Today's activities included:
●
Elementary School Tour & Teaching Experience
●
Japanese Lesson Study with Waseda University students
Today we had the wonderful (.../humbling/amusing...)
opportunity to teach a lesson at Namiki Elementary. The students could not have been more
gracious towards us loud, blundering Americans.
Despite the language barrier, we were able to communicate and connect--largely
in part to how welcoming, eager, and helpful the students were.I believe I
speak for the my all of my USD classmates when I say that on this trip I have
been astounded by how conscientious, respectful, self-regulating, and motivated
Japanese students are. I believe there
is a stark cultural contrast between Japanese and North American students, and
analyzing these differences has been insightful to the degree that it has
catalyzed my entire teaching philosophy.
We were lucky enough to get the chance to eat lunch with the
students, which was an entirely different experience than eating lunch in a
U.S. school cafeteria. The students did
all of the work! They served the food
(wearing very cute hats and aprons while doing so!) and cleaned up after the
meal--without any prompting from their teacher.
And they all took out their toothbrushes after eating and brushed their
teeth! We tried to help them clean up
but they wouldn’t allow guests to clean.
After lunch we played with the students during their recess time. I tried playing tag with the 4th graders, but
the rules were a bit complicated and I couldn’t understand their
explanation...so I basically just ran in circles for half an hour, with a herd
of 4th graders chasing after me. The
fact that the Waseda students politely sat next to a big blond sweaty mess for
the rest of the afternoon is testament to how polite Japanese people are.
I am going to try to control myself and not write a page about
how cool the Japanese lesson study was. As
many of you have figured out by now, I find containing my excitement to be very
difficult. Or I just don’t really bother
to try doing...not sure which one it is.
Back to my point, which I will try to make as concise as possible: for me, the most interesting aspect of the
lesson study was getting a glimpse of education from a different cultural
perspective. The Waseda students
approached the same problem from a very different angle. I admired how reflective and purposeful they
were with their thoughts and opinions.
They had no discomfort with pausing to collect their thoughts and mull
over ideas. Americans tend to rush
through discussions in a way that is impulsive and shallow, as compared to
Japanese lesson discussions. The Waseda
students went much more slowly, but delved deeper into the material than [I
believe] American students normally would.
Cutting myself off!
A few photos...
 |
| Dave after reading my blog post |
To and from:
 |
| Before the party with Waseda students |
 |
| On the way to the party with Waseda students |
 |
| After the party with Waseda students |
No comments:
Post a Comment