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| My humanities students taking a 5 minute break after midterms during Spring term. |
Over the summer, I taught an intensive writing course, but had only seniors in my class. They were a great bunch - more self-motivated and willing to take initiative with their own learning than most of my first year students. I had collected their reading journals at the end of the course, but a few asked if they could pick them up again so that they can continue them.
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| A note from one of the summer students. |
Then I volunteered at ERC, which is an overnight, week long Bible camp that promotes better understanding and relationships between Korean-Americans, Koreans and North Korean refugees. It was a tiring, but awesome experience. I want to write more about this later, but this isn't the focus of this particular entry.
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| A real time translation of a radio interview of one of the refugees as it took place on stage. |
I also visited Guam for a week with Lisa and Heidi... another entry for another time. It was beautiful and I want to go back. I also broke my trusty Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-W80 while there.
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| The clean warm waters of Guam. |
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| Riding on the bus in Guam. |
After my first class of English Literature majors, I went to grab a bite to eat with my new officemate, Melissa. On our way back to campus, I ran into a bunch of my previous Fine Arts (and Arts and Crafts) students. "Oh, Gloria! We couldn't get into your class because of the schedule," Gina explained. Angela pretended to pout. "That's OK. We'll see each other around campus," I replied. I turned to Melissa and expressed how much I liked these students. Joshua (who is a female student who explained her choice of English name by simply stating matter-of-factly, "I know Joshua is a boy's name, but it's my favorite name.") and Liz (one of my most cheerful, monosyllabic and lowest English level students from last term) greeted me and I said, "I still have that picture of you two from the Spring festival." Liz, in complete Liz style, took a little time to process the English words, then giggled nervously and exclaimed, "Oooh no!" I teased them by suggesting I would make a poster out of it and hang it somewhere public. Joshua, in complete Joshua style, calmly smiled and said something like "That's not a good idea." Meanwhile Liz exclaimed again, "No! No no no no NO! Hehehehe~"
I had my All Majors class and surprisingly, all but one of my students were seniors. (Later, about half the class dropped the class and I got another batch of freshmen, sophomores and juniors to mix things up a bit.) After the class, however, one of my Humanities majors from last term, Claire, stopped me as I was leaving campus for dinner. "I wanted to enroll in your class, but there is no room." I told her that my All Majors class probably still had some open spots, but she'd have to talk with the office about that. She hurried in - lo and behold, she was in the next class.
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| The walk back to my office from class. |
The next day, I taught the Culture and Tourism majors, and as I left, was ambushed by three of my former Humanities students, Jennifer??, Gloria and ... I ... forget! (Ack.) They explained that they couldn't get into my classes, so they missed me. One of them held a bottle/can of ice coffee that another quickly pried from her fingers and thrusted in my direction. "For me?" They nodded energetically. "Are you sure? It's not really hers and you're not just stealing it from her to give it to me?" They giggled and nodded again. I asked, "Do you have class next door?" "No," they explained. "We were waiting for you." "How did you know I was here?" "We checked all the doors." They meant that they had previously looked at all the schedules outside of the classrooms to figure out where I was. "Oh! I have three cute, friendly... mmm... stalkers?" This time they laughed. Gloria waited for me a couple days later to tell me that she was worried because most of her classmates, this time around, are seniors. I'm sure she'll do fine though. She wears very princess-y outfits, giggles profusely out of nervousness and blinks vapidly to express that she's lost in class, but she seems very quick to learn and when it comes to her school work, she's pretty much always very prepared and conscientious.
I quickly made my way to my class of Computer Science majors, hoping that they'd be more lively than the bunch I had last term. One of my students, Erica, had sent me an e-mail asking me to raise her grade, asking, "Do you think I'm a bad student?" I explained to her that I have a very high opinion of her, but changing her grade would be unfair to all the other students, so I wouldn't do it. I did get a random message from her toward the end of the summer asking, "It's Erica. Did you forget me?"
I rushed in the room and prepared to start the class. I looked up to see Erica, Hana, Haylee (formerly Diana), Leah (formerly Victoria), and Jane from last term sitting with grins on their faces. "Oh! I know you." Their grins widened. What a surprise. Last year, I felt like I was pulling teeth with their class, but the five explained that they wanted to be more outgoing this term - and they are already influencing the other quiet Computer Science majors by speaking up and engaging the other members of the class.
Ready to start the new semester? I hope so.
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| The campus at night. |
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