzes mostly of all the questions we had already done on smaller quizzes during the school semester, and the students had links to those quizzes so as to prepare by taking and practicing them again. I felt sad to have the last classes and say goodbye to, especially my graduate school seminar with six bright and funny young people, my university seminar with 10 bright and funny younger people, and my introduction to American culture and literature class for about 101st year students – – that one I'll especially miss because this coming year in 20 2021, I won't be teaching it for the first time except for my sabbatical since I came to Fukuoka University. I will also miss my English conversation class for English first year of majors. Of course the strangest part of the strange year was that I never met any of the classes in person, and I only met about five of the students in person by chance on campus, and because our university recommended holding our online classes with the students turning their videos and mics off, I could never see any facial expressions or any reactions to anything I was ever saying, so that I never knew how the students were listening or responding or reacting to our classes. There was one exception: the graduate school seminar for which we all decided at the first class to meet with our videos on, which made that class extra special to me, because then we could see how we were reacting to each other's words. I think it was easier to do the big lecture class for introduction to American culture and literature than to do other classes like English conversation, because I could just lecture with my PowerPoint presentation and just imagine that students were listening and then give them a quiz with Google forms at the end of class that would I hoped ensure that they were listening. And I guess with most with a few exceptions most of them were mostly listening most of the time maybe? In a usual school year, before coronavirus, I begin each class of the semester by getting photo name cards from the students and then by the next week I have memorized their names and faces, which usually impresses them and increases my morale because I know all the names and faces. This year, by contrast, of course, I only know their names and have no faces too attached to them. What will next year be like, meaning the school year beginning in April 2021? Will we be on campus in classrooms in person? Or will we continue to do long distance online learning? The best student in my university seminar, who spent this entire year 2020, her first year at her our university, in her home in Kagoshima, told me that for the coming year she's going to be living in a dormitory near campus, so I really hope that she will be able to have classes in person. There were many hiccups and mistakes in my presentation of classes this last year: but usually they were technical troubles relating to the clumsy nature of the WebEx platform that we had to use as a default, because, for instance, I was not able to use the desktop application at home I had to use the online application, which is touchy and tricky and liable to freeze up when I'm sharing things, so that sometimes I had to ask the students to leave the meeting and return, which is very clumsy indeed. Anyway, finally, we all survived 2020, and apparently I did not catch coronavirus or Covid, and I'm looking forward to making my final grades, submitting my final grades, attending final meetings, making my syllabi for the new year and having graduate school defenses for Master's students and their theses, etc., and then to go into a well-needed spring vacation, after which I hope we will be back in the classroom on campus. Although, in closing, I have to admit that I have become somewhat used to even appreciative of having classes at home, because then I don't need to worry about clothes or commuting or getting nervous in front of a bunch of people! So it will be interesting to see how next year goes… Good luck to us all!
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Jefferson Peters (JP)
Can you find me in the picture above? Archives
December 2023
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