Last Friday I was enjoying my graduate school seminar (with nine fun people, five officially enrolled, three unofficially joining, and one TA) as we were talking about a great Native American (Passamaquoddy) story called "The Girl and the Chenoo" that I've used a dozen or more times in my Introduction to American Culture and Literature class for first-year university students, and we were explaining the character of the protagonist, Little Listener, and after most of our members had said something about her, I pointed out what I like to point out about her every time I teach this story, that although she changes the Chenoo from a monster into her grandfather she herself doesn't change because she's perfect from the start, when Hui, one of my Chinese grad students, spoke up and said something like, "She does change! She smiles on page 53! Because she has had her own adventure and her life is usually boring."
And then we found that she smiles again a little later... Two times after not smiling during the first half of the story! Ah, the wonderful nature of literature, whereby you can think you know everything there is to know about a story and then someone, often a student, will point out something that you've been missing and it changes--deepens--how you understand and appreciate the story. Yes, I can see that: Little Listener usually stays in the camp that she and her three older brothers make when they go on their seasonal hunting trips into the wild forest, and then when her brothers return in the evening after their days of hunting, she listens to their exaggerated hunting stories (hence her name), and then one day this giant man-eating monster the Chenoo comes to their camp and she deals with the threat by calling him Grandfather and offering him food and shelter, so he learns that she's his relative so he can't eat her or her brothers. Finally, the Chenoo suggests that they make a sauna in which to sweat away his giant monster body, after which he coughs out his icy monster heart so Little Listener can toss it in the fire and melt it, leaving him permanently their grandfather. So this might be her first real adventure. So perhaps it stimulates her into smiling. Anyway, it is a nice story and I do like my class, so it was a great way to finish my third week of classes. Now for a long Golden Week vacation (ten days off this year!)!
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On Wednesdays my Introduction to American Culture and Literature class (for mostly first year English majors) ends at 2:30, and I have ten minutes to get from Building 8 on the first floor to Building A on the 8th floor for the next class. It's not easy. To be able to do it, I must start gathering all the materials spread over the lectern and OHC machine area as I'm wrapping up the class, which is distracting for me and probably the students, hope there are no students who want to ask questions after class (luckily in this case in Japan such students are very rare), hustle across campus to Building A, take the escalators up to the fourth floor and then the stair ways up to the eighth (the elevators are always too crowded to take). The first week of classes, I barely made it through the classroom door as the final start period 4 chime ended, but last week I made it somehow with about five minutes to spare!
Hmmm... Maybe it's less impossible than I thought!?!? ANYWAY. Last week, for the American Culture and Literature class and for my American Culture class, I had my TAs take photos of the classes so I could put them at the tops of our class websites' blog pages. You can see the photo of the American Culture and Literature class at the top of this page! It's nice that most students are trying to be seen and to take happy pics, while some are trying to hide. . . Anyway, in Japan the picture taker usually says, "Cheese," while the subjects do not, so I tried to make a point of making them do it the American way, where the picture taker says "Say 'Cheese'" and the subjects say "Cheese" so they will smile, with the result that I'm grinning like a fool... but most of the kids are smiling, so that's OK! I have a wealth of TAs this year, because I have a wealth of graduate school students: three (3!) for the American Culture and Literature class (my two Chinese first-year Master's students and my Japanese second-year Master's student) and two for the American Culture class (my two Chinese first-year Master's students). This is the first time I have had more than one TA in any class, so I have to figure out how best to utilize their helpfulness. They are all very earnest in wanting to be helpful! Usually, though, I only need them to change the images on my iPad so I can stand by the screen and point things out on it without having to run back and forth from the iPad at the OHC machine place to the screen. But then how do I get them to do an equal amount of that?!? Maybe henceforth I should have one do it one day and another the next day and so on?! Hmmm... Anyway, it is nice to have them in class, and I do feel lucky to have them. In conclusion, last week, the second week of the new school year, went OK. Whew! I made it to Saturday after the first week of classes in the new school year--barely. We returned from our trip around the world (eight cities and seven countries and three continents) on the night of Monday April 8, and the very next day I had to go to school for a meeting, and the very next day after that my classes started.
