Wow--yesterday I finally had my last class of Spring Semester. And ... it was a Friday class but it was held on a Monday because our university feels compelled to have fifteen meetings for each class by any means necessary. That means we sometimes have Monday and Thursday classes on Saturdays, Friday classes on Mondays, and so on. It's crazy. When I came to Fukuoka University in 1997, it was more relaxed, and depending on the calendar and the day of the week, some classes had 14 meetings, some had 12, some had 11, and so on, and we never had any weird class meetings on different days of the week. But now ... (I won't go into how our summer vacation has shrunk more and more each year till we go From April into August now for Spring Semester!)
ANYWAY. It was fun to meet the first year students in Introduction to American Culture and Literature again, and fun to meet them on a Monday instead of our usual Friday. Every Friday (usual class time) we begin and end with big "TGIF" greetings and partings (it's the first thing I teach them in the first class of the year), and they get a kick out of saying it with big voices. So yesterday I started off that way with them, then told them about OGIM and OHIM (Og God/Hell It's Monday), but then said that because we have a FRIDAY class, today (even though Monday) is in fact a TGIF occasion. Then we went into the last class, wherein I went through the handout I'd given them about the term examination and answered their questions for about an hour (I'd hoped to do it in half an hour, but a surprisingly large number of them were bold enough to ask questions, unusual for a Japanese class), and then had to pack into the last half hour a review of our semester (Native Americans, Puritans, Romantics, Modernists and their songs and poems and personalities and cultures etc.) plus a little extra on some benefits of studying American Culture and Literature in English (Learn American culture, exercise their empathy muscles, get topics for conversation and thought, and improve their English expression and understanding), and then said "TGIF" for goodbye. After the class, several somewhat earnest boys got an extra point or two by reciting some William Carlos Williams poems. (I made them do them over if they paused strangely or messed up the words, but actually they could do rather well.) Also yesterday in the evening I attended a graduate school beer garden party downtown, in the heat. It was fun but hot and smoky and involved too much meat barbecued and not enough veggies. ANYWAY, the classes of the first semester are over, and now I just have to invigilate exams and make a lot of grades and read a master's thesis and give an Open Campus lecture and survive this incredible heat and humidity, worse than ever... Fight!
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I went a little crazy today.
It was during the first period Friday (TGIF!) introduction to American culture and literature class. I'd summarized Emily Dickinson and #359 ("A Bird came down the Walk") from last week's lecture and had moved into the main business for today, an introduction to Modernism with a bit of Ezra Pound ("In a Station of the Metro"), and was in full spate when I noticed this male student (let's call him Masa) sitting in the back of the room and writing furiously. I suspected he wouldn't be taking notes on my lecture (nearly nobody ever does that), so in the course of walking the room while introducing Modernism I pounced on him and found that he was dong Chinese homework! Now, I had scolded a student for doing that same thing (Chinese homework) and I'd told the class more than once in the past that their grades will go down if they do things like use their smart phones or do other class' homework in our class, so I got a bit angry today. Indeed, I snatched the paper he'd been writing his Chinese homework on (a fully covered page of B5 paper) and raged up to the lectern with it, where I proceeded to do a little slight of hand, slipping his paper down and tearing a random handout in several pieces, tossing them on the floor, and stamping on them! (A little crazy?) Then about ten minutes later I saw another boy sitting in the back furiously writing something, so I pounced on him and found that he was doing Chinese homework, too! So I shouted, I don't believe it! (Maybe I also muttered, Jesus Christ!) Then I roared, Shota, you're AMAZING!" and laughed like an insane Santa Claus, large rocking Ho Ho Hos. AMAZING! I also looked at some good girls in the front row and whispered, Can you believe it? After class the two boys came up to get their homework (and Chinese textbooks) and apologized, so I smiled at them ironically and said Don't do it again. Whew... Mind you, this class also featured a parade of about five students coming in late spaced about ten mins apart, beginning about twenty minutes into the class, so I started asking them Why are you late? and when they tremblingly stood their paralyzed in my headlights, I suggested to them, Train trouble? Because I had received emails from a couple students before class saying they'd be late due to train trouble due to the flooding rains Fukuoka has suffered recently. The first person I so asked nodded yes, so I then shouted, Show me your late train paper! (They can get a stamped paper from the train station or bus station when their transport is delayed...) The student shook his head with chagrin, so I let him go, reminding him and everyone that when they are late their grades go down. When they do other class' homework their grades go down. When they check their smart phones their grades go down. Etc. Then a girl came in 45 mins late and when I asked her, Train trouble? She shook her head no, so I approvingly bellowed, "Honest girl!" It sounds horrible, but actually it was pretty fun, and I think many of the students were entertained by my antic antics (am I crazy?) There are only a couple classes left, and by now they really should know what kinds of things tee me off and lower their grades, so it's a little perplexing why a handful get worse in those areas as the semester goes on... And it's also a bit perplexing why I lose my cool like that. It's actually always an act. Part of me is laughing at myself and feeling like an entertainer (or clown), part of me is genuinely disappointed that some of the kids are so detached from what we're doing that they'd sit their doing another class' homework... But really I should just ignore late people or other class homework people etc. and quietly lower their grades, I suppose... So what will I do next time? |
Jefferson Peters (JP)
Can you find me in the picture above? Archives
December 2023
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