My first day of classes last week happened to be my birthday. No cause for celebration when you pass fifty. Nevertheless, I couldn't resist making 120 students in American Culture and Literature practice what to call me (JP), by having them repeat things like, "Good afternoon, JP," and finishing with, "Happy Birthday, JP!" And then when they realized it really was my birthday, they clapped roundly and generally celebrated my accomplishment (?). So it was funny and fun and nice, really.
There was a worm in my Eden, though... This new student, one of the seven new law students taking my English department class for some reason, came in a little late, shuffling right in front of the room past where I was standing and starting the class, and then sat down in the front far row, probably because he'd come late and the room was full so he couldn't sit in the back. He proceeded to ignore my words and keep his eyes downcast, his head aimed down at... his smart phone! Now, one of my pet peeves is smart phones in class, so I regularly scold students for checking them and take points off their grades for checking them and even confiscate the phones of addicted people for the duration of class and so on. So I knew he was a new member of the class, not having taken it in spring term, so at first I only told him to put the smart phone away, which he did, and I also told the entire class to put their phones away and proceeded with my first day lecture. About five minutes later I saw an English major I'd failed in spring term sitting near the back and swiping his finger over his phone screen, his whole being intently focused on it, so I called out, "Takumi! Put your phone away!" Then when I had my TA take a picture of our class so I could put it on our website, I was sitting down in the front row next to the new law student guy, and happened to see that rather than getting ready to take a photo with everyone else, he was checking his smart phone again! So I asked him what he was doing, and reached over to take his phone away, but he grabbed onto it and said in coarse, rude Japanese something that, translated into English would come out something like, "What the fuck are you doing?" So I told him, "I am the teacher!" and then on second thought, "Leave the room!" He refused to leave the room, so I decided just to let him be, but told him that if he wanted to take my class, he couldn't look at his phone anymore... Not only did the episode spoil the fun feeling I felt from the "Happy Birthday, JP," but this bozo also spoiled our class picture, because in every shot my TA took, he had his head down and radiated sullen funk. Sigh... Still more. Then I told the class that I needed to talk in the corner of the room to several different groups of students, and the first one was the seven law students new to my class, so I could give them the syllabus and some pointers and photo cards and so on, so I called out, "All JJ or JB students come here now!" two or three times. After the first time, six of them scattered throughout the room came, but the smart phone rude boy remained sullenly in his seat on the far side of the room, so I had to leave the others in the other corner and walk over to get him to follow me back to the corner... The other six new law students in the class will be fine! They were responsive and normally smiling and interested seeming... but what is this guy's problem and why is he in the class? I suspect that he doesn't understand a word of the English I use, but the online syllabus students are supposed to check says that my class will be in English only, so maybe he didn't read it. Or maybe he has some kind of learning disability? Hmmm...... Often one or two law students who start taking the class end up dropping out after a day or two, and needless to say I sure am hoping he is one of them. ANYWAY, then for my birthday I had an English department meeting!
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Yesterday was the first day of classes for Fall Semester, Friday September 14, 2018.
For a month before I'd been having increasing numbers of increasingly frustrating and distressing nightmares of going to classes without having my handouts done, being late going to classes, finding that the students were in the wrong classrooms and I in the right ones or vice versa, noticing students getting up and leaving class early without permission, and so on and so forth. To avoid any of those kinds of things from happening, I went in to school the Thursday before the first Friday, and spent the whole day making handouts and trying to confirm my classrooms and printing my student lists and so on and so forth. So I woke up Friday morning feeling somewhat confident that everything would be OK... But when my first period class ended and I was about to go from building 10 to building 8 for period 2, I was shocked to see most of the students for the period 2 class (American Culture) trying to come into my period 1 classroom in the wrong building! I stopped one to say, "Aren't we in 811?" and he showed me his smart phone's screen, showing our university website and the classroom locations and sure enough, the period 2 class was for some reason changed without my knowing to the same room as period 1! I couldn't believe it, so I told the students to stay in the building 10 classroom, and went to the usual classroom in building 8 (the same one from Spring Semester), and there found a handful of kids and my TA, and asked them to wait there, and went down the hallway to the phone and called the administration office to explain what happened and to say we'd be in building 8 (our usual room), and could they please turn on the air conditioning in that room. They wanted me to have the class for the first day in building 10, but as there is no screen etc. in that room, I wouldn't be able to show the class some important things on the first day, so I stubbornly held out for having the class in our usual room, and finally (after putting me on hold for five mins or so, during which I heard the start of class bell ring), the administration people agreed... So then I went back to building 10 and got the 45 or so kids to come back with me to building 8, and we finally we got our first class of Fall Semester going! Ho ho ho--it was really very much like my nightmares... And then, to top things off, when I got back to my office, I checked the paper I'd received the day before with my classes and classrooms listed, and sure enough, the change was reflected there, but I had not noticed it before! I am a careless and unobservant person, to be sure--but in this case my oversight was due to the fact they have never in my 20+ years here changed a classroom without my initiating the change, so it never entered my head that the classroom would be different than in Spring Semester. Sigh... Anyway, I guess the class went OK... I reviewed grades, confirmed that most of them would prefer the final examination on the last day of class rather than during the exam period, reviewed using our class website's blog, and then introduced the Mid Term Election phenomenon that's occupying so much American media and other attention right now. Whew--I suppose it's lucky to have gotten the craziness out of the way on the first day of the semester, so that now when all my other classes begin next week on Wednesday and Thursday, everything should be smooth (knock on wood!). And it is good to get back in the classroom and back to work in autumn after the long hot humid summer... |
Jefferson Peters (JP)
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December 2023
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