kdblog

Much of the work for JS continued from May right into June. In addition, my class ended on June 30^th, visitors from the US came at the end of June, and I had to write a speech for the Closing Ceremony for SILS on July 3^rd. It was a hectic month but a positive one. It was a sad one, too, as the realization that we would soon be leaving Japan settled in for both David and me.

I had a great group of students in my course, Philosophies of Education, who worked hard on their websites of schools reflecting the philosophy the group had selected. The menu to the TEN different schools created by my students this year can be found at http://www.f.waseda.jp/kgourd/Courses/Philosophies/home.html.

I am very proud of our work as it was a big undertaking for all of us. I considered changing my syllabus after I found out I would have nearly 60 students in my course. However, this project always helps the students really understand the use of philosophy. After a few days at the beginning of the semester to consider making a change I elected to go with it and to trust I could get it all to work out. It was a bit more difficult than at Knox when I have students do websites because I had to do most of the posting to the server. Space on the server was assigned to me as the faculty member, not to the program or the course. I could not give students access. In addition, I had to learn to do many things in Japanese (e.g., connecting to the server, getting a FTP program onto my computers, and using a Japanese keyboard while teaching students about creating their school websites). It was a steep learning curve, but I enjoyed it. Mostly, I enjoyed it because the students worked so hard, learned so much, and enjoyed it, too!

Some of my students will be in the US next year, and two of them will be in Seattle, so I should get to see some of them again! One who will go to school at SUNY-Stonybrook has promised to visit us.

On the 24^th of June, two Knox graduates came to visit Japan for about 10 days. David and I had fun taking them around Tokyo. It brought back memories of our first discoveries in Japan. It helped us recognize some of our learning, too. Although our Japanese is still so bad, it is better than it was last August. David knows the trains and subways better than most long-time residents of Tokyo. Jenn and Cindy stayed with us, and it was during one of the hottest and busiest times during June. David and I were both still teaching, but did a lot of sightseeing, too. Cindy brought us one of her latest beautiful paintings, which I quickly hung on our wall in Tokyo.

During June, David began reducing the number of hours he teaches and started to focus on making soap as soon as we get back to the US. He has the things he needs already delivered to Tina and Lorrin’s, so for all of you who are waiting for soap because your year supply has run out or is running low, David should have soap made and ready to ship by the end of September. One of my first tasks when I return to the US is to start our website for selling his soap on the Internet. Since neither of us has jobs lined up, we will give the soap making business on the Internet a try. You can tell all your friends and family members!

Where did May go? I knew it was going to be busy, and it was! I had lots to do to keep up with my large class and to prepare for the conference in Bangkok; then, of course, we went to Bangkok. I went on a Tuesday afternoon, and David came the following Thursday night. We stayed in Bangkok until Sunday night. In addition to it being the busiest month, it also presented me with some difficult days.

Bangkok. I had to really rush to get to the airport after I taught my class on a Tuesday. I let my students out about 15 minutes early, but they used that extra time to ask me questions, and I ended up leaving 10 minutes after the class is supposed to end. In fact, I was in such a rush after all the questions that I forgot to close down the computer in my classroom, lock the computer cabinet, and return the key to the office! Consequently, while in Bangkok, I received an email message that the office workers were trying to find the key to the computer cabinet!

I did get to the airport in time and my flight to Bangkok was a good one; however, the more than 50 papers in my book bag that I needed to read did not get read. I was exhausted from the nervous moments, and I watched movies instead. I arrived at the airport just after 11:00 pm, and for the first time in my life, I was met by an airport staff person and escorted all the way through the airport. I went through a special immigration line for “honored guests” or some similar honorary designation. Going through customs was even easier; I didn’t even have to wait in line. The young woman who met me had arranged for a driver to take me to my hotel. The cost was covered by the conference. This conference was in honor of the Princess’s 50th birthday, and she had spoken at the opening ceremony (I missed because it was a day before I arrived), so this conference was a really big deal from the Thai perspective.

It was a good start. However, the next morning when I tried to pick up my registration materials, I found out that my credit card had denied charges (for a second time), and I was not actually registered. It would not have been such a big problem except that I had not brought enough cash to pay for the registration (which included my hotel stay), and I could not take enough out of my bank account in a single day to cover it. I was distraught as the conference was going on, and I was spending my time waiting while the nice people tried again to get two different credit cards accepted, or I was at the ATM machine trying to get money. Finally, I convinced the very nice woman to allow me to pay half of the bill and attend the conference and then the next day, I could pay the other half. While sitting in a session, I realized that a new day would be starting in the US, and sure enough, I could get some more money out of my account. I happily paid my other half of the bill in the afternoon.

The sessions at the conference were quite interesting. It felt good to be at a conference dedicated to language issues! I met a lot of nice people who are doing amazing work. I was presenting my research with a colleague from Waseda University, Professor Iino. We have been working on a very interesting study of the program we both teach in, The School of International Studies at Waseda University. It is a new program (in its second year when we began), and we were interviewing students about their experiences. Our focus was the student perspective on the policies and implementation of the new program. Our focus for the Bangkok conference was issues of language and identity of the 26 Japanese students we had interviewed.

Pictures for our Bangkok trip can be found at http://www.nerdylorrin.net/gallery2/v/kd_2005/kd_2005_Japan/May2006/Bangkok/

Research Project. Our project is great, and we have excellent data. We were rushed to do analysis, but we had a good paper for presentation at the conference. We had worked hard to make it only about 12 minutes long, so we would have time for questions and answers within our 20 minute time slot. Unfortunately the first woman to present at our session took nearly 30 minutes, ignoring all the prompts that her time was up. Everyone after her had their time cut, and everyone went over the “new” time. Consequently because we were the last presenters in the session, we had only 10 minutes to present. We had to cut even more from our presentation, and had no time to respond to questions. It was quite disappointing considering all the effort to do the work and to travel to the conference. On the positive side, it was good that we got started with the analysis and had the big push to focus on the project.

JS Student Issues. When I returned to Bangkok, I still had those student papers to get read, and the two biggest issues facing me as the RD pushed themselves forward on my to do list. One of the JS students developed pain in her arm that prevented her from attending classes, and she became quite distraught about not finding a reasonable explanation for the pain despite having undergone many, many medical tests. She ended up returning to the US in early June, just 3 and a half weeks before her scheduled return. It was too early, however, for her to earn credit for the semester.

A second student had stopped going to Japanese classes, but the teachers were making changes and were negotiating to get him back to class. That story worked out very positively.

Since the nature of my job is to discuss and resolve problems by collaborating with the director of the program in the US, my colleague in the program in Tokyo, and with the SILS administration and faculty, I wrote and read many email messages related to both of these issues and had several related meetings. As Michiyo stated, a positive part of having “issues” is that we work closely together and learn so much from each other. It makes us feel competent and grateful to be working together. Therefore, even though we were all worn out, we realized how lucky we were to be working together and to have a director who was interested and involved in what was happening here.