Some interesting tidbits popped up during the Interactive English class students' self-introduction speeches this week. Often, they don't say such interesting things, telling about the names of music artists they like or sports etc., without any details, but sometimes they let us know something interesting. For example...
In my Chemistry majors class, one boy, a quiet a little nerdy a little cute boy with short black hair, mentioned that his brother is also a Fukuoka University student, but of course didn't tell us his age, his major, his personality, and so on. So after three students had asked him some questions, I asked him how old his brother is, and instead of answering in words, the boy raised both his hands in front of him, palms flat, to signify, I gathered, that they were the SAME age, that they were, in fact, twins. Why he didn't tell us that his brother is his twin from the first point, i have no idea. Anyway, he was pretty funny, and we laughed a lot for him. Then, later, a boy with long styled hair dyed blond, gave a speech in which he told us that he has twin younger brothers, and when I asked him if his brothers are identical twins, he, perhaps thinking of the earlier boy's gesture indicating that he and his brother were the same age, did the same gesture but then raised one of his outstretched palm down hands above the other, to indicate, I gathered, that one brother is taller than the other. So we laughed again. Other interesting things. In my Commerce majors class, one boy said he'd quit his part time job in an apparel shop because his manager had make him work eleven straight hours alone without any breaks, so he wanted advice from his classmates on a better part time job. Another boy said he had ten pairs of Nike shoes because he likes their style, and removed one of his shoes and displayed it to the class, a bright lime green color that did, indeed, look pretty cool. A girl said she had an eight-year-old dog called Niko, a black chihuahua-dachsund mix weighing three kilograms, a pooch who hates walking so they always have to carry her everywhere. Anyway, I had a fun week at work, actually, back after a weekend trip to Nagoya for my mother-in-law's funeral. Thursday and Friday went OK, too. I do really like my American culture class!
0 Comments
So last week was the first full week with four days of classes, cause the week before had a holiday on Friday. So last Friday was the first Friday class day for fall semester. It was fine.
I had period 2 Reading and Writing for (I think) Science-Electronics majors (nineteen boys and one girl!), and we'll be reading Charlotte's Web in the class. One boy had bought the book from amazon instead of from the campus bookstore, and he got a British publisher version with 249 pages, when the version everyone else (and I) will be using has the standard American 184 pages. Thus the Guide and Homework Handout I made from the book will have different pages for things than his edition, and it will be impossible for him to follow us in class when we go to different pages in the book for the lecture etc. I sent him an email advising him to return the book to amazon and buy the appropriate one from our school bookstore, but haven't heard back from him. Apart from that, the class seems OK, with the lads seeming lively enough (apart from one who fell asleep when I was explaining the syllabus). Though, being third-year students majoring in science, I suspect that many of the students will have low English levels... Then I had my graduate school class with one of my two MA students, both of whom are working on their theses this year. I see them in alternating weeks. Both have been making progress and have drafts of about two of their three main chapters done by now. So they should be OK... Finally, I had my American culture class for third and fourth year English majors, which is always a pleasure. There are fifty in the class, and the room is suitable for up to two hundred, I think, so of course they all sat in the back with four full empty rows of desks in front of them, so I'll make them move forward next time. I mostly introduced the coming midterm elections... And when ending the class, I could say "TGIF!" with them and hear it said back to me, which was very nice. On that last Friday, I took the above photo of one of our classroom buildings, the one where I have all my university classes this semester, Building A, which looks lovely and golden in the late afternoon sunlight, but is really inconvenient in many ways, like not having enough elevators for the number of people who go to and leave classes each period and having windows that only open a few centimeters and air conditioning vents only in the rear of the rooms, etc. etc. At least it looks good near sunset! The first week of classes in the fall semester!
