For last Friday's American Culture class the students were supposed to bring their ideas on the purpose of university and on the degree to which Fukuoka University is fulfilling that purpose for them, and their responses were interesting and nice (though I had to call on people randomly to answer because, being Japanese, most of the students are so shy about volunteering to talk in class).
There were practical, utilitarian answers, like university should help me get my dream job, help me get a necessary license, help me learn English more deeply, give me stimulating (not boring) tasks, and psychological or emotional or developmental answers, like university should help me build good relationships and make friends and enrich me and make me a more active and positive human being with wide knowledge about many things. Interestingly, when I asked them what percent our university had fulfilled those purposes so far (most are third year students with a handful of fourth years), the answers were higher for the more psychological purposes (80% to 100%) than for the more practical ones (30% to 70%). I suppose that's because they know that they have made good friends and learned some interesting things here so far, but have not graduated or finished their education with us yet and so don't know how much their practical purposes will be satisfied? Anyway, I wrote their answers on the board in different colored chalk (only the second time I've used the black board in our class all year, with only two more classes to go), white for practical purposes, pink for psychological ones, and yellow for in between ones. It was a fun ending to the class; I'd begun by explaining the differences between Private and Public American universities and going through parts of the University of Michigan's website so they could see what a top American public school looks like, and compare UM English Department classes with ours (ours have way less variety and less topical themes and are much fewer in number). And I really hope our students will find that Fukuoka University has fulfilled both kinds of goals for them when they graduate!
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Picture that giant Japanese hornet flying into the classroom in the photo at the top of this page! It happened last Wednesday freaking out the 100 or so (mostly) first-year English majors in my Introduction to American Culture and Literature class and disrupting what I was trying to do with them and leading to a dangerous maneuver I don't recommend trying at home...
The poor creature would fly near some students and they'd recoil shrieking and flailing, and the rest of the students in the region unvisited by our guest would be laughing and trembling, and everyone was totally distracted, so I figured I had to Do Something. So I tried shooing the creature out the window it'd entered by, but it had other ideas, so I failed in that endeavor (though I felt the wind caused by its large beating wings on the palm of my hand, almost as if my hand heard the sound as it felt the wind). The hornet flew up to the ceiling and perched on a beam, resting, and deciding on its next move. I hoped it would rest there long enough for me to catch it, but I didn't want to catch it in my hand (for obvious reasons) and had no handy jar, so I grabbed my canvas grocery bag, emptied it of books, kicked off my shoes (luckily I was wearing slip ons that day), and climbed up on some nearby seats untenanted by students, and when I found I wasn't high enough to reach up to the still resting hornet, I climbed up on the desks themselves (that's the thing you shouldn't try at home, cause it was high up and the desks are slippery), one foot on the front row desk and one on the row desk behind it (you can see the desks and the ceiling beam in the photo at the very top of this blog), and now, standing far above all the students, who were most excited by my activity, and trying to keep my balance, I reached up with the shopping bag open and somehow closed it around the creature and then climbed back down and got back in my shoes and (after threatening to give some students a "present" by pretending to open the bag right in front of them), I left the room and opened a hall window and shook the visitor out into the cool late November day, so it could gather itself and its wits and fly off safely. I then reentered the classroom triumphantly and told them it was easy to be brave when other people are scared! Unfortunately, I did a bad job telling them the Passamaquoddy story of "The Girl and the Chenoo," not being able to match the excitement of the hornet's visit! ANYWAY, this semester has flown by, and I've been too lazy to write any updates, and I guess not enough remarkable things have happened to motivate me to write about classes etc., until the hornet incident! Classes have all been going well enough. I continue to be disappointed by the American Culture class because the third/fourth year students are so unreliable in their attendance and so reluctant to participate in our class blog, so the class has had the highest number of absences and tardies and dropouts and the lowest number of blog posts of any Culture class I've taught in nearly twenty years. The kids who consistently come are great, really, but it's just a disappointment each week when only two students submit comments on our blog before class and up to ten students (out of about thirty) show up late or don't come at all. . . The first year Introduction to Culture and Literature has been fun, mostly, apart from a handful of sleepers or smart phone checkers or other class homework doers, and apart from their tendency to talk to each other when they get comfortable and I try to communicate something to them I really want them to get. But really they're all lovely. My two freshman English classes (basically conversation classes) are going OK. A handful of the chemistry majors (on Wednesdays) or commerce majors (on Thursdays) can't understand a word I say, but many can understand much of it and some are even able to communicate in English. My Freshman Conversation class (for English majors) is usually great fun. The kids are really funny, and it's a great chance to meet them in a smaller setting than in the big Introduction to Culture and Literature class they all attend with 75 of their fellows. My graduate school classes are fine, really. Recently my two first-year master's students presented their theme and methods at our annual Theme and Method event, where the first year students give presentations about the subjects of their second year thesis writing. One young lady will write about Catherynne M. Valente's Fairyland series, while the other one will write about Louise Erdrich's Birchbark House series, and as I really like both those writers and those series, I'm looking forward to helping my students write their theses next year. Both are Chinese, and it occurs to me that without Chinese foreign students, like my super PhD student and another really nice PhD student from five or six years ago, I'd have a much poorer time teaching in our graduate school. My second-year master's student is having trouble writing her thesis on Lois Lowry's Giver Quartet, so I'm a little worried; she's a very hard worker and intelligent but writing in English is a labor for her, nearly a torture I fear. But I think she'll finish OK! And then I have a weekly seminar in Families in American Children's Literature for five students, and we're enjoying reading Kelly Barnhill's The Girl Who Drank the Moon, the last work in our year-long class. So things are going mostly fine, and I can't believe we just have about another month of classes left. I hope it'll all go OK, and no more wildlife visits our classes! |
Jefferson Peters (JP)
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December 2023
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