Yesterday was my first day working at Kobe University. I’m teaching a two month special course on making technical presentations in English. I’ll be teaching six classes a week at two of the Kobe University campuses. The classes are small to give students more opportunity to speak, and almost all the students are either medical students or doctors working on graduate/research work.
The first day went pretty well. I taught in two different places, the Okurayama campus in western Kobe and the Rokko campus perched near the top of Rokko mountain in the east. Most of my classes are at Okurayama, and the staff there were extremely helpful. They really took care of anything that came up – they made copies for me, faxed materials and looked up my next destination on the internet. They even assigned a woman from the staff room to have lunch with me and show me how the cafeteria works.
The classes themselves went smoothly. The first class was a little tough because the department head and the staffing company’s boss watched the whole lesson from the back. The students were a little quiet at first, but warmed up later despite having an intimidating audience watching them from the back of the room. After the class ended the department head said that he thought the class went really well, and wished me good luck with the rest of the course. The other classes were not observed, so I guess I passed the test on now I’m on my own.
The Rokko campus is quite large. I took a combination of subway, train and bus to get there, and once on campus the classroom was easy enough to find. My contact at that campus was pretty nervous, and just wanted me to do whatever it is I do so that he could get back to the safety of his desk. Only two students (out of five) showed up yesterday, so I did an abbreviated version of the lesson and I think I’ll have to do pretty much the same thing next week. The nervous guy signed the papers and said thanks, and then I was out the door. I caught a rapid train that skips several of the usual stops and got home in record time.
I’ll teach three more classes at Okurayama tomorrow, so my work week has expanded quite a bit. The pay isn’t great for the Kobe University lessons, but I’m in this to make contacts and gain experience (and bragging rights), so no big deal. I’m on the hunt for something full time in April 2009 – so far only one promising lead, but I haven’t heard anything back yet.
