Course Description:
This course gives students opportunity to deepen their knowledge of Japanese language and culture through their community service and to develop communication skills through discussions, reflection essays and presentations. Taught in Japanese.
Units: 4
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Reflective Narrative:
As part of our upper division Service Learning requirement, we were given the opportunity to visit a local elementary after-school program for a couple of hours and teach them about Japanese language and culture. My group (a mix of American and exchange students from Japan) went to Highland Elementary located in Marina once a week for 10 weeks, and worked in 2 groups to teach around 15-20 students ranging from 7-10 years old. Through our experiences in Service Learning, we became familiar with the concepts of compassion, social responsibility, social justice, and diversity.
Through the in-class readings (that we also wrote reflections for: see here), we learned of the significance of compassion and how the lack of it affects individuals' thoughts and feelings. Without compassion, even if you help people with good intentions, the person on the receiving end will feel belittled. This concept was important to us since we were going to be visiting an elementary school that could be considered to be low-income. Not only the students, but we had to make sure to not make the school employees feel uncomfortable with our help. As university students, we were not actual teachers so we needed to be mindful of our position as Service Learning volunteers. At the end of our experience, we hopefully also imparted the importance of compassion to our students as we taught them about a new culture and new perspectives.
By having studied abroad in a foreign country, we all had experiences that were unique and not many people can say that they have. Because of this, it was our social responsibility to impart some of this knowledge and experience that we gained to future generations of students. We learned through our Community Scan Project (link) that a lot of the students who we worked with came from families who were not able to go to college or did not even speak English, and that many of them were part of the school's free-lunch program. Since they were still only elementary students, college seemed like a far-off concept to many of the students, but I believe it was a nice experience to talk to current university students and learn a bit about what college entails.
Through in-class discussions, we learned about social justice and how some groups of people are more privileged than others simply because of the color of their skin or where they were born. Everyone in class had a unique perspective that contributed to the class discussion. I personally related to many of the students we worked with because my background was so similar to theirs. At the time, most of the students did not understand complicated concepts such as "social justice," but I do think that many of them understood that set them apart from the more privileged students. One of the goals of our Service Program was to show to these students how one's social standing or financial status does not have to affect their future.
A large majority of the students that we worked with were not familiar with Japanese culture or confused it with other asian cultures. In our lessons, we wanted to celebrate diversity by encouraging discussions between the students' different cultures. For example, for our lesson on animal sounds in Japanese (lesson plan) we would also ask the students how the sounds in Japanese compared to those that they use in their native language. Students then demonstrated how the sounds would be said in other foreign languages such as Spanish and Tagalog. While the reason we visited the elementary school was to teach them about Japanese culture and language, we wanted to teach the students to respect diverse point of views. Through our weekly site reflections in Japanese (link), we would then look back on our week and note what worked and what we needed to work on for the next week.
As part of our upper division Service Learning requirement, we were given the opportunity to visit a local elementary after-school program for a couple of hours and teach them about Japanese language and culture. My group (a mix of American and exchange students from Japan) went to Highland Elementary located in Marina once a week for 10 weeks, and worked in 2 groups to teach around 15-20 students ranging from 7-10 years old. Through our experiences in Service Learning, we became familiar with the concepts of compassion, social responsibility, social justice, and diversity.
Through the in-class readings (that we also wrote reflections for: see here), we learned of the significance of compassion and how the lack of it affects individuals' thoughts and feelings. Without compassion, even if you help people with good intentions, the person on the receiving end will feel belittled. This concept was important to us since we were going to be visiting an elementary school that could be considered to be low-income. Not only the students, but we had to make sure to not make the school employees feel uncomfortable with our help. As university students, we were not actual teachers so we needed to be mindful of our position as Service Learning volunteers. At the end of our experience, we hopefully also imparted the importance of compassion to our students as we taught them about a new culture and new perspectives.
By having studied abroad in a foreign country, we all had experiences that were unique and not many people can say that they have. Because of this, it was our social responsibility to impart some of this knowledge and experience that we gained to future generations of students. We learned through our Community Scan Project (link) that a lot of the students who we worked with came from families who were not able to go to college or did not even speak English, and that many of them were part of the school's free-lunch program. Since they were still only elementary students, college seemed like a far-off concept to many of the students, but I believe it was a nice experience to talk to current university students and learn a bit about what college entails.
Through in-class discussions, we learned about social justice and how some groups of people are more privileged than others simply because of the color of their skin or where they were born. Everyone in class had a unique perspective that contributed to the class discussion. I personally related to many of the students we worked with because my background was so similar to theirs. At the time, most of the students did not understand complicated concepts such as "social justice," but I do think that many of them understood that set them apart from the more privileged students. One of the goals of our Service Program was to show to these students how one's social standing or financial status does not have to affect their future.
A large majority of the students that we worked with were not familiar with Japanese culture or confused it with other asian cultures. In our lessons, we wanted to celebrate diversity by encouraging discussions between the students' different cultures. For example, for our lesson on animal sounds in Japanese (lesson plan) we would also ask the students how the sounds in Japanese compared to those that they use in their native language. Students then demonstrated how the sounds would be said in other foreign languages such as Spanish and Tagalog. While the reason we visited the elementary school was to teach them about Japanese culture and language, we wanted to teach the students to respect diverse point of views. Through our weekly site reflections in Japanese (link), we would then look back on our week and note what worked and what we needed to work on for the next week.