Taira Middle School
Click on the picture for some images from the day.
We were welcomed to Taira Middle School as if we were royalty!
The band had obviously been working on their best American songs, so we entered the gym under the floral garlands to the theme song of Star Wars and finally sat to Sousa. They performed a traditional dance, a more modern one (to a young girl band from Miyakojima called "Pani, Pani" - great fun, they'll definately be played in my classes soon!) We were told a traditional Japanese folk story and had a Karate demonstration. Several of the performers had won high places in national competitions!
The day was fun, they gave us free reign to visit any classrooms we wanted and to pop in and out of classes. The school was in multiple buildings and leaving our shoes outside each building was no problem until the tropical storm hit! This was nothing new for them, but for the wide eyed Americans, it was a storm to behold. It cleared up again pretty quickly and we went on with our day. I spent a solid amount of time in the art studio which was in a newer building. There were lots of empty shelves and wall space and I tried to ask the art teacher why there was no artwork on the walls (this was the only blank walled room.) I THINK what he told me was that he was concerned for the artwork getting stolen - this doesn't really make sense as everywhere else things were left out, but that is as much as I understood. We did get far enough in our communication for me to understand the project they were working on and the detailed set of curricular instructions that were mandated from the national government -- down to how many class sessions for each project.
The kids were great. I had lunch with the prizewinning storytelling 9th grade girls. They laughed at me and we communicated as best as we could with their limited English and my very limited Japanese. They enjoyed looking at my photographs of FA, my students and advisees! After lunch, one of the girls (clearly a champion calligrapher) wrote my name in Kanji. It is beautiful!
We were welcomed to Taira Middle School as if we were royalty!
The band had obviously been working on their best American songs, so we entered the gym under the floral garlands to the theme song of Star Wars and finally sat to Sousa. They performed a traditional dance, a more modern one (to a young girl band from Miyakojima called "Pani, Pani" - great fun, they'll definately be played in my classes soon!) We were told a traditional Japanese folk story and had a Karate demonstration. Several of the performers had won high places in national competitions!The day was fun, they gave us free reign to visit any classrooms we wanted and to pop in and out of classes. The school was in multiple buildings and leaving our shoes outside each building was no problem until the tropical storm hit! This was nothing new for them, but for the wide eyed Americans, it was a storm to behold. It cleared up again pretty quickly and we went on with our day. I spent a solid amount of time in the art studio which was in a newer building. There were lots of empty shelves and wall space and I tried to ask the art teacher why there was no artwork on the walls (this was the only blank walled room.) I THINK what he told me was that he was concerned for the artwork getting stolen - this doesn't really make sense as everywhere else things were left out, but that is as much as I understood. We did get far enough in our communication for me to understand the project they were working on and the detailed set of curricular instructions that were mandated from the national government -- down to how many class sessions for each project.
The kids were great. I had lunch with the prizewinning storytelling 9th grade girls. They laughed at me and we communicated as best as we could with their limited English and my very limited Japanese. They enjoyed looking at my photographs of FA, my students and advisees! After lunch, one of the girls (clearly a champion calligrapher) wrote my name in Kanji. It is beautiful!
posted by lisa at 2:17 AM
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