Indiana Teachers Take a Bow in Japan; American Educators Return From Japan Study Tour
20 July 1999
Indiana Teachers Take a Bow in Japan; American Educators Return From Japan Study Tour
TORRANCE, Calif., July 20 -- When 50 U.S. high school
teachers -- participants in the new Toyota International Teacher Program --
met with members of a PTA in Tokyo, Ryan Sergeant of Mishawaka, Ind., stepped
forward to represent his group.
He bowed in customary Japanese style and presented the PTA with bags of
gifts from the United States. Then he greeted the parents -- to their
surprise, in Japanese.
Sergeant had long prepared for this moment. He had studied Japanese for
two years in high school and another two years in college, exchanged gifts
with Japanese exchange students and helped his mother host a visiting family
from Japan.
And as a summer worker with Mishawaka's city parks department, he had
worked on the Shiojiri Niwa Gardens, a Japanese garden donated to Mishawaka by
its sister city.
"I have yearned for the opportunity to go to Japan since I was in high
school," said Sergeant.
He got the chance to visit the Asian country after he was one of 12
Indiana teachers selected to take part in the intensive 10-day Toyota program.
Once in Japan, Sergeant, an art teacher at Mishawaka High School, found
the country a rich source of new information for his art courses.
When the American teachers visited a water color class at Rinkai
Elementary school in Tokyo, Sergeant, a fan of 19th century Japanese artist
Hokusai, picked up a brush and delighted the Rinkai instructor by doing a
portrait of her.
The school visit was only one stop in an all-expenses-paid journey that
took the teachers to seven cities in Japan. The American educators returned
to the United States June 30.
Sponsored by Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc. (TMS) and administered by
the Institute of International Education (IIE), the new program offered one of
the most comprehensive studies of Japan organized to date.
The 50 high school teachers -- from California, Indiana, Kentucky and West
Virginia, states where Toyota operates manufacturing plants -- followed a
rigorous schedule that exposed them to both Japan's past and present and the
global issues shared by all industrial nations. They explored how Japan
evolved from its traditional culture into a modern, technologically advanced
nation.
"The itinerary was diverse enough to meet the interests of a wide variety
of participants," said Maureen Grant, who teaches math at North Central High
School in Indianapolis. "Activities that did not directly impact my proposal
plan often had a huge impact on someone else's plan. It was really fun to see
the other teachers get excited when we were participating in activities of
their areas of expertise."
Dick Willis, an English and drama teacher at New Castle Chrysler High
School in New Castle, described the program as "a wondrous two weeks."
"My body is tired, my mind is full, and my spirit is soaring," he
commented at the end of the trip.
Like Sergeant, other program participants, who teach a variety of
different courses, plan to weave their Japanese experiences into their
curricula.
Grant, for instance, plans to develop a project linking geometry to the
patterns in Japanese traditional art.
Cheryn Drake, an English teacher at Penn High School in Mishawaka, will
explore how Japanese literature reflects the country's culture.
"Finding human common denominators requires a macrocosmic perspective,"
she noted. "Therefore, all of the themes investigated in the visit (to Japan)
are integral to understanding Japanese people and their literature, both old
and new."
Program sponsors and administrators said the teachers' response to the new
study tour indicates that it will have educational benefits well into the
future.
"At the end of our 10 days together in Japan, we asked the group of 50 to
evaluate the program," said Rhonda Glasscock, TMS senior administrator who
oversaw the development of the program. "I was pleased when they shared that
one of its strengths was that the program 'raised as many questions as it
answered.'
"I realized that these teachers are taking back a lot more than
information and experiences, but a hunger to know and understand as well."
Looking toward Japan's past, teachers visited historical and art museums,
Shinto shrines, Buddhist temples and palaces. They attended Kyoto's Gion
Corner theater, where Japanese performers entertained with a sampler of
Japanese arts, from floral arrangements and koto music to bunraku puppetry.
