Every summer in Japan I am shocked by the oppressive quality of the heat and humidity, but this July has been the worst I can remember in 20 some years. Record setting temperatures, thousands of people struck down by the heat, many deaths, and here we've only just finished classes for the spring semester, with examinations still to come!
I frequently imagine in this season that I'm soft vanilla ice cream dropped onto the broiling black asphalt at noon. I finished my classes last Friday, and begin invigilating exams this coming Saturday, and in the meantime have been trying to survive. If we had the American academic calendar, which has a long summer vacation starting from late May or June, it wouldn't be so bad, but here we go until August 2nd (the last day of exams). I feel sorry for the poor kids, who have umpteen examinations because they have so many more classes than American university students (at least twice as many). It must be so difficult to study and function generally now. The cicadas are drone-singing their whirring metallic sheen of sound into the hot air, and it really does feel like a new world in this summer season, and it will really make us appreciate fall and winter when they finally come, but it sure is difficult to do anything related to school work in these conditions. I should be starting my grading (for classes that don't have examinations like English Conversation), but I can't muster the energy and usually end up taking another nap in front of an electric fan. This too shall pass! At times like this, I wonder if I'll really make it to retire at age 70.
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With each year that passes, I notice more and more students checking their smart phones in class. Throughout this spring semester, I've often told my American Culture class (about 45 third-year and five fourth-year students) to put their phones away at the start of class, told them that checking their phones in class will lower their grades, and scolded students several times about it.
In yesterday's Culture class, for instance (our next to the last of the semester), I told the students to put their phones away at the beginning of class. About fifteen minutes in, I noticed a girl seated in the back tapping away on her phone, so I told her to put it away. About thirty minutes later, I saw her doing it again! This time I got angry when I told her to put it away, and (rhetorically) asked if she was addicted to it. Then with about fifteen minutes to go in the class, I noticed a suspiciously acting boy who always sits in the back and tries to hide behind the body of the boy in front of him making tapping motions. I sauntered over gradually kind of like a cat stalking a mouse, and glanced at his desk. At first I saw the handout we were covering that day (about American money etc.), so at first I felt chagrined at having doubted him, but then I saw his phone next to the handout, and some kind of game going on on it, so I confiscated the phone, asking him if he'd been gambling... As I walked back to the front of the room, I looked at the screen, seeing colorful tiles in the center, and wizard-like avatars on either side with "HPs" (hit points) listed under them, some kind of a magic battle game apparently. At the end of class, I returned the phone to him, noting that his friends sitting around him were kind of ironically and sympathetically smiling at him, and his face was expressing shameless loss; apparently I'd taken his phone away at a particularly crucial point in his magical duel! Something similar to that has happened in pretty much every Friday Culture class this year so far. I've told them that their grade goes down when they do that kind of thing; I've told them that it really upsets me when I do it. But still a fair number of them do it every week. Many things about this upset me. First, in order to have any self-respect or sense of fulfillment in my work and life, I need to believe that I am teaching most of the students something, and when they are checking their phones, I figure they can't be learning much from me. Second, I am human and would like to think that what I am teaching them is somewhat interesting if not always practically useful, so that I'd like to think that 90 minutes of my class would be something they could turn off (if not forget) their phones and the worlds of their phones for. Third, I realize now that that boy, of course, has been doing the same thing throughout the semester, because I've seen him making the same gestures from behind the back of the guy in front of him several times, and have often wondered what the heck he was doing because he sure isn't the kind of student who'd be taking notes. Fourth, that they ignore my requests and commands reveals that they have no respect for me as a teacher or really as a person, or reveals that they are so addicted that whatever feelings they have for me and my class are overwhelmed by their need to check their SNSes or play their games on their phones or whatever they do with them. ANYWAY, I always have to remember that the majority of the students in that class and my others do not incontinently check their phones during classes, but... I guess I'm tired of the heat (it's been around 33 or 34 in the daytimes and uncomfortable to sleep at night ever since the torrential rains came and went last week) and tired of the semester and ready for vacation! Still one more week of classes, then a week or so of exams.... |
Jefferson Peters (JP)
Can you find me in the picture above? Archives
December 2023
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