This is going to be a strange semester because I have to teach not the usual three days but an unusual 4 days, because I'm taking a class for a teacher who left us to return to her home in Australia. Luckily, one of my Japanese colleagues has taken one of the classes I had been assigned in exchange so that my overall load of classes stays the same. Unluckily, the new class I'm taking for the departed colleague is on a Tuesday, when my other days of teaching are Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Thus, my schedule this year is one class on Tuesday (period 5), three classes on Wednesday, including two Graduate School classes, one class on Thursday (period 4 ), and three classes on Friday, including one Graduate School class. Although Tuesday and Thursday will be easy days, having only one class each, they'll be challenging days because I am a morning person, and the classes on Tuesday and Thursday start at 4:20 pm and 2:40 pm respectively, which means that on each of those days, I have to wait around twiddling my thumbs getting increasingly antsy the way I do before classes. Anyway, this first week was an exceptionally easy one because Friday was a national holiday and a vacation from school classes, which means this first week I only had three days of classes. I'm liking all my classes! So far... Not including the Friday ones which I haven't met yet. On Tuesday afternoon I had an interactive English class which is basically conversation class for first year commerce majors, 28 of them, and they seemed pretty lively and funny, and I succeeded in memorizing all of their names and faces on that first day, and they also permitted me to take a few photos of the class so that I could practice their names and faces later, which I will try to do every day so as to avoid forgetting them before the next class. 23 of the 28 students had apparently watched the so-called startup class video for the class before the first day and had also done the Google forms quiz that I assigned for them to do after watching the video to check their comprehension, and the last thing they had to do in that Google forms quiz was too write some details about themselves. Although some students wrote little, like a guy who only wrote, “I like sushi,” some wrote a fair amount and some of that was interesting, and I could refer to some keywords from their writing that I had written down next to their names in the class list so that when I was learning their names and faces I could tell them what they had written and make some comments to each one, like one girl who said she likes reading and dancing and that she's been dancing since age 6 and that she was the champion of Japan when she was 12 and then when she was 16, and one girl who said that she went to Ishigaki Island and had BBQ there and went swimming in the sea and wants to eat a big American pizza in America someday, and so on. There is a group of boys in the back who may be a little noisy and a little too inclined to chatter amongst themselves in Japanese when I'm trying to explain something, but they're kind of cute and funny, and I think I'll be able to manage them OK, and I'd rather have a group of boys with good camaraderie than a bunch of sullen ones. There is one strange boy who sits all by himself in the very front on the side far away from anyone else, so I'm a little worried about him mixing with the others when they have to do pair or group work, and there seem to be one or two who may have rudimentary English skills compared to the others and may rely on classmates too much for Japanese translations whenever I say anything, but overall the class seems lively and personable and willing to try enjoying English together once a week. This class takes place on the 8th floor of building A, on the very top floor that is, in a spacious room with mobile desks on wheels. The afternoon sun will be blasting in from the window in the back of the room, and I'll have to watch that the kids don't keep shutting the windows back there so that we can maintain some air circulation in the room. In short, that class should be fine. On Wednesday, I first met my two Graduate School classes, the first being like a seminar for any of our students, and because we only have one first year master’s student this year, the class only has one student, but then my PhD student is the teaching assistant, so it’s like there are three of us. We did that class online. In the class we're going to be reading and discussing the first book in The Hunger Games trilogy. In the second class that day I met my PhD student online and we talked a little about Ursula K. Le Guin's The Farthest Shore. Apparently we will be reading the 4th, 5th, and 6th books of Earthsea in fall semester, so I'm looking forward to that very much. Finally, that day, I met a class of first year chemistry majors for Interactive English, and they mostly seem fine, with many lively science oriented young people, including a surprisingly large number of girls for a science class at our university, which usually have only two or three. I could do the same thing with them that I did with the Tuesday first year interactive English class, memorizing their names and faces and mentioning some highlights from the writing that they did about themselves for the Google forms quiz. I did notice one boy who needs someone to translate into Japanese every single thing I say in English to him, but