The teachers also learned the arts by doing. They were given a lesson in
suiboku, a Japanese style of water coloring. At Kyoto's Kodai Yuzen Dyeing,
they created intricate, multicolored designs on handkerchiefs by painting over
a series of stencils.
When the focus shifted to contemporary industrial Japan, the teachers
traveled to factories and business museums in Nagoya, Toyota City, Kyoto and
Osaka.
At the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology, the
teachers learned that Toyota began as a spinning and weaving company. They
observed the "zero defect" auto assembly line at Toyota's Tsutsumi plant in
Toyota City.
In Osaka, teachers connected with another major international corporation,
Matsushita Electric Group, which produces Panasonic brand electronics and
batteries. They toured the company's Hall of Science and Technology, where
the latest in high definition television and other state-of-the-art products
are on display. At the Matsushita Battery factory, the visitors not only
observed batteries whirring off the assembly line at a rate of 400 units a
minute, they were taken to a special classroom where they were taught to make
AA manganese batteries.
Another visit took them to a smaller Japanese company, Kawashima Textile
Manufacturers Ltd. The Kyoto factory, founded in 1843, is known for the
artistry of its tapestries, kimonos, theater curtains and carpets. Today, in
keeping with the changing markets, 45 percent of the company's business is in
fabrics for car seats and public transportation.
All three Japanese companies do business abroad, and each has
environmental and recycling programs.
Toyota has developed electric cars and a new hybrid vehicle, the Prius,
that uses both electric and gas combustion motors to reduce emissions, while
automatically recharging the car's batteries. Panasonic boasts that it is
producing batteries for electric cars and is researching battery materials
that will be more "eco-friendly." Kawashima displays tapestries woven from
recycled plastic bottles and expresses concern for the preservation of plants
and trees that produce natural dyes.
For many of the teachers, one of the program's highlights was the
opportunity to visit the homes of residents living in Tokyo's Edogawa Ward.
The Japanese hosts prepared dinner for the Americans, who were split up into
small groups of two or three per home. The teachers brought gifts and photos
from their U.S. hometowns.
Program participants had another chance to meet and socialize informally
with Japanese when they lunched with civil service personnel studying at the
Japan Intercultural Academy of Municipalities. The Japanese officials, who
were preparing for their own trip to the United States, were eager to practice
English with the visitors.
From a professional standpoint, the teachers took great interest in
observing and learning about Japanese schools.
During the Japanese PTA meeting, one mother said her goal was to involve
Japanese fathers more in their children's education and another spoke about
the eroding discipline in Japanese schools.
American teachers also talked with their professional counterparts. A
Japanese science teacher asked how American teachers deal with classroom
bullies, particularly in the wake of the Columbine shootings. And an American
teacher sought information on how Japanese schools deal with handicapped
children and low achievers.
In keeping with Japanese custom, the teachers slipped off their shoes and
put on school-issued slippers to pad around the halls of an elementary and
high school in the Edogawa ward of Tokyo and two middle schools (grades 7, 8
and 9) in Toyota City.
The Rinkai elementary children served a lunch of chicken and rice soup for
the visitors, taught them calligraphy, flashed peace signs at them and had
them autograph their notebooks.
For Malik Abdur-Rahman, who teaches at the School of Knowledge in
Indianapolis, their warm acceptance of the visiting American teachers left a
lasting impression.
"Children have that innocence about them," he said. "They don't see
themselves as one culture, one race -- just the human race."
For many of the teachers, the experience in Japan opened their eyes to the
diversity and complexity of the culture and made them eager to learn more.
Said Willis, the New Castle English teacher, "It will be impossible to
have taken this trip and not to have developed a larger global awareness and
more cultural understanding. We were bombarded with stimuli. I'm sure the
full effects will not be realized for days, months, years."
To receive an application for the 2000 Toyota International Teacher
Program, call 877-TEACH-JP (toll free) or e-mail: toyotateach@iie.org.