Final Essay

[Anonymous]

I have honestly enjoyed both seminars I have attended this year. Last August, I can say that I knew very little about Japan, China, Korea, and the interrelations between and among the three nations. However, now I feel much more comfortable with having at least a general understanding of the nations’ histories. I have already incorporated more East Asia into my lessons, but this course has developed my understanding, particularly in the arts. I hope to use more art in general in my teaching next year, and I hope that I can also incorporate more classical art pieces by Asian artist. I also uploaded my lesson plan, which uses the poetry that I was exposed to for the first time by Professor Jung-Kim: Sijo! I was really excited about this poetry, because I am not very poetic, but it is a good length so that students don’t feel intimidated, but creates a space for their creativity. Unfortunately the content for this seminar has been hard for me to try to integrate into the actual content I am required to teach because of the time period, but I would like to embed some of the concepts. I also liked that one of our professors used "puzzles" in his teachings. I think that this is a great visual tool for students. I would go as far as creating actual puzzle shaped note taking handouts and having students find another piece of the puzzle when jigsawing information or for their own understanding of a "whole" topic. I also plan to use this in my classroom next year. Overall, thank you for the opportunity to deepen my understanding of the history of Asia, and I look forward to future seminars!

[Anonymous]

Once again, it has been a pleasure taking another seminar with the USC US China Institute. I have learned so much to be able to apply in my classroom for the following school year. I appreciated how this course focused on ancient times since I teach sixth grade history and can incorporate a lot of what I learned into my classroom.

One particular session I enjoyed was when we engaged in the philosophical debates with our colleagues at the beginning of the semester. The resources provided were great and definitely adaptable for my sixth graders, and I appreciated how the structure was modeled with us going through the experience so that we can then take our students through it at a later time. For this past school year (back in May), I was able to modify the philosophy readings given to us and use them with my students. I then also had them debate/discuss the different philosophical beliefs in a Socratic Seminar. The students loved it! And this was a great common core lesson since I had students write an argumentative paragraph using evidence from the text, and then find ways to articulate their point of view in the seminar. Students really enjoyed it and gave positive feedback after this lesson, so will definitely be doing it again next year.

One other session I really enjoyed was the talk by Mei Fong. Her discussion on the one child policy was fascinating, and I loved how she gave us copies of her book (reading it as we speak)! I definitely will be incorporating information from her book and talk into my future class discussions when we discuss population growth and China in general. I also appreciated the video that she shared titled “Marriage Market Takeover.” This video really resonated with me, and is something I would want to show in a high school or college course if I were to teach one in the future. I feel with appropriate scaffolding and setting up the context I could share it with my middle schoolers, but again, would want to make sure I appropriately set up the context of what this video entails.

Overall, I really enjoyed this semester, and look forward to taking classes in the future if available Thank you Clay and Catherine for putting together a great course.

[Anonymous]

This is the first Asian studies course that I have ever taken. I first got interested in taking the course because I felt I needed to incorporate more lessons into my curriculum on Asian culture. After taking the courses and sitting through the seminars, I now feel a bit more confident in understanding the history, creating lessons and having resources I can access.

The most important aspect about this session is the amount of lesson ideas I have read through, making it easier to connect to my curriculum. The posts about the museums and activates near my school where I can take my kids is very helpful because this will reinforce the concepts I teach. In addition, I now see ways in which I can collaborate with other teachers at my school. I know this was the most helpful to me because administration is always asking teachers to collaborate and I now feel confident in approaching a teacher at my school in creating a unit together.

I really enjoyed sharing ideas with my fellow colleagues and were able to ask questions to professionals that could guide our misunderstandings. This course was an eye opener for me in understanding China’s history in the family units and government. Having this knowledge has helped me look at news articles differently and even watching Asian movies. Learning the history as a foundation, it gives me the confidence to answer students’ questions and also have contact to whom I can email in case I don’t have an answer.

I would recommend anyone interested in taking this course to apply. The only drawback is that there are a lot of materials to read but this should not deter anyone because it really adds to each session. Thank you to all the professors and to the program officer at USC U.S. - China Institute who took the time to lecture us and answer our questions.

[Anonymous]

I came into this seminar with very high expectations, not only for myself but for the seminar and what I would be able to get out of it. I can honestly say that my expectations were not met, they were shattered, I gained so much from this seminar. This seminar gave me not only a ton of information that I never knew I needed to know but it gave me confidence as well. I feel like anyone who teaches needs to take a seminar like this one, there is so much that we are not doing in the classroom, so much that I have never covered before that needs to be covered. At this point in my career I teach 6th and 7th grade and almost every session covered something that I teach, but we barely skim the top. I feel like I have been given tools where I can now dig deeper and incorporate more and more into my teaching of this curriculum. The one subject that we do not specifically cover is Korea, and i would really like to see this change and I know I am going to make the change next year by adding in things I learned from this seminar into my teaching. I feel like throughout the seminar I was given so many different materials that could be used as is or adapted for the grade level you teach. I honestly feel like that was one of the most important things. I have already used some things, but I know while I am planning next year there are definitely new material I am going to add. This seminar has changed the way I am going to teach about East Asia and I can not wait! I will jump at every opportunity I have to take another seminar like this in the future.

[Anonymous]

Overall, I gained a lot of historical context through my participation in this seminar. I have been lucky to have gone to China last summer, and I am very much looking forward to getting acquainted with Japan this summer and thanks to this course, I have a better sense of how and why both of these countries operate the way they do. Chinese, Korean, and Japanese costumes and thought is the product of thousands of years of history and historical developments, and I have a better sense of these by having taken this class. In thinking about the materials I can use in my class, I feel that given the grade levels that I teach, a lot of the information I gained is not directly applicable to my social science classes, but I feel that I gained a lot of material that will help me contextualize a lot of contemporary developments in East Asia. Very often, students ask the why behind many developments in contemporary history, and after having explore philosophy and family structures, I feel better prepared to explain to my students the why. As an art teacher, I was delighted to have been explored to a new aesthetic that I hope to incorporate in my art classes. Very often, art classes are dominated by western tradition, but given the demographic changes in Los Angeles, and the rising prominent of East Asian countries, I think its important for students to gain an appreciate from art in East Asia. I also really enjoyed the debate activity we did in our earlier session, and it is a structure I look forward to using in my classes.
edited by nramon on 6/23/2016

[Rob_Hugo@PortNW]

East Asia will be incorporated in my high school art courses. I teach Ceramics 1-2 and Drawing/Painting 1-2. Both art courses can easily relate to East Asia's art, as well as their various cultures. Learning the different arts in the East Asia cultures will bring an unfamiliar kind of artwork into my classroom. The majority of my students are Latinos and they are often interested solely in Latino art; but I believe introducing them to something new will enlighten them and maybe motivate them expand their appreciation of the diverse cultures that art can bring to them. Some students have expressed interest in Japanese art, but it will be a positive addition to my class curriculum to also include Korean and Chinese art.

It isn't only the actual East Asia artwork that I can incorporate in my teachings, but also addressing the cultures, traditions and values into my curriculum will give them a better