Two weeks ago when I went to my English Conversation I class on Thursday afternoon after lunch, I found the group of six lively girls who sit together in the center front of the room in three pairs having a birthday party for one of their number, complete with cake. Then when one last boy was giving his short speech to start the class, he began by having us sing "Happy Birthday" to the student. So that was all quite fun.
Then last Thursday when I went to the class after lunch, I found the six lively girls playing cards with great enthusiasm and happy noise, so I could tease them about gambling and enjoy making them practice saying "casino" with English instead of Japanese pronunciation (we were practicing pronunciation of difficult sounds like th, l, v, and s that stays s and doesn't change to sh before "e" sounds). I wonder what they'll be up to this Thursday? In general, I am really enjoying this year's classes because so many of the students are lively. Also, for the first time ever since I came to Fukuoka University in 1997, I am teaching first year conversation AND Freshman English (basically conversation) to two different sets of about 27 freshmen English majors (in the past I only had those classes were always with students from other departments and faculties). So that means that in addition to my Introduction to American Culture and Literature class for all 107 first year English majors this year, I get to teach about half of them in smaller and more intimate conversation type classes. So that means I get to know about half of them twice as well as I normally do. And I'm really enjoying spending time with the young ones. There are a number of intelligent, diligent, and motivated students of high enough English ability to understand most of what I say in English in class, so they make up for the handful who probably don't understand anything I say and generally make me happy to be in the classroom. This is especially important because we've just entered the horrible annual rainy season, which is so hot and humid and well rainy...
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Last week hit 30 degrees, so Wednesday's period 3 (1:00-2:30) classroom with 120 students was a sauna when I got there several minutes before 1:00 to practice student names and faces. When I saw the poor students fanning their faces and wilting visibly and felt myself getting sweaty, I hustled down the hallway to telephone the administration to ask them to turn on the air conditioner. (There is no control for doing that in the classrooms of Building 8.) The worker I talked with was reluctant at first, but I told her it'd be impossible to have our class, and she said she'd have it turned on. Fifteen minutes later, we started feeling cool air coming in from the ceiling machines and closed all the windows and shut the doors. Thirty minutes later I felt fine and did the class on Protestants and Catholics and Puritans and Anne Bradstreet (too much for 90 minutes as usual!), but after class, two female students told me they'd been too cold! ("The wind was cold," they said shyly.)
ANYWAY, school in Spring Semester gets pretty unbearable due to the humid and hot Japanese summers, from about the end of May. This year got bad in the middle of May... And whenever I think that in America universities are having graduation and going on vacation by about the end of May, I sigh. Yesterday (Wednesday) was my only day of work this week, because Thursday and Friday are holidays, for Golden Week, etc. Ah, it is nice to have six days off soon after the new semester begins!
Yesterday I had my first period graduate school class with my super PhD student talking about various things (SF, fantasy, a paper she's revising on Neil Gaiman's American Gods, etc.), and my third period Introduction to American Culture and Literature class (I have been happy with the majority of the students' responsiveness in class but disappointed by their lack of participation in our class website and blog, so I gave 'em a surprise quiz at the end of class, so now I have to read 120 quiz papers and decide how to score/grade them etc....), and my fourth period Freshman English conversation-like class (there is a wide range of ability and seriousness in the class, from a few students who don't understand anything and have trouble saying anything in English to students who've spent three months homestaying and English learning in Canada, but I like all the kids a lot)... Anyway, this Golden Week is necessary and will be over too soon! And then we'll have hard constant going till the summer break in early August. |
Jefferson Peters (JP)
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December 2023
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