Whew--I made it--the first semester classes are over! Now for examinations and grading ... and then vacation!
I had a really great Thursday last day of classes. Period 2, English conversation for English majors, was interesting, cause we could find out about voting in Korea to compare with voting in America and Japan. Period 3, American Culture Kakuron, was fun in a scary way because I covered the Republican Convention (using Melania Trump's plagiarized speech to warn the students about plagiarism for their group reports in fall semester) and Pokemon Go. But I really enjoyed the last sports majors Freshman English class, where I let them play a gesture game a soccer player wanted to play... and some of the kids had fun acting out elaborate situations to communicate words like "doctor" and "couple." For couple, a pair of soccer players left the room and came back, acting like they were meeting each other for a date, and then arguing, and then making up again, and then one of them cooked a meal for the other, who pretended it was delicious... and we were all laughing and cheering and asking them to to more "story!" in their gesturing... till finally I asked if the word they were acting out was "couple." I do wish they would do homework and I do wish that more of them were better at English (or even wanted to be better at it), but I also really enjoyed each Thursday's class with them--so healthy and young and funny and full of personality!
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Yesterday Friday period 1 was the last Introduction to American Culture and Literature (America Bunka Bungaku) class of spring semester, and I'd been looking forward to finishing enjoyably, comfortably, coherently, because I like the class and the students so much, but... as happens every year during the last class, there was too much to cover and not enough time and I had to run through in five minutes things that needed fifteen minutes, or cut them out suddenly... I confused the students about the examination, too... And then I finished by scaring them about the course division process, telling them that if too many students the Culture and Literature course or the Language course, some will be moved against their will into the course with too few students, according to GPA, so they should try hard on all their spring term final examinations.
Poor students! I really want to teach them about American culture and literature in an interesting and enjoyable way, but too often I run out of time and go too fast and confuse or lose them, just like yesterday. Well.... All I can do is try to remember for the future, to try to learn from past mistakes, even though I always forget and never learn. Sigh. A good thing happened, though: my Masters graduate student told me she'd gotten a full-time, permanent job with Fukuoka University in administration! Those jobs are very competitive, requiring taking tests, writing essays, and sitting for three interviews, along with hundreds of other applicants. So it's really impressive that she got the job--and a big relief. And last night I went with several other great colleagues to the annual July Union party, where we had lots of sushi and beer and wine and cheese and conversation, and I won a prize: a set of drip coffee packets. Oh--one other nice thing happened, even in that disastrous last Friday class: we covered William Carlos Williams' charming poem, "This Is Just to Say," and even though we went through it too fast, I did get the class to recite it with me a few times... Ah, I love literature. Whew--we had to have Friday classes on Saturday today, so that we can make the required 15 meetings for the day. So yesterday I taught the first year Intro to American culture and literature class and then today as well. Actually, I so enjoy the class and the students that I was very happy to see them today (but I do feel sorry for them, too...).
Anyway, one nice thing that happened today was when I put William Carlos Williams' poem "The Red Wheelbarrow" on the screen and asked the students to raise their hands for bonus points to identify assonance or consonance or any interesting features of the pattern. At first I thought, "Oh, what have I done--they're all too shy--no one will raise their hand!" And as I was stalling for time while deciding whether and when to give up and just lecture them about those matters, a really shy and bright student sitting near the front, Sae, raised her hand and said, "the i sound in beside and white is the same." And when I asked her what that is, she said "Assonance." Wow! Her example freed up others, and by the end of it at least ten had raised their hands and pointed out consonance (r sounds repeating) and assonance (glazed and rain) and pattern (each stanza has four words, each stanza is three words in one line and one in the second, each second line has two syllables, the two syllables usually go high-low, and so on, and finally one brave bright eyed girl (Ayaka) said that there are no capital letters in the poem! I was so relieved and pleased with them! To be sure, there are about 110 students in the class... but I do think they probably most of them liked doing things that way more than my usual non-stop lecturing. So I will try to do things like that more often! Anyway, it was a nice Saturday (even though I gave them the test without enough time at the end of class...) See you next Saturday! Whew--it's getting hotter, 30+ degrees centigrade, real summer.
Luckily, the air conditioner has been on strongly enough in room 811 where I have to two lecture classes, and has been OK in the other rooms. So this year's first year students seemed to like Edgar Allan Poe's "Annabel Lee"! Nine of them posted comments about it on our class blog (the largest number of comments I think all semester), including one girl who said the rhythm is like skipping, which gave me great joy, and led me to do a bit of skipping in class while saying, "it was MAny and MAny a YEAR ago..." But--oh, no--I forgot that we must have a Friday class as usual on July 8, and then a "Friday" class on the very next Saturday, July 9, due to the crazy schedule Fukudai forces on us to ensure we have 15 meetings for each class each semester... And i forgot to tell the students about it yesterday... so it will be hard for them to do homework over night... so... Maybe I'll give their last quiz at the end of class on Saturday!?! ANYWAY, the end of the semester is really in sight! See you next Saturday-- |
Jefferson Peters (JP)
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December 2023
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