Boy, was I sure stupid (charitably, naive)! I had kinda suspected that my Reading and Writing Commerce sophomores were getting and giving help to each other on our weekly quizzes, cause the class average for the five point things was usually around 4.5, which is way higher than when I did the class with the same quizzes basically in the spring semester, but I was lazy and wanted to keep using Google Forms for quizzes because 1) I'd made them already for the spring semester class, 2) I don't have to mark them because Google does that, 3) I don't have to waste time in class handout out paper quizzes and collecting them, and 4) I was stupidly thinking that by having Google Forms mix the question order as well as the order of multiple choice options within each question I was making it so they couldn't look over each other's shoulders at their smart phones to get answers so easily...
BUT--I found out to my chagrin after last Thursday's class (and our ninth quiz) that they can easily send each other emails with the correct answers while they're taking the quizzes, which I what I happened to see one especially clueless girl doing... I should have known, of course. I should have thought of that... but as it didn't seem to happen last semester when we were having classes online, I just assumed it wouldn't happen this semester when we're having classes in person at school. I guess it must be that when doing classes online, they don't communicate with each other as much as when they're in person, so they couldn't "help" each other so much or at all with online classes... But the temptation and opportunity are too much to pass up with in person classes. ANYWAY, that means, sigh, that I'll have to start giving them paper quizzes (and collecting the dirty things) or becoming more scary about cheating etc. etc. And for their final exam, I sure will make it a paper test and not use Google Forms for it. Apart from that shocker, things have been going OK, I suppose. The weeks have been flying by, and we're now getting close to the end of classes (my last ones of 2021 will be on Christmas Eve, though I'll have about one last set of classes after the New Year holiday before exams). I'm struck by how much Japanese my English major and Pharmacy Interactive English class students use when they're in small groups and supposed to be communicating in English. I think it's gotten worse than before. There are one or two students in each class who, in fact, are, seemingly, incapable of talking in English at all. The majority could do it if they tried. So that's disappointing. But as I get older, I get more detached feeling about such things. Maybe ... maybe I'm giving up? I do really enjoy my American Culture class fully, as well as my graduate school classes. And what the heck, I like all the kids in all the classes anyway, despite their tendency to cheat or use Japanese too much. Just a couple more weeks till vacation!
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Last week was so easy that I've already forgotten about it almost completely!
Because of the nature of my schedule (class on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday) and a national holiday (last Wednesday) and a school holiday (last Friday), I only had one day of classes last week. It was my hard day, actually, in that it features two back to back general English classes periods 4 and 5, and I tend to have much more energy in the morning than in the afternoon, and I don't like getting through the day thinking that I have to teach a couple classes later, etc. etc. However, since we began doing classes in person, Thursdays have been going better for me. Last Thursday was OK! We finished the students' short self-introduction speeches for the first-year Pharmacy students period 4. One girl's English had that American English quality, and indeed it turned out that she lived in Ohio for three years during elementary school. The last speeches were in general not SO great, because most of them were too short, but that's to be expected for the last students to volunteer to do the activity, and really they were OK, and the class is fun to spend time with. In the second-year Commerce Reading & Writing class period 5 we did the next section of The Wild Robot by Peter Brown, which is a neat book. I do fear that probably about a quarter or a fifth of the kids are having trouble, because the book, being a normal American book for elementary schoolers, has a big vocabulary, and I think that Japanese students are not comfortable using the easy words they already know to read for general comprehension while ignoring the words they don't know, so I think some of the students are having trouble. Most may be doing OK. They do mostly all score 5 or 4 points out of a possible 5 on the quizzes I give at the end of class. The challenge is to try to find more ways (in addition to making them read passages out lout here and there) to do things more actively for in person classes and move way from my online mode... ANYWAY, the one-day work week was very nice. (Though now it's over and from tomorrow begins another full one!) 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! 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! Well, last week we started the fall semester (koki) here, and I had my first classes, and I survived!
We are basically beginning the new semester online, with the expectation that sometime in October we'll move back into the classroom, assuming the coronavirus pandemic is trending down here as it has been recently. Wednesday I had my graduate school class with two MA students in their first years, trying to help them get ready to explain their thesis topics at a formal presentation event in late November, my seminar for fourth-year university students, in which we'll read Wonder during eight weeks, and my Freshman English Interactive English class (basically conversation) for English majors. All three Wednesday classes went OK, I think, and I didn't get any headaches or light headed feeling etc. etc. as I started being subject to last semester from near the end of June. One reason may be that it's less hot and humid than it was during summer (though it still is getting up to 30 now in late September). Thursday was a national holiday and was observed by the university, so there were no classes, which was very nice and helpful. Friday I had my first period American culture class, in which I didn't (as usual, alas) give the students enough time to ask enough questions etc., then two graduate school classes back to back. They all were OK, and, as with Wednesday, I got no headaches, etc. I'm still nervous about Thursday classes, which will begin next week, because the fourth and fifth period Freshman English and Intermediate English classes were the hardest for me to survive when things got difficult last semester. The students will all be new, but the classes themselves the same. I'll have to hope that being cooler will reduce my headaches etc. etc. ANYWAY, finally the second semester is under way, and so far so good. A young fellow emailing me to say that due to family matters, he'd have to participate in our Reading & Listening class from aboard a train, so he wouldn't be able to answer questions etc.
