The first week of classes in the fall semester!
This is going to be a strange semester because I have to teach not the usual three days but an unusual 4 days, because I'm taking a class for a teacher who left us to return to her home in Australia. Luckily, one of my Japanese colleagues has taken one of the classes I had been assigned in exchange so that my overall load of classes stays the same. Unluckily, the new class I'm taking for the departed colleague is on a Tuesday, when my other days of teaching are Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Thus, my schedule this year is one class on Tuesday (period 5), three classes on Wednesday, including two Graduate School classes, one class on Thursday (period 4 ), and three classes on Friday, including one Graduate School class. Although Tuesday and Thursday will be easy days, having only one class each, they'll be challenging days because I am a morning person, and the classes on Tuesday and Thursday start at 4:20 pm and 2:40 pm respectively, which means that on each of those days, I have to wait around twiddling my thumbs getting increasingly antsy the way I do before classes. Anyway, this first week was an exceptionally easy one because Friday was a national holiday and a vacation from school classes, which means this first week I only had three days of classes. I'm liking all my classes! So far... Not including the Friday ones which I haven't met yet. On Tuesday afternoon I had an interactive English class which is basically conversation class for first year commerce majors, 28 of them, and they seemed pretty lively and funny, and I succeeded in memorizing all of their names and faces on that first day, and they also permitted me to take a few photos of the class so that I could practice their names and faces later, which I will try to do every day so as to avoid forgetting them before the next class. 23 of the 28 students had apparently watched the so-called startup class video for the class before the first day and had also done the Google forms quiz that I assigned for them to do after watching the video to check their comprehension, and the last thing they had to do in that Google forms quiz was too write some details about themselves. Although some students wrote little, like a guy who only wrote, “I like sushi,” some wrote a fair amount and some of that was interesting, and I could refer to some keywords from their writing that I had written down next to their names in the class list so that when I was learning their names and faces I could tell them what they had written and make some comments to each one, like one girl who said she likes reading and dancing and that she's been dancing since age 6 and that she was the champion of Japan when she was 12 and then when she was 16, and one girl who said that she went to Ishigaki Island and had BBQ there and went swimming in the sea and wants to eat a big American pizza in America someday, and so on. There is a group of boys in the back who may be a little noisy and a little too inclined to chatter amongst themselves in Japanese when I'm trying to explain something, but they're kind of cute and funny, and I think I'll be able to manage them OK, and I'd rather have a group of boys with good camaraderie than a bunch of sullen ones. There is one strange boy who sits all by himself in the very front on the side far away from anyone else, so I'm a little worried about him mixing with the others when they have to do pair or group work, and there seem to be one or two who may have rudimentary English skills compared to the others and may rely on classmates too much for Japanese translations whenever I say anything, but overall the class seems lively and personable and willing to try enjoying English together once a week. This class takes place on the 8th floor of building A, on the very top floor that is, in a spacious room with mobile desks on wheels. The afternoon sun will be blasting in from the window in the back of the room, and I'll have to watch that the kids don't keep shutting the windows back there so that we can maintain some air circulation in the room. In short, that class should be fine. On Wednesday, I first met my two Graduate School classes, the first being like a seminar for any of our students, and because we only have one first year master’s student this year, the class only has one student, but then my PhD student is the teaching assistant, so it’s like there are three of us. We did that class online. In the class we're going to be reading and discussing the first book in The Hunger Games trilogy. In the second class that day I met my PhD student online and we talked a little about Ursula K. Le Guin's The Farthest Shore. Apparently we will be reading the 4th, 5th, and 6th books of Earthsea in fall semester, so I'm looking forward to that very much. Finally, that day, I met a class of first year chemistry majors for Interactive English, and they mostly seem fine, with many lively science oriented young people, including a surprisingly large number of girls for a science class at our university, which usually have only two or three. I could do the same thing with them that I did with the Tuesday first year interactive English class, memorizing their names and faces and mentioning some highlights from the writing that they did about themselves for the Google forms quiz. I did notice one boy who needs someone to translate into Japanese every single thing I say in English to him, but the other students seemed mostly OK. Oh--one interesting thing I have to kind of worry about is that near the end of class when I encouraged them to ask me any questions about anything to get bonus points for their grades, one girl asked if we can have a Christmas party! I was a little noncommittal because obviously there is a coronavirus epidemic going on, and I fear that having some Christmas party might not be a good idea in this context. On the other hand, she is a healthy bright active person, so in my usual vacillating way I left it that we'll think about it and decide later. Finally, Thursday I saw my first year English majors for the first day of the second semester of their year-long English conversation class. It was good to see them again. I was a little upset two girls came in about one or two minutes late and then when two boys sauntered in 10 or 15 minutes late, and but otherwise it was good to see them. In the first semester we did various activities that I also do in my semester-long Interactive English classes, but in the second semester starting now, we're going to read Charlotte's Web over the course of 11 weeks, using it to practice short conversations and to do group discussions, and I'm always uneasy about this second semester when I teach English conversation, because the students tend not to use enough English when I'm not hovering over their particular groups. Yesterday after I introduced our semester and told them about grades and practiced their names etc., I had them get into groups of four people and talk to each other in English, starting with the topic of what interesting thing they did over summer vacation, and with about 10 minutes before the end of class I stopped them and asked each one what percent of their talking that day was in English. The answers varied from a low of 50% that may actually have been generous to a high of 90% with probably the average being around 75%. I told them that's not bad but that they should all try their best to get that percent up 10 points higher when we start talking about Charlotte's Web in groups. I hope they'll be able to do that! And that was my first week of classes in the new fall semester.
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Jefferson Peters (JP)
Can you find me in the picture above? Archives
December 2023
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