Final Essay I have learned a lot from the China Institute and feel I am fortunate to have been able to participate. I have already begun to use the information in the class and have had the pleasure of hearing my students ask me where I learn all this stuff. I was glad to tell them I go to school at night to which they seemed genuinely surprised. I was then able to truthfully tell them that I enjoy school and feel I am a student for life and I enjoy learning about places, people and cultures.
I started by showing Seven Samurai to my 7th graders and they loved reading the subtitles. I was able to provide details I had learned in class such as the right of Samurai to wear their hair in the ponytail style while others were not permitted to do so. The movie and my insights gained in class were valuable in provided back ground knowledge was useful as we compare and contrasted Medieval Europe and Medieval Japan. We then performed a short skit called “The Siege of Chihaya Castle” and I got a kick out of watching my students try to imitate the Samurai from the Seven Samurai.
I was also encouraged by a fellow classmate to research the seventh grade standard covering The Tale of Genji and make a connection with the modern graphic novels called manga. While I had seen students with these types of novels before, I was unfamiliar with the term manga and did not know anything about Genji. I enjoyed researching both and now I know that The Tale of Genji is credited with being the world’s first novel and that manga lore (and much of modern Japanese culture) is deeply influenced by it. I now have a unit to share with my students as well as a lot of new knowledge gleaned from our USC-US-China Institute.
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