the other students seemed mostly OK. Oh--one interesting thing I have to kind of worry about is that near the end of class when I encouraged them to ask me any questions about anything to get bonus points for their grades, one girl asked if we can have a Christmas party! I was a little noncommittal because obviously there is a coronavirus epidemic going on, and I fear that having some Christmas party might not be a good idea in this context. On the other hand, she is a healthy bright active person, so in my usual vacillating way I left it that we'll think about it and decide later. Finally, Thursday I saw my first year English majors for the first day of the second semester of their year-long English conversation class. It was good to see them again. I was a little upset two girls came in about one or two minutes late and then when two boys sauntered in 10 or 15 minutes late, and but otherwise it was good to see them. In the first semester we did various activities that I also do in my semester-long Interactive English classes, but in the second semester starting now, we're going to read Charlotte's Web over the course of 11 weeks, using it to practice short conversations and to do group discussions, and I'm always uneasy about this second semester when I teach English conversation, because the students tend not to use enough English when I'm not hovering over their particular groups. Yesterday after I introduced our semester and told them about grades and practiced their names etc., I had them get into groups of four people and talk to each other in English, starting with the topic of what interesting thing they did over summer vacation, and with about 10 minutes before the end of class I stopped them and asked each one what percent of their talking that day was in English. The answers varied from a low of 50% that may actually have been generous to a high of 90% with probably the average being around 75%. I told them that's not bad but that they should all try their best to get that percent up 10 points higher when we start talking about Charlotte's Web in groups. I hope they'll be able to do that! And that was my first week of classes in the new fall semester. Yesterday I had to invigilate two exams, neither for my own classes, and while the first one went surprisingly easily, finishing very early because ALL 250 students got up en masse in unison at the thirty-minute mark and left, so we invigilators could leave early, and the second one went rather easily, too, when I returned to my office I found an email waiting from me from Fukudai's administration. They were telling me that because I didn't go to invigilate the exam I was assigned to do, our department chair had to do it for me!
I thought, What the what? Didn't I just invigilate an exam? Then a horrible thought hit me: what if I'd gone to the WRONG room?!?! I immediately hustled back to the venue, the second floor of building 8, and to my horror discovered that indeed I'd been in the WRONG room, 826, when I should have been in 821! How could I have made such a mistake? I've been at Fukudai since 1997, doing exams every semester since then, and I've never gone to the wrong room or missed my invigilation duties. What happened is I went to the second floor of building 8 and instead of checking the room number, assumed the big one on the left of the stairwell was for me, because ... because... because I saw a mob of students crowding into the room and assumed that mine must be that one because... because... because... I have no idea why I didn't bother to check the room number before entering the room! Earlier that day I'd checked my invigilation room assignments to confirm them and had written them down to be sure I'd remember them and not make any mistakes... ANYWAY, I had to apologize to our chair and promise to take one of his exam duties in fall semester, but I do feel very sorry for him to have to do an extra job yesterday. Invigilating is not easy. You stand around or pace a little too for an hour, trying not think about catching coronavirus (or covid) and feeling your feed, knees, and lower back start hurting... And my careless error made our chair do an extra test! Yikes... By the way, yesterday I also forgot to bring my collared shirt with me when I left for the bus, so it was lucky that my blue t-shirt was good enough to pass muster (maybe...). Am I losing it? I am over 60 and it is over 35 degrees... Oh, one thing I did during my invigilation yesterday was to note the t-shirts the kids are wearing, and here are some interesting ones: a black t-shirt with a lovely photograph of the sky with colored clouds in it and the words: "Serendipity: (noun) finding something good without trying to." A black t-shirt with giant white words "WORK WORK WORK" and a green line of paint crossing through each one. A long-sleeved black t-shirt with the words "HAVE INSPIRATION" written going from the left sleeve across the back and then down the right sleeve. A beige t-shirt with the words, "FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION ALL MUST SUCCEED" And then the puzzling one: a t-shirt with letters on the back looking like they'd been cut out of a magazine or newspaper for a kidnapping ransom note, saying, "Atmosphere Urine." Yikes, it's been HOT--June ended with days about as hot and humid as mid- or late-August, around 35 degrees etc. Kids and teachers have been suffering, melting, wilting...
