One of the hardest things about teaching classes in which everyone is wearing masks is learning the names and faces of my students. After three weeks of in person classes, I am finally starting to learn and remember some of them!
For each class, I start by taking roll, memorizing each person and their given name as I go and reviewing those I've memorized in groups of several students, till I get to the end of the roll and have memorized all the students in that class at that time. It takes less than ten minutes for a class of about thirty people. The problem is that they're all wearing masks. Another challenge is that there are often students with similar sounding names (Riko, Riho; Yuri, Yumi; Ayano, Ayu; Arisa, Akari; Nano, Kanon; Shunsuke, Shunhei; Yukiko, Yuiko; Ryoto, Ryuto; etc.). The result is that, although I'm pretty good at memorizing them for a given class on a given day, by the next week I've forgotten most of them because we only meet once a week. Another challenge is that I have stopped getting photo-name cards from students... I used to require ALL my classes to give me photo name cards. The merit of that system was that I could easily review their names and faces before each class and remember them more quickly and more deeply that way, especially when the name card memorizing was reinforced by meeting them in person in classes (without masks). But I stopped making them give me photo cards because I thought it was a burden on them and because after over twenty years teaching in Japan, I'd started getting too many photo cards in my office... Also, last year when we were online for the entire year I didn't know how to actually receive their photo name cards from them had I made them make them, so I just jettisoned the practice. Finally, if I had photos of them without masks, the photos might make it harder to recognize their masked selves that I meet in class! Anyway, luckily, taking roll that way becomes a little easier each week, because the students have remained ghostly in my memory and take less effort to refresh therein each time. One of the interesting things about this effort is that I pay more attention to eyes and hairdos than in the past; or rather that my main visual information when memorizing has become eyes and hair, whereas in the past student faces would be part of my memorizing... It makes me think of burkas but for boys and girls, and how interesting people's eyes become. Windows of the soul, as the saying goes, in this case enhanced by not being able to see their noses and mouths and chins etc. I can tell when they widen their eyes in surprise or question or crinkle them in humor; I can appreciate big eyes and almond eyes and every other kind. They are all the same color, brown, being all Asian, but they are usually interesting, indicating interest or boredom, cheer or doom, and so on. I do like learning their names and faces, so I will soldier on memorizing them at the start of each class and hope that eventually I'll remember all of them for some next class before the end of the semester comes. Another interesting feature of our new weird way of doing classes now that we're back on campus is that I've been running into second-year students whom I taught last year in all online classes with all student videos off, and they are recognizing me and saying hello as if they know me because before each online class, I'd have my video on as I greeted the students and took roll for several minutes... It's an odd feeling to have some students I think I've never met and have no idea as to identity or name etc. say "Hello, JP." They are of course aware of the situation and so introduce themselves at such times... Finally, it sure is strange times to be taking classes for them and to be teaching classes for us. But we're all (mostly) doing our best. So far (knock on wood) I apparently haven't caught the coronavirus, and these days the numbers of new cases in Fukuoka and Japan have been dramatically decreasing. I bet we'll make it through this semester (about eight weeks to go) staying in person. Good luck to us all!
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So I survived the second week of in person classes.
There were some challenging moments! In my Interactive English class (basically English conversation) for English majors, I was saying "Good afternoon," to the students before class one by one to practice their names and faces etc., when I got to a boy sitting in the front row, and when I greeted him, he turned to his friend and asked him in Japanese what I was saying, and his friend told him, "Konichi wa" (hello during the day in Japanese). I then said to the first boy, "Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, good-bye!" He looked at me blankly. In short, we have here a first-year English major who doesn't know what "good afternoon" means, and who, it turned out, couldn't even understand that I was saying "good" plus "afternoon." Later in class I told him that he is "interesting," and he couldn't understand me, so I tried giving the word the katakana (Japanese syllabry) pronunciation so see if that would work, saying, "You are interesutingu," but he still didn't understand me! Yikes... luckily, apart from a girl who's not much better at English in the class, the other students are pretty good and should be OK with my spoken English, but I feel sorry for this one boy, because I am not going to speak in Japanese just so he can understand me, because then we won't be doing a proper class and the students' English won't improve much. Oh, and I also lost my temper with that class because the last six people giving their three-minute self-introduction speeches pretty much all did only barely one-minute speeches, so I finally said in a loud voice that their speeches are supposed to be THREE minutes, not one minute, and that they should have practiced them to be sure they lasted three-minutes... Another tough class was my Thursday period 5 Reading and Writing class for commerce majors, because it suddenly dawned on me that I was teaching a deadly boring class that's too hard for them to follow, because, I realized, I was still teaching basically the online version of the class instead of doing it as for an in person class. That is, I was just talking and reading and lecturing etc. at them instead of trying to get them to do some things... So I will have to change my approach and try to remember how to do it in person.......... For example, in the next class, I'll have them find on their smart phones some videos of opossums playing dead and some pictures of porcupine quills stuck in dogs' jaws, and I'll have the kids tell me the answers to the comprehension questions instead of telling them the answers. Duuhhh... On the plus side, I had some good experiences in other classes, like a lively speech (though in a very faint voice) by a girl with a catchy name, Urara, in which she talked about her great love of the J-pop group Arashi, and because her name is so catchy, when I asked her a question about Arashi, I accidentally called them "Urashi," which made the class crack up in a fun way. Also, I again enjoyed my Friday period 1 American Culture Class (covering American English pronunciation) and my graduate school classes were great as usual. So--it's on to the next week in person! Well, the first week of online classes is over, survived, apparently unscathed.