Looking at the digital clock under my computer and seeing it was 32.9 degrees in the room where I do the only classes. Getting so hot and tired after one day of classes that I felt a little dizzy and light headed and headachy. Realizing as a result that I'd better start letting the poor kids go a bit early and spare them and myself some wear and tear. Enjoying my graduate school classes very much! Hearing from our university that the plan for the university to vaccinate all teachers, staff, and students in the gymnasium was indefinitely delayed due to lack of supply. Hearing from our university that we could instead go to Hakata Station Cruise Center to get the Moderna vaccination. Hearing from two students in my university seminar that they'd gotten the Moderna vaccine the day before and were feeling poorly (one student missed our class, the other student came and did fine). Continuing to be amazed by a handful of students in Reading & Listening, Reading & Writing, and American Culture doing poorly on my Google Forms quizzes, which means that they 1) didn't read the homework material and 2) didn't pay attention in class. (And being gratified that the majority are able to do well on such quizzes.) Wondering just when this semester will end. It was extended two weeks until the end of July because we missed about two weeks earlier when the university transitioned from the in person classes we began the year doing to the online classes we're doing now. Usually we'd be doing last classes next week, but as it is, I'll be teaching until July 28, 29, and 30. Can I make it? Realizing that The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill might be too difficult to use in a university class, even in my seminar for fourth-year English majors. I do love the novel, but the narrative strategies and vocabulary are very challenging, so I kind of feel sorry for my poor kids as they struggle to make sense of it all (though I continue to have faith that the Simply Tiny Dragon Fyrian, who believes he is a Simply Enormous Dragon and who has been stuck about five years old for five hundred years, will charm the kids enough to pull them through the novel, along with the moving memories and relationships of the other main characters, like Luna and Xan and the madwoman). Confirming that Ursula K. Le Guin is one of my very favorite writers, because here I am reading A Wizard of Earthsea with a graduate school class for the fourth time or so and still being impressed and moved by her characters, fantasy world, magic, story, and writing. Wondering what the heck I'm doing teaching Interactive English (English Conversation), not for the first or last times. . . It would, in truth, be easier to do this class in person, and more effective, too. Last Thursday we were using some Calvin and Hobbes comics to practice some structures, but although most of the students were fine doing their versions of one, the other one we tried was very hard for them, and, as usual, I hadn't left enough time but tried to jam it into the last part of class anyway, so I failed to explain how to do it or to confirm that they could do it or to have any students do their examples with me, so I felt regret after class (not for the first or last time). ANYWAY. We continue online and will continue that way till the end of July, I imagine. I will continue watching the temperature rise in this study room, continue getting plenty of lemon flavored water to drink during classes, and continue turning on two fans in this room (that has no air conditioner). And will continue hoping to survive until July 30! 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! Well, I just finished my first week of classes back online after our two week hiatus. It was . . . hard, especially Thursday, where I have to wait to do my two classes till 2:40 and go till 5:50, but then it was hard doing that before with in person classes at the start of our semester. The difficult thing now, of course, is staring at the computer screen for so long while trying to keep the faith that the students are all awake and focused and there and not playing games or eating lunch or napping etc. And to keep faith that they are understanding when I can't see any reactions (our university wants us to do classes with videos off, for the most part, though in small classes like my nine-person seminar I'm trying to keep videos on).
A difference between this year and last year online is that this time I'm using Zoom for all my classes from the start, because it's easier to get students in smaller groups with Zoom than with Webex, and is generally easier to use it than it is to use Webex. So far it seems to be working. It feels like a miracle when all the students (almost) in a class of thirty-six or thirty-three actually show up on time. I did like doing my seminar with videos on very much more than with them off (as we did last year). I think some of the kids may not be comfortable with videos on, but they did mostly seem to smile a lot and it was great to see their faces and expressions while we were talking about The Giver. My graduate school classes are fine with videos on, I think! The students are lively and funny and sharp. Maybe the most difficult class was the Interactive English class (English Conversation basically), because I'm having the students give short self-introduction speeches and it's so artificial to do that kind of thing online in a Zoom meeting with videos off... And it does require a lot of concentration to follow the speakers and to try to get a variety of students to ask them questions, etc. Another bonus (what can I say? I'm lazy) of online classes is that I don't need to go to school but can do them from home! That means I can sleep a little later in the mornings and worry a little less about what to wear and so on. I hope Fukuoka and Japan can get the coronavirus situation under control again so we can go back to SAFE in person classes, but until then, we'll do our best online, eh? |
Jefferson Peters (JP)
Can you find me in the picture above? Archives
December 2023
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