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CCTEA Summer Study Tour 2008
In the summer of 2008, fourteen elementary teachers from ten school districts in Colorado spent four weeks in Japan on the Program for Teaching East Asia’s 2008 Texts and Contexts: Japan through Children’s Literature study tour. With study tour leaders, Catherine Ishida, TEA’s Japan Project Coordinator, Professor David Henry, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and Jessica Rodd, TEA’s Japan Project Assistant, the group visited six cities: Tokyo, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Okayama, Yamagata, and Yokohama. In each city, the group developed their understandings of a featured children’s book about Japan through hands-on activities, visits to the book’s setting, and meetings with speakers. In collaborative groups, teachers began drafting lesson plans to teach aspects of Japanese history and culture through the selected stories. Many other activities, visits, and meetings provided participants with information to deepen their knowledge of and connections to Japanese history, religions, education, architecture, and geography.
Highlights from this year's Texts and Contexts study tour include the following:
- In Kyoto, teachers had a quiet day to reflect upon how the samurai cultivated inner-peace during an age of war. The group participated in a tea ceremony and an overnight at a Zen temple including an introduction to meditation and vegetarian Buddhist cuisine.
- Each teacher spent a weekend with a family in Yamagata prefecture. The teachers experienced a family's weekend lifestyle, visited some famous sites in Yamagata, and shared ideas and laughter over delicious meals.
- On July 5th, we spent a day with author, Holly Thompson, in Koshigoe-town, the setting of her latest book, The Wakame Gatherers. With Holly Thompson as our guide, we walked by shops, houses, and beach scenes that are illustrated in the book. At lunch time, town volunteers taught the teachers how to cook a variety of wakame seaweed cuisine and then we shared a delicious lunch together. Following lunch, three speakers presented on the harvesting of wakame, an elementary school project for Koshigoe students to learn about their local produce, and life before, during, and after World War II in Koshigoe.
- Across the four weeks, we visited four elementary schools in the cities of Otsu, Yamagata, Kawasaki, and Tokyo. Teachers spent a full day in one classroom observing teaching and learning practices. They learned about preservice and inservice professional development for teachers in Japan. They developed an understanding of the diversity within elementary education in Japan, with special foci on multicultural and international education. In addition, Dr. David Satterwhite of The Japan-United States Educational Commission met with participants to provide them with an overview of the Japanese education system.
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