I did confirm what I'd been hoping was the case: the weird disturbing headaches, hot flashes, dizzy headedness, and so on, accompanied by my hearing my voice coming as if from far away and very quiet, etc. etc. etc., was a product of doing real time live online classes, especially ones where the students had their videos off. I made it through the week without experiencing anything like those symptoms, which had been plaguing me ever since the middle of last June or so. My especial worst class for headaches etc. was period 5 Reading and Writing for second year students on Thursdays. The other classes before or after that one didn't seem to affect me as malignly, though they were also challenging often. ANYWAY, in addition to being headache free and undizzy, it was great to see the kids in person again. We are all wearing masks, but their eyes are very expressive. Highlights: 1) Memorizing all the names of my Freshman English Interactive English class for English majors (twenty-one of them), and guessing correctly which girl is called Shiori and which boy called Renta. And having some nice self-introduction speeches from them. 2) Visiting the groups of four, three, and three in my seminar and listening to them talk about the book we're reading, Wonder. 3) Talking about Farewell to Manzanar with one of my Master's students and realizing that it is a great book (though terrible in many ways in relating the awful internment camp experience of the Japanese American author when she was a little girl). 4) Learning most of the names and faces of my other Freshman English Interactive English class, this one for Pharmacy students, and hearing some interesting speeches from them, like one by a girl who said she played point guard in high school and told us about her cute welsh corgy shiba inu mix dog who's "ferocious," or one by a boy who told us about his favorite mystery genre author and books. 5) Learning a few of the names and faces of my Intermediate English Reading and Writing class for Commerce majors, telling them about Botticelli's Birth of Venus painting while comparing it with a picture of Peter Brown's wild robot Roz breaking out of her box/shell as she's born on her new island home (and not getting a weird headache during the period 5 class!). 6) Leaving campus earlier than expected on Wednesday because our humanities meeting including voting for the new dean was shorter than I thought it'd be (I could leave before 6:00 pm). 7) Enjoying telling the American Culture class students about English spelling (i before e, except after c!) and then doing a spelling bee with them. 8) Talking about The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (the part where Dorothy and company find out that he's a humbug instead of a great wizard!) with two of my graduate students. 9) Talking about Anne of Green Gables with my PhD student (focusing on kindred spirits and Gilbert Blythe and so on). 10) Running into colleagues I hadn't seen for a long time! Difficulties: 1) my lower legs, especially the shins, starting to really ache as my work week went on, cause I had become unused to standing and pacing etc. for 90 minute classes, and the bottom of my right foot, below the toes, starting to feel sprained again... 2) discovering/remembering that waking up at 5:40 is too late to be comfortably ready for and on time to my Friday period 1 Culture class. 3) looking out my office window and seeing all these giant construction vehicles as they continue working on this new empty space out there where the old pool was before being demolished in CONCLUSION, I am thinking it's good to be doing classes in person, both for the students and for me, and I'm hopeful that my legs will get worked into condition and that I'll get back in the swing of in person classes soon! Well, I think I survived the three weeks of online classes with which we started fall semester...
Looking back on the three weeks online, I recall some tricky times. Once when I had the American Culture class in break out rooms talking in pairs about September Seasons (school, football, tv, 9/11), I left one room and accidentally clicked the button for end the meeting instead of for leave the room! Luckily, after last year and most of spring semester this year online, the kids are used to such things happening, and I was able to quickly restart the meeting and have all of them (I think...) rejoin so we could finish the class. Each Thursday afternoon, when I do back to back classes from 2:40 till 5:50, I started feeling lightheaded and hearing my voice from a distance from around 4:30 till the end, which was disconcerting indeed. Luckily, it didn't really happen during my Wednesday or Friday classes (then the classes are mostly smaller with videos on for graduate school or my university seminar, whereas the Thursday ones are biggish with videos off, which may be why they're more challenging), and luckily we had an early Thursday holiday for the first week, so I only had to do two online days for Thursdays. There were plenty of good times! A girl who said her favorite food was avocado, especially cooked with basil pasta; a girl who said her cat's name is Lily though her cat is black; a girl who used the words "leisurely stroll" in her speech; a funny boy who said he loved me after our first online class (!); some good questions and comments from students about the novel Wonder in my seminar; fine times talking about The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Anne of Green Gables with my graduate students; some great questions from great students in my American Culture class. I continued to be impressed that my meeting links actually worked (I have eight different classes to set up) and that 98% of the students attended the classes on time. It was good to wake up an hour later than for in person classes and to not need to worry about clothes so much and to not have to commute to and from school. But now I reckon that the stress of worrying about doing classes in person will be less than the stress of wondering if I'll hold up for online classes and the stress of actually doing them in person. I bet I won't get the headaches and light headed far voice symptoms on campus in classroom in person face to face. Here's hoping that's so! |
Jefferson Peters (JP)
Can you find me in the picture above? Archives
December 2023
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