Ah... Last Friday's period 1 Introduction to American Culture and Literature class was something of a disaster. . . .
Something about the several students coming late irritated me. Something about the one multiple repeater student (who'd failed several times in the past) getting up early on from his seat in the back and gesturing that his stomach hurt so he was going to the restroom got my goat (maybe it was because I had seen him before class walking around with a friend so I thought if he had to go to the toilet he should have done it before class). There were the same several students falling asleep (it is period 1 and a class in almost all English, but... but... ). There were the handful of repeater students sitting in the back together obviously paying no attention to what I was trying to say. There were the two first year girls who hide in the back so they can chatter and giggle. There was the empty spot in the front where the most reliable and responsive student usually sits (where was she?). All of that kind of thing got to me, so that about twenty minutes in when some repeating students sauntered in late, I snapped and called them out as repeaters and warned them that they'd be failing the class for the third time at this rate. And so on. I shouldn't have done that. It is not cool to humiliate students in class, especially not in Japan where they are so group oriented and self-conscious and shy in public and so on. I felt weird as I was doing it, as if I were setting my house on fire or peeing in public. It colored my whole class, too, so I used time unwisely, spending too much on a Where the Wild Things Are lecture and not enough on the introduction to fantasy lecture I had to get through but only left five minutes to start at the end of class. So of course I should have just stopped everything and let them go early but instead I tried to jam five minutes of the fantasy lecture in, confusing them, not saying the main point, bolluxing it all up, ending on a kind of feverish downer. Sigh... Luckily, the following graduate school class was fine, and the seminar class for fourth year students was great fun, as two of the best students enjoyably gave their interesting reports on Monsters, Inc and Frozen. But I still regret that period one class... Sigh...
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Jefferson Peters (JP)
Can you find me in the picture above? Archives
December 2023
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