That first Wednesday was difficult. Three classes (periods 1, 3, and 4) and then two meetings lasting until around 8:00 pm. I was jet lagged and still somewhat sick with the cold I caught in Cairo two weeks or so earlier. However, I did enjoy meeting the first year students for Introduction to American Culture and Literature! This year there are about 90 first-year English majors, and they seemed responsive and fresh. I introduced our class to them and tried to communicate the fun and usefulness of studying literature to learn culture and language and the human heart etc. from my point of view as a learner of Japanese by showing them two different examples of introductions in Japanese, one in a Japanese textbook called Japanese for Busy People (Tanaka san introduces Smith san to Hayashi san) and one in the Slam Dunk manga by Takehiko Inoue (the Shohoku High School basketball manager Aya introduces the new manager Haruko chan to the team). I think it was an effective contrast: Tanaka san and company are just names on a textbook page without any personalities or stories etc., whereas Haruko chan is an important character in Slam Dunk who reveals her nervousness on the occasion by hear heart going "doki doki" and her cheeks blushing. The manga situation also reveals Japanese culture (boys sports teams usually have girl managers) and moves the reader (because it comes at the end of the 31st and last volume of Slam Dunk and reveals Haruko chan's growth from little sister and fan to manager). The only problem was that now that I think of it I bet many maybe most of the students didn't get the relation of my learning Japanese that way to their learning English that way! Sigh... Anyway--they seem like a promising group of young people, and I'm looking forward to teaching them about American culture and literature and English for one year. Other classes went OK, I suppose, but it was only the first week. . . There was weird stuff in my Interactive English class for engineering freshmen Wednesday period 4. First, it's in the horrible Building A on the top 8th floor, so it's hard to get to on time from my Introduction to American Culture and Literature class in building 8 on the first floor. To get to that next classroom, then, I must gather all my scattered Culture and Literature materials (like the Japanese text book and Slam Dunk manga and iPad and left over handouts and so on) hustle across campus to Building A, go up the escalators to the 4th floor, and then walk up stairs to the 8th (the brilliant architects who designed Building A didn't put in enough elevators for the amount of people who'd be using them to get to and from classes, so unless you get there or leave there 15-20 minutes early or late, you can't get on an elevator), and I just hopped into the classroom as the last of the period 4 starting chime ended. I needed a few minutes to catch my breath and gather myself. And then I discovered that instead of the 29 students on my class list there were 32! As I called roll, two of them realized they'd made a mistake and left to go to their proper class, but I still ended up with 30. One boy whose name was not on the roll insisted he was in the right class and showed me on his smart phone his schedule that listed my class as being where he should be then. Anyway, all that made the class start on a false step... And Interactive English is never my favorite class to teach. the problem is largely with me: I have not changed how I teach the class in probably 20 years or so! I keep doing the same things in the same order and so I've become bored with it and know I'm not doing a good job but am too lazy to try a new approach. To be sure, I usually after all enjoy spending time with the students doing what we do, and they (mostly) with me. But... I had another Interactive English class, one with Commerce freshmen, on Thursday, and that went better because there were no people in the wrong place then and they were more lively in asking questions when I gave them a chance to. I also had what I think is a promising start to American Culture class Friday period 2, for about 35 third-year students and a dozen fourth-year ones. Although I did probably bite off more than I could chew and regurgitate for them at the end of class by introducing the idea of Disney-Mickey as a Monster intent on devouring the world of media! Anyway, the students stayed rather attentive for the whole 90 minutes, which is a good sign. English conversation for first-year English majors went well, too, because many of them volunteered to ask questions for the last 25 minutes of class (way more than usually volunteer to do that), so that was a good sign. I mean they seem active and lively and not too shy, compared to usual Japanese students. A core of six boys sat together in the very front, which is unusual, too, because usually boys sit in the back. As for graduate school, I still haven't decided even after the first week just how to manage things. I have four students all together, more than I've ever had at one time. One PhD student (Super Sheryl), one second-year Master's student (Earnest Aki), and two first-year Master's students (Shu-san and Hui). I am pretty sure I'll have to reduce the number of times I meet Sheryl, who is starting her extension year, and manage carefully how I arrange to meet my other three students, or else I'll run out of energy pretty quickly. On the plus side, all my graduate students are diligent and capable and concerned for my well-being, so I think we should be OK. The graduate school seminar for any students has more than any class I've ever had in graduate school before: nine! That includes the TA, Sheryl, three unofficially attending students who've taken my class in the past, all four first year new students, plus one student who left the program a couple years ago and has returned. So we can't meet in my office, which can only accommodate six people at most, and so are meeting in the graduate school seminar room ("practice room") C in the library. I hope it will be OK! I might for the first time have to put the students in small groups of three a lot so they can talk enough each class... Hmm.... Right, so I made it through that first week somehow! I do feel exhausted though. Partly it's because of the trip, partly because of my cold, and partly because of my age. At 57 I do find that I have less energy to expend and need more time to regain it on the weekends. Good luck to me this year! |
Jefferson Peters (JP)
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December 2023
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