Musing on school

This is now officially week 4 of my wading into the world of graduate school, albeit in an online, part-time way. I'm working on a masters in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). It's a little strange to be doing things online, because the conversation is asynchronous. My classmates are spread out all over the world, with a fair share in Korea, one in the Republic of Georgia, a few of us in Japan, and the rest (a moajority) in the US. So, when I'm awake and posting on the Black Board (a university bulletin board and other function program), many others are asleep, so it takes a fair amount of retracking the conversation to figure out a response.

The other thing I have noticed is, well, it's really not challenging me very much yet. Admittedly, it's only week 4, but I haven't felt any struggle to keep up with the work or figure out any of the ideas. Sure, there have been moments when I'm reading, either a published work or a colleague's comment, when I've thaought to myself, "Oh, that's a good idea. That makes a lot of sense." I mean, I've had two "papers" (only 500 and 1000 words) so far that I basically just tossed off in a few minutes and got nothing but positive comments on.

But mostly, it's been putting into academic terms a lot of the things I already knew. It is good for me because it's reminding me that I need to work on my classroom management, though a lot of time, I feel like the ideas in the books are nice in theory, but in a classroom of 45 Japanese 20 year olds, of whom only a handful really want to study English, some of those ideas get lost in the shuffle.

But these first two courses aren't the ones that, looking at the degree requirements, interest me the most. Those will come a little later. "English in the World" is something that is of particular interest to me. And while it's kind of nice in some ways to be having an easy time, here's hoping for a little more challenge to come.

In other news, I've registered to go ride 160km (approximately 100 miles) around Mt. Chokai, down in Akita and Yamagata, next month. It'll be my first Chokai MTB ride in 4 years and I'm really looking forward to it. It'll be my first major ride on the new bike. Should be awesome, if tiring.

A cement company you can really believe in

Summer Vacation Photos! Finally!

Rather than post all thirty photos individually, here's a slide show of photos from my summer vacation, finally. Mostly, they're from Akita, with a few from Aomori and Hokkaido. And you can always check out my picasa albums here.

I'm a grad student...apparently

So, this week, I began working on an MA in TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages) online, through the New School, a university in NYC.

And today, I'm reading an assigned reading concerned with learner assessment (the title of the chapter is called "Changing Paradigms for Assessment" by one Anne Katz, who ever she may be. And I come across a block quote talking about the history of testing which reads as follows (emphasis mine):

Jephthat (Judges 12:5) ordered that all those who approached the Jordan fords unable to pronounce the word "shibboleth" should be killed. By doing so, he distinguished between his own men and those of the enemy, who could not say the sound "sh." Thus, those who came with the password pronounced as "sibboleth" failed a very effective, early, criterion-referenced achievement test and recieved immediate feedback. (From someone named Betrand's work in 1981, on page 18)

Now, this is either a candidate for comedic understatement of the year or it's an example of what so many people hate about academic writing. To call being killed for failing to pass a test - yeah, I can't argue the fact that it is immediate feedback. But that's such a sterilized way to put it.