I've been SO lazy, and few school-related things have occurred to inspire me to write about here. It's already just over a third of the way through the semester!
My Introduction to American Culture and Literature class has mostly been going well. The kids were mostly interested by the African American unit I started off the semester with. They seem to be opposed as a matter of principle to discrimination, without being quite aware of how much discrimination there is in Japan. They were impressed by racial profiling and slave spirituals like "Lay Dis Body Down" and by Gwendolyn Brooks' "We Real Cool." They did well on our first quiz, covering the African American history, culture, and literature unit, with 81 of about 125 people getting 8-10 points, 20 people 7 points, and only about 20 people getting 4-6 points, which is a much better performance than in Spring Semester. I still really enjoy spending time with them! Last Wednesday I introduced American newspaper comics, focusing as I do each year on Calvin and Hobbes, and they seemed interested in all that. We are no approaching the time of year when I dread their having to choose either the Language Course or the Culture and Literature course for their 2nd-4th years of study, because I hope most of them will choose the latter course, but also wish the students didn't have to make any such choice... My Freshman English conversation class for Economics majors is going OK. They are a lively group of 29, only five girls, though about a quarter of them probably don't understand anything I say in English. There are about half who seem responsive, and a quarter who are capable and active. My American Culture class is going OK, too, overall. About 50 students. Too many miss or come late, but when they're there, they are usually alert, and a handful of them post great comments on our class website blog and a smaller handful ask great questions in class. We've been covering American English, especially comparing it to British English, and just introduced bad words etc. when I ran out of time yesterday, Friday, so will have to complete that in three weeks. Next week is Halloween, the week after that a holiday. And in three weeks will also be the Mid-Term Election current event topic! My English Conversation classes are going OK.. I have one for first year English majors, and they're really all responsive and funny and capable of doing homework and of communicating in English. We're using Jeff Smith's first Bone graphic novel as a text for conversations, slang and expressions, and discussion. I have another for second year English majors, the so-called SIE (Study in English) track people, who are supposed to be more motivated to speak English than their peers, but I've been finding lately that after all too many of them are pretty much average in that respect, and I'm starting to find that overall the class is not much different from any second year group of English majors. In fact, two of the best students for communicating in English happen to be French majors taking the class! My graduate school classes are fine, I think. I'm supposedly advising a third year PhD student, who is surely my most capable, diligent, intelligent, and enthusiastic for literature student I've ever had (who combines all those traits more than any other). The only problem is that I don't know if I know what I'm doing as a PhD advisor, and I don't know if her many interests (musicals, movies, TV shows, fiction, multiple genres, etc. plus multiple SNSs) can be focused on doing a thesis. My first year Master's student is diligent and capable and nice, and should do fine with her thesis next year. She's been a bit later than past students in finding her topic, and she'll have to present her "Theme and Method" (her thesis topic and approach) for 20 minutes in a few weeks, and it might be a close thing to get it ready by then. And I'm really enjoying my seminar for first year students, for which we've been reading 20th century American kids books, starting with The One and Only Ivan and Doll Bones in Spring Semester, and moving now to Lois Lowry's Son and The Girl Who Drank the Moon ... I look forward to meeting them each week. So overall classes have been going OK! Meetings are a chore. Last week the PR people visited my first year conversation class to take pics of us in action for 45 mins, and took too many to choose easily one or two pics... Next week I have to have my annual physical examination, always a stress to get ready for and a relief to finish. I'm 57, for crying out loud! Thirteen more years to work??? Hmmm.
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Jefferson Peters (JP)
Can you find me in the picture above? Archives
December 2023
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