The air conditioners are usually working in the classrooms, but as we have windows and doors open in the classrooms to promote air circulation during coronavirus times, things still get plenty uncomfortable. Anyway, here are some highlights from the last few weeks of classes. I found out some interesting things about some students in English conversation class for first-year majors. For example, one girl's parents are both nurses, who met in nursing college and work in different hospitals in the same city, the father getting higher pay than the mother. And one girl's parents own a patisserie, so she's always smelling good things baking and eating tasty cakes and such. I started having to ask a boy in one class to pull up his mask, because he was constantly pulling it down (or letting it drop down) around his chin. As the class he's in is "Interactive English" (basically English conversation), so the students talk a fair amount, and as one of his classmates had recently returned from being out with Covid (and telling us that he'd been coughing blood while sick), and as they sit side by side in the classroom, etc., it's rather appalling that a kid would want to have a class like that without wearing his mask properly. I continue to get weird flashes as if seeing people buck naked when students pull down their masks to get a drink during class. It is a sign of how weird our current life is that I feel uncomfortable when seeing people's faces... I have pretty much mastered all my students' names and faces by now, without the aid of the photo cards I used to have all classes give me. But there are still a few here and there whose names I regularly botch, like the girl whose family name I keep mangling, Megashira, Shimameguribashi, etc., when it's Murashige. And the class with three Rinas, three Mizukis, and a Motoki and a Tomoki, an Ayami, Ayari, and Ayuri, a Riku and a Rukuo, and a Jumpei and a Junsuke, not to mention a Karen and a Karin is still challenging (in a fun way, as it's fun to say their names when greeting them before class). My Reading and Writing class for Commerce majors continues to be challenging, because, although most of the students are capable enough to do what has to be done to participate in the class and pass it etc., and a few are super, there are several who are clueless, hopeless, dire, and almost doomed. They sleep in class; they get one point out of five on our daily quizzes, even though I basically give the answers to the class during each lecture so that if the students do homework and pay attention in class the quizzes should be easy to get perfect scores on; they copy their friends' homework; and so on. They also tend to miss too many classes... I may have to fail them, but I don't want to. Failing them will doom them to taking huge repeater classes next year, and we are in the coronavirus times, so teachers are supposed to be more lenient about absences.... Apart from this class, most students in most classes are doing well enough to get (and deserve) credit. Anyway, this has been an increasingly difficult semester, because throughout June and into July I've been having to go to all-day Saturday meetings for our entrance exams and to take several hours preparing for them during the week, so my usual Saturday of resting and recovering energy expended during the work week has been gone. So I'm really getting tired and my lower back is really sore... sob sob sob! Just two more weeks now, though, of usual classes! Hey, I really like my Thursday period 4 English Conversation class for first-year English majors! (You can see half of them in the above photo above.) The kids are engaged, active, interesting, fun, funny, bright, responsive, and good to spend 90 mins per week with. Sure, several of them missed class the week before and didn't get the homework handout (about requesting and offering), so they weren't ready for the next class, but I can't get very upset with them. I am looking forward to fall semester with them, when we'll read Charlotte's Web and use it for group discussions every week.
A new level of busy-ness is about to start for me. A week from this coming Wednesday, I have to take two hours to record a half-hour lecture for Yume Navi, some kind of promotional service our university is using. The resulting lecture will supposedly be available online for years! Needless to say, I've been preparing for it for months now, and have it almost memorized. The problem is that I still don't know exactly how I'll coordinate doing the required powerpoint slide show with doing the lecture while being videoed. Then starting next week, my duties as part of the three-person Entrance Examination Committee for the English Department begin, which means that for four Saturdays in a row I'll have to go to school for seven or eight hour meetings, each of which will need hours to prepare for. And of course classes will be going on as usual. Yikes! Luckily, we're already over half-way through spring semester! By the way, another class I'm really enjoying is the Friday period 4 American Culture class for third and fourth year students. I've been doing rather heavy and difficult topics lately, like problems with American freedom (like guns and gun violence etc.), so next class and the one after should be better for the poor kids, being about American money. Right--so here's to surviving this semester! I've been so lazy and so busy that I haven't posted here for weeks now! The first semester has been flying along, now about half over. Here are some memories from the last few weeks.
