It's been so long since I last made an entry here that I scarcely know where to begin. One of my great students at Ube Kojo, OKAMOTO Yuta, keeps asking about when I'm going to write something. And one of his equally brilliant classmates, MORIWAKE Yuto, wants me to start introducing photographs into my blog entries a la one of their teachers, MR YOSHIMASA (recently married and honeymoon to Cairns in north Queensland, Australia) who is a photographic genius!
Unfortunately, earlier this morning, I suffered some rudeness from a small group of students in my First Year class at Ube Kojo, and so upset was I that I felt it warranted some discussion with their Home Room teacher - the aforementioned Mr YOSHIMASA. This is a University Prep. class but the attitude I have experienced over recent classes from this group has to be challenged to get them back on track. Some students enter senior high school with a surprising but welcome level of maturity, fostered by the very setting into which they have been admitted. But others, it seems, are still living out of their junior high school milieu - not yet prepared to assume the mantle of personal responsibility called for in high school. I have to encourage them to understand this as soon as I can - and I have to say that it is not easy. Imagine trying to evince concern and dispense words of wisdom in a language over which you might have limited control (as is the case for me with Japanese) to students not wanting to follow direction and who find it all too easy to simply giggle away with their friends and whenever I challenge them to simply reply "Wakarimasen" ("I don't understand.")! I look forward to the change of attitude I am certain that Mr YOSHIMASA will be able to bring about on my behalf! During the class I passed around three hard plastic cases enclosing photographs from my past, scenes of Australia and photographs I took when last in the UK about four years ago when I visited some cousins, Isabel and Alan FARROW, just outside Cambridge. They live in the house where the Revd Wilmer AWDRY wrote the first books in the "Thomas, the Tank Engine" series some 65 or so years ago. My cousins bought the place nearly 30 years ago. Erasmus, the early 16th century Humanist philosopher was invited to stay in an earlier structure on the same site during one of his visits to Cambridge as well, it seems. Whilst not the point of to-day's lesson - or indeed of any class around which I pass such matters - they are a part of my overall plan to stimulate as much as I can the thinking of my students and to lay plain their connectedness with our world. So you might imagine that I felt some pain as the group of troubled students passed these photographs on from one to the other with a mere cursory glance. Only one somewhat redeemed herself, when she realised that one of the photographs was to do with her favourite childhood character 「機関車トーマス」and loudly exclaimed so! She was the same girl on whose recent written report I had had to append a comment that ten minutes in class was not what I had intended as an appropriate allocation of time for that report. I had expected due thought and care at home - not a last minute hurried attempt in MY class time! (So many matters of courtesy, manners!)
At the same school I teach one senior 3rd Year Writing class which is NOT University Prep. although I imagine a number of them will enter university nonetheless. They are keen. Their hearts are not devious. They do as I ask. Which is to listen, to answer, to write. To laugh, too, of course! They practice English pronunciation with gusto and write down the stories I put up on the blackboard. To-day, before the other class about which I have written above, I was teaching this 3rd Year class and eliciting from them their tales of the past week-end. They each in turn gave me a brief outline, I wrote it up in English, they copied it down into their books. My step had been light when I walked away from that double lesson of 100 minutes. Little did I realise what lay in store for me, literally around the corner. But I know this disagreeable matter will be resolved, of course...
*******Up-date. It's Thursday June 8th. Mr YOSHIMASA has worked his magic! The three students have apologised to me for their behaviour on Monday. I have accepted their aplogies with hand-shakes. We are now back on course
Unfortunately, earlier this morning, I suffered some rudeness from a small group of students in my First Year class at Ube Kojo, and so upset was I that I felt it warranted some discussion with their Home Room teacher - the aforementioned Mr YOSHIMASA. This is a University Prep. class but the attitude I have experienced over recent classes from this group has to be challenged to get them back on track. Some students enter senior high school with a surprising but welcome level of maturity, fostered by the very setting into which they have been admitted. But others, it seems, are still living out of their junior high school milieu - not yet prepared to assume the mantle of personal responsibility called for in high school. I have to encourage them to understand this as soon as I can - and I have to say that it is not easy. Imagine trying to evince concern and dispense words of wisdom in a language over which you might have limited control (as is the case for me with Japanese) to students not wanting to follow direction and who find it all too easy to simply giggle away with their friends and whenever I challenge them to simply reply "Wakarimasen" ("I don't understand.")! I look forward to the change of attitude I am certain that Mr YOSHIMASA will be able to bring about on my behalf! During the class I passed around three hard plastic cases enclosing photographs from my past, scenes of Australia and photographs I took when last in the UK about four years ago when I visited some cousins, Isabel and Alan FARROW, just outside Cambridge. They live in the house where the Revd Wilmer AWDRY wrote the first books in the "Thomas, the Tank Engine" series some 65 or so years ago. My cousins bought the place nearly 30 years ago. Erasmus, the early 16th century Humanist philosopher was invited to stay in an earlier structure on the same site during one of his visits to Cambridge as well, it seems. Whilst not the point of to-day's lesson - or indeed of any class around which I pass such matters - they are a part of my overall plan to stimulate as much as I can the thinking of my students and to lay plain their connectedness with our world. So you might imagine that I felt some pain as the group of troubled students passed these photographs on from one to the other with a mere cursory glance. Only one somewhat redeemed herself, when she realised that one of the photographs was to do with her favourite childhood character 「機関車トーマス」and loudly exclaimed so! She was the same girl on whose recent written report I had had to append a comment that ten minutes in class was not what I had intended as an appropriate allocation of time for that report. I had expected due thought and care at home - not a last minute hurried attempt in MY class time! (So many matters of courtesy, manners!)
At the same school I teach one senior 3rd Year Writing class which is NOT University Prep. although I imagine a number of them will enter university nonetheless. They are keen. Their hearts are not devious. They do as I ask. Which is to listen, to answer, to write. To laugh, too, of course! They practice English pronunciation with gusto and write down the stories I put up on the blackboard. To-day, before the other class about which I have written above, I was teaching this 3rd Year class and eliciting from them their tales of the past week-end. They each in turn gave me a brief outline, I wrote it up in English, they copied it down into their books. My step had been light when I walked away from that double lesson of 100 minutes. Little did I realise what lay in store for me, literally around the corner. But I know this disagreeable matter will be resolved, of course...
*******Up-date. It's Thursday June 8th. Mr YOSHIMASA has worked his magic! The three students have apologised to me for their behaviour on Monday. I have accepted their aplogies with hand-shakes. We are now back on course
