Hey, the second week of Fall Semester (Koki) was easy cause Thursday was a national holiday, so I only had two days of classes.
I decided to try a new approach (slightly) with my big Introduction to American Culture and Literature class: I'll try to avoid calling out the names of sleeping or smart-phone using students to shape them up by embarrassing them, because one student wrote in the class evaluations at the end of last semester that when I do that it interrupts the flow of the class. So I'm taking that on board and henceforth I'm going to try just remembering which students are sleeping or using smart phones etc. and take points off their grades without calling them out on it in class. I will risk interrupting the flow of the class to stop students from talking to each other when I'm lecturing, though, because letting them talk distracts other students around them. Part of me can't believe I'm having to deal with this kind of thing in university classes, but that's the way things are here now. ANYWAY, I did enjoy last class a lot--most of the kids are attentive and alert and trying to listen and learn.
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whew--it's begun again. Another fall semester (koki). I'm SO tired after just one week... But it was good to see the students again, the young people. I am looking forward to the semester. I think it will be a good one.
I read the class survey comments, and one student said that when i scold students for sleeping or talking etc., it interrupts the flow of the lecture too much, so I have been thinking about what to do instead. I've decided that I will continue stopping students when they talk too much during lecture, but will try not mentioning their sleeping or using smart phones etc. until after class, and tell them that every time I see them doing those things, their grade will go down a point. Otherwise, the surveys comments were positive (though one student said my voice was too loud, and two students said they want me to say exactly when I'm going to give a quiz, and one student said I should make the content more difficult...) ANYWAY, it was good (and exhausting) to be back in the classroom. I can't believe summer vacation is over! I hope that you had a good one--with interesting experiences and plenty of rest and relaxation. If you're a Japanese English Department student, I hope you did something with English sometimes.
As for me, my wife and I visited Central Europe for eleven days from the end of August to the beginning of September: Budapest in Hungary, Vienna in Austria, and Chesky Krumlov and Prague in the Czech Republic. We had been to other European countries (England, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Belgium), but never to the ones we visited this time, so it was very interesting to see a different kind of Europe than before. It felt more Slavic, more ethnic, more medieval (in Hungary and Czech) and more Empire-ish (in Vienna). We ate delicious food: goulash, cold cherry and cinnamon soup, honey cake, roast duck, German wine, Czech beer, and Hungarian tokay, etc. And saw so much rich history and culture, castles, palaces, towers, cathedrals, gardens, paintings, statues, furniture, organ recitals, folk dances, puppet show operas, and string orchestra classical performances, gardens, and so on. We took lots of public transportation: street cars, subways, and buses. And walked a lot every day (I got big blisters on my toes...). We got a strong sense of history, how, for example, the Habsburg Empire dominated Bohemia (Czeck) and Hungary until after World War II, when the USSR dominated them, until 1989. And in Vienna I touched the wall (only a small part of it remains) that kept out the Ottoman Turkish armies more than once over the centuries. People were generally very nice and helpful and communicated with us in English. We usually felt very safe. Before traveling I don't look forward to it at all! After traveling I need a week or more to recover! But during traveling I really enjoy seeing and learning and hearing and tasting and smelling and touching new things... ANYWAY, now the second school semester begins the day after tomorrow, and it will be difficult to get back into the teaching routine--I'll try to continue posting things each Saturday here. |
Jefferson Peters (JP)
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December 2023
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