A funny girl in a first-year Interactive English class (for architecture majors) who gave a speech introducing her family's dog, whom she called Kobayashi Mokko. We laughed because her family name is Kobayashi, so she was definitely including her pet among her family members. I asked her if she used her dog's full name when she was scolding her and her given name when playing with and walking her, and she said yes. A slouching under-performing blond-dyed hair boy in second-year Reading and Writing class for Commerce majors sitting in the front (right in front of me) reading a manga on his smart phone while I was teaching, till I scolded him for it, and then realized he had his mask pulled down around his neck so I scolded him for that. The English Conversation first-year English majors doing a great job talking with each other in pairs, finding out everything they could about their partners in thirty minutes, then telling a new partner about their first partner for fifteen minutes, then giving reports about their second partner's first partner, etc., all nice and lively and full of character and effort. My graduate school class for our only first-year MA student, plus my PhD student as TA and my second-year MA student as unofficial participant talking about Stuart Little. They have a sense for the charming and humorous points of the great, compact novel, and it's fun having that class to start each work week. My American Culture class for third- and fourth-year English majors, covering various topics related to American freedom, like "The Star-Spangled Banner" (flag and anthem), the Statue of Liberty, Memorial Day, supermarkets, and school uniforms, etc. I really like all fifty students in the class and enjoy greeting them by name one by one to start each class and enjoy ending my work week with them (it's my last class each week). My second-year Pharmacy major Reading and Writing class being generally charming and neat and on the ball. Ugh--meetings! A Humanities meeting followed by a graduate school meeting lasting from 4:30 till 7:30 one Wednesday; an English department meeting followed by a full-professor English department meeting lasting from 4:30 till 8:30 another Wednesday... Funny thing: I realized the other day that when a student removes his/her mask to get a drink of water etc., and I happen to look at them while looking around the room while teaching etc., my eyes inadvertently dodge away from their face in embarrassment, as though I'd just seen them naked or in their underwear! ANYWAY, so far so good. The second half will be much harder than the first, because my duty as part of the Entrance Examination team this year kicks in after May ends and lasts intensely till into July. And the heat and humidity are just getting going. But as long as I don't catch Covid (knock on wood), this year should be survivable. Last Friday I was sailing through the only class of the week (Wednesday and Thursday were holidays for Golden Week) when I heard (from my trusty TA) that Saturday May 7 was a special day for Thursday classes! I freaked out, shocked and panicked, because I had told my two Thursday classes that I'd see them next on May 12, Thursday, and nothing about Saturday.
What happened?? In March or so, when I make the schedules for spring and fall semester classes for the new year, I am very careful to watch out for the strange times when some Saturday is given over to another day's classes to make up the quota of meetings, and of course incorporate such days into my schedules, but for whatever reason, I didn't notice the May 7 Saturday for Thursdays when I made my schedules. For the English Conversation class it's not a big deal really, cause they didn't have any particular homework (they're giving short self-introduction speeches now), but for my Reading and Writing class, it was a problem, because I had worked out a detailed schedule for homework (reading and writing etc.) and given it to them and gone through it with them, including a last day July 21st when classes have already ended (I found out Friday). SO anyway I had to send emails to both classes Friday after lunch telling them that indeed we were having classes on Saturday... Then I had to make a new correct schedule and distribute and explain it in class, though nearly ten students were absent (probably cause they'd made other plans when they thought we weren't having classes). Yesterday was difficult... period 4 and 5 classes on a usual day where I'm recovering energy spent during the week of classes. Luckily, last week was Golden Week, so I only had classes on Friday the 6th, but all Saturday was surreal. I feel sorry for the poor Reading and Writing students, who didn't have time to do homework before class and especially who thought they'd have no class Saturday but suddenly found out on Friday that they would... That was the first time I've ever made that mistake... and I hope the last. **One good bit of news: I have (with the help of photos I took of the classes) managed to memorize pretty much all the names and faces (or I should say eyes and hairdos, because they're all wearing masks all the time) of all of my 150 or so students. ***Though I still have a bit of fun trouble with Ayami, Ayari, and Ayuri in one class, and Hiyori and Hiyori and Yui and Yui in another class. Not to mention Daichi and Daiki, Ryoya and Ryo, Ohtaro and Kotaro, Ryuto and Ryuki and so on in other classes!*** The second week of classes went mostly OK, I think.
