So I've had three weeks of online classes now, and, what can I say? I am kind of liking it. It appeals to my lazy side, the side that wants to stay home and doesn't want to wake up at 5:30 am and then hustle to school by 8:00 am and doesn't want to get sweaty in classes (especially now that we're in June and have till the end of July to go till our semester ends), and so on. Also, of course, I didn't want to catch coronavirus or provide a setting for students to catch it or pass it on etc. I remember that, although most of my classes were small enough so that students could sit with pretty good spacing (as in the photo at the top of this blog), one class was too big for the room, so plenty of students were sitting side by side and being very chatty and laughy with each other...
ANYWAY, it is what it is, as they say, and now we're online, for better or worse. I am enjoying my seminar (with about nine students, though I think one boy has stopped coming cause he doesn't like online classes), because we've been meeting with our videos on, so we can see each other's expressions, which makes it more lively and personable. Also, the students are intelligent and seem to be engaged with what we're doing (we just finished reading The Giver, and several students have done some very thoughtful writing about it). I'm also enjoying my graduate school classes, all of them with videos on, because my students are funny and interesting and diligent enough. We just finished From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E. L. Konigsberg, and I think the class really enjoyed it. We were always chuckling at the conversations and actions of Jamie and Claudia as they ran away from home and hid out in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and tried to solve a mystery about who sculpted a statue of an angel. We were also impressed by the narration of Mrs. Frankweiler, and with her final encounter with the kids... Now we've started Adam Gidwitz' The Inquisitor's Tale, about three magical children and their holy dog in 13th century France, which I hope the class will also like. I've been reading and talking about Emily Dickinson poems and Oscar Wilde fairy tales with my PhD student, and that's been very stimulating, and with my two particular MA students, we've been reading Kira Kira by Cynthia Kadohata, and liking it a lot, too. I also like the third-year American culture class, though I kind of wish there were more students in it (though I should be thankful for the 30 kids, cause it's a first period class on Friday, a most unpopular time indeed. We finished Memorial Day two weeks ago and started Freedom last Friday, covering the ways in which independence, individuality, and choice are related to Freedom for Americans, from childhood on. Finally, my non-English major classes... My Freshmen Pharmacy Interactive English class is fine, really, with the only problems being my fault in how I'm handling their class online. Last week, I put them in pairs (using Zoom's breakout rooms) and had them find out everything they could about each other in about forty minutes, and then heard a few reports about each other's partners... The six pairs I visited were all doing OK, using English when I joined their rooms, etc. I learned that one girl had been in two major earthquakes, including the Kumamoto one a few years ago, when she and her family of five had to sleep two nights in their car and that one boy wants a job as an Uber driver because he wants to exercise his body while earning money. The Reading and Listening class and Reading and Writing class are going almost OK, maybe, but probably about a quarter of the students in both classes are either not trying or being unable to try, so I'm worried about what will happen to them. I've shown them youtube videos of opossums playing dead and beavers building dams, in an effort to liven up The Wild Robot (in which such animals play key roles). But I think my method of going through the homework reading pointing out highlights and explaining certain key points may be too difficult for some of them to follow... Anyway, that's school. Oh! And yesterday I attended an entrance examination meeting from 10:00 till nearly 4:30, so I am exhausted today. Good luck getting ready for classes for next week!
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Jefferson Peters (JP)
Can you find me in the picture above? Archives
December 2023
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