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Internationalization in Mizusawa
Anthony Hand
This was written on Sunday, November 13, 1994, and has been included almost verbatim. I had such a great time, and I think everyone else did too, that I shared it with our prefecture's monthly AJET magazine, the Rock Hand Roll. Jody, Clare, et al., did such a marvelous job organizing this event that it went off without a hitch. I think an event like this would work very well in any school.
Now I have to tell you a little bit about my weekend, which was jam-packed as usual. Yesterday I went to a city about 45 minutes away called Mizusawa for an international exchange event. The JETs there, led by two cool gals named Jody, from Illinois, and Clare, from Australia, arranged this event for about 60 sixth graders from the local elementary schools. It went so well that I'm so inspired to try something like it in my town someday, and I'm still kind of in awe of it.
The JETs had gone around to the eight or so elementary schools in Mizusawa giving presentations about the event to all of the sixth grade classes. All the kids needed to sign up was 250 yen, an o-bento (bag lunch), and the desire to interact and have a great time with a bunch of foreigners. Then, they sent out post cards to most of the JETs and other ALTs in the prefecture asking for their help with the event giving workshops about anything they found interesting. Jody and the gang got a great response, about 12 foreigners showed up. I'd signed up to do a workshop on Russian with another gal, Joellen, who also studied Russian in college. Then, I stayed to help out with a couple other workshops.
Jody, et al., had everything so well organized. Each of the kids were assigned to a group that was named after a country. There were two JETs and an English speaking Japanese person assigned to each country as the leaders. Since Joellen and I were doing Russian together, we were co-leaders and our Japanese "helper/co-leader/translator's" name was Yoko. Our country was Tanzania and we had 8 of the coolest kids there. They were four boys and four girls who came from various schools. So even though no one kid knew more than one other in the group, they all clicked really well with each other. The boys and girls were even interacting well together, something nearly unheard of in this fairly segregated society. Perhaps it was because they're only elementary school students. Regardless, it was great!
So after the opening words, we escorted our group off to the first workshop that they were assigned to, then Joellen and I went on to our own workshop. There were a bunch of cool workshops, including no-bake cookie making, Easter egg decorating, "creative movement", and Scottish dancing.
Tanzania's first workshop was about Australia and included an "authentic" Australian aboriginal dance which they all participated in. Actually, the dance wasn't quite 100% authentic and was taught by a white fellow, but it did include elements of several real aboriginal dances. The kids loved it! I think that was one of the most popular workshops.
Joellen and my workshop went pretty well, too. We taught the kids how to say "My name is...", "Nice to meet you" and a couple easy greetings in Russian. Then, we taught them how to count to 10, and after a bit of practice, we played a karuta game. This is a very popular game that's played especially around New Year's. We had them sit in a circle with cards numbered 1-10 spread around in the middle. Each of the cards have a fun and colorful picture on it, like 6 dancing fireflies, two frogs shaking hands, etc. (I lifted most of the pictures off of a Dr. Seuss Beginner's Dictionary, then colored and modified them.) When Joellen or I yelled out a number, the first person to slap their hand over the correct card got a point. At the end, we asked them to say how many points they had in Russian. It went pretty well.
For the next workshop, Tanzania was reunited as our kids joined us for a Spanish workshop. Joellen's main major was Spanish and she'd spent some time in Spain one summer, too. First, we taught the kids how to say the colors in Spanish. Can I just tell you that Spanish words are much easier for Japanese kids to produce than English words. But English grammar is probably easier to learn, especially when it comes to verb conjugation!
Then, we did the same karuta game with colored pieces of paper, instead. It went over really well and the kids really enjoyed it.
Next came perhaps the coolest part of the workshop. Joellen taught the students how to make a Mexican craft called "ojo del dios" using simple disposable chopsticks and some yarn. It's a very easy craft and it took only 20 minutes or so to complete. What you do is put the two chopsticks together like an "X", then wrap the yarn about it in a certain way so that it makes kind of like a diamond shape with the chopsticks sticking out the vertices. Joellen brought multi-colored yarn, so they looked really cool when the kids were finished. Yoko tied the ends in a loop so the kids can hang them on their wall as special souvenirs of the day.
After this it was lunch time, so we all gathered in the gym again under the flags of our respective countries. It was also group picture time. Each of the kids got their picture taken at least twice. Once for their country, and again with all the kids from the same school and all the Japanese and foreign leaders.
After lunch came the third and final workshop. Being uncommitted and intrigued by the title "creative movement", I decided to help out an American gal also from Michigan named Holly. She teaches dance to kids in her town and may have majored in it in college; I forget. Anyways, it was a really fun workshop. Another good thing about it was that my Tanzanian kids also happened to have been scheduled for it at the same time. I was so lucky!
We did a number of neat things in this workshop, some of which I'd like to use in my elementary school visits later. First, everyone sat in a circle and everyone tossed around a koosh ball sort of like we were playing "hot potato". The kid who caught it had to say the target English phrase, such as "I like...".
Next, we played "human knot". We broke into two smaller groups, and one person from each group left and covered their eyes. Those left stood in a circle and joined hands. Then, without letting go, we tied ourselves into a knot and the kid who left had to undo the knot. After a few times of that, the two groups got back together and two kids left, then returned to untie this much larger group. It was such a good time!
The next activity involved balancing a small bean bag like hacky sacks on our heads. First, we put it on our head and roamed around freely walking, running, doing whatever. If the bean bag fell off our heads, we had to yell out in English, "Help me!" and someone else would come to put it back on for us because we couldn't touch it. Then, we played "follow the leader" with the bean bags on our heads. If they fell off while we did whatever the leader did we were out and had to sit down. If the leader lost her bean bag, the next person became the new leader. This was a lot of fun, too! Have you ever tried to shoot a basket with a bean bag balanced precariously on your head? And I made it, no less!
After doing that for a little while, we sat back down in a circle and Holly showed us pictures of animals, went over their English names and we reviewed the sounds they make. Then, she gave each of a picture and we had to either act out the motions of the animal or make it's sound, and we had to look for the other person with the same picture. That went pretty well, too, and I can just imagine doing it with a bunch of first or second graders. They'd love it!
As you can tell from my in depth discussion of this last workshop, I really enjoyed it myself! I also got some great ideas for activities for my elementary school visits.
After the last workshop, everyone gathered in the gym again and we played a fun game of human paper-scissors-rock. We divided into two groups. One of the JETs was the leader of each group and decided which of the sign we would do together. Then, on the count of three, we all did the action together. For example, if it was rock, then we'd all squat down. If your team won, then you'd try to tag members on the losing side before they reached the "safe place"--the back wall. Tagged people then came over to your team.
The last activity for the day was "blob tag". It started out with four people holding hands and forming a chain. Whoever they managed to tag joined them until they became eight members. Then, they'd split into two groups of four each. Groups keep growing and splitting until everyone's tagged. Even though it was a cool day out, we were all sweating profusely between these two games, and we were all completely tuckered out!
A camera guy from IBC, one of the local TV networks, also came to get some footage of the last Australian workshop and the two gym activities. He must've gotten some pretty good footage.
After we were all so tired and panting up a storm, it was time to say good-bye. One member from each country stood up and gave their impression of the day's events. All the kids said really nice things and they had such a wonderful time. Then it was time for everyone to go home. I was kind of sad to see my new "Tanzanian" friends go. Several kids asked for my autograph, and I gave my address to two girls who're from the same school--the only ones from that school. They said they wanted to send me a letter later.
[Post script: One of the girls, Chinatsu, did send me a letter about a week or two later and we corresponded from time to time for the next year and a half.]