I did have trouble remembering the names and faces of the students! I did re-remember them quickly at the start of each class, and I took pictures of the classes so I could practice their names and faces in between classes, which is going to help a lot. In one of my Interactive English classes, a girl gave a nice, interesting self-introduction speech in which she talked about her pet rabbit Chacha, saying he likes eating papaya and dandelion greens. Interestingly, the Architecture students as a group are more into volunteering to give speeches and ask questions than my English major students... The two Reading and Writing classes were OK, I suppose, but I HAVE to find a way to do the class that makes them more involved than I managed last year. My American culture class was OK, but the students seem to sit as far away as possible from the front of the room, so next week I WILL make them move forwards a bit. We covered Easter. One boy asked a neat question: why did it take Jesus three days to resurrect and not a longer time? (I could only say that western culture likes the number three, in fairy tales and in Christianity...) Another student asked why Easter isn't as popular as Christmas in Japan (I could say that it seems more strangely religious than Christmas--a birth being more relatable than a resurrection--and Santa is more recognized in a universal kind of image than the Easter Bunny, and many presents are more interesting than chocolate and candy) I fear that i took too much time introducing paintings of Jesus' life like the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection. I must remember to stay on point and not digress. I do like the names and sets of names in that class, of mostly third-year English majors with a few fourth years: three students called Mizuki and three called Rina; Karin and Karen; Ayami, Ayuri, and Ayami; Tomoki and Motoki; Junpei and Junsuke; and my favorite names to say, Tsuguko and Kirara! Finally, my graduate school classes are fine, though I fear I'm not guiding my students well enough and worry about their MA theses or PhD work... Whew--
The first week of classes in the new school year is over--I survived! But ... I needed all Saturday and most of Sunday to recover my energy etc. They were OK, I think. Classes and students etc. I enjoyed meeting a bunch of new young people, really. I have three graduate school classes (PhD seminar, MA seminar, MA lecture) with small numbers of students (one, two, one respectively). Then I have five university classes: two Reading and Writing classes for commerce and pharmacy sophomores (32 and 25 students), one Interactive English class for architecture freshmen (27 students), and then two classes for English majors, one Conversation for freshmen (25 students) and one American Culture class for juniors and seniors (50 students). That means that I challenged learning the names and faces of nearly 150 students last Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I could do it! But only during each class... After each class, I started forgetting most of their names and faces. I'm trying this time to review by going through the class lists before sleeping at night etc., but I can now after a few days only remember a few from each class, apart from remembering where they were generally sitting in the classrooms... So next week I'll have to take about ten minutes at the start of each class to memorize them again. **I used to make the students give me photo cards with their names on them so I could practice them at home, but I finally realized that it was a burden on them to do that, and I started accumulating too many cards that I'd never need again...** I noticed last year that it's kind of like living in an Islamic country except one that makes both men and women wear masks, so I have to really focus on their eyes and hair styles to try to remember them. Also their personalities. It's interesting how in almost every class there'll be one or two loners who sit by themselves, with the majority sitting by friends in pairs or trios or groups of four or so. I started each first class by getting them to practice calling me "JP," and then by taking 15 or so minutes to call roll, memorizing and reviewing them as I went. Then I went through the class description handouts with them, and finished class by asking them to ask me questions about anything. One funny guy asked me how much I get paid! A cute girl asked me to tell my love story with my wife. One interesting guy asked me if I knew how to write eggplant (茄子), because I'd said when another student asked me what Japanese food I like that I like any eggplant dish, and when I said no, I asked him to write it on the board, so I learned the kanji for eggplant... The best class for all that was I think the pharmacy one, because I'd managed to read and print their pre-class ("start-up class") writing about themselves, so as I went through the class list calling roll, I could refer to different things they'd written about themselves so as (I believed) to help me remember them better. It didn't really have that effect, but it was fun. Oh! And I had a great new family name I am sure I've never encountered in nearly 30 years teaching in Japan: Hebshima, which means Snake Island in English! Someone back in the Meiji era when all Japanese got family names (I think) had a neat imagination... ANYWAY, the new year is under way, so I can stop having school nightmares at night and just get back to working. |
Jefferson Peters (JP)
Can you find me in the picture above? Archives
December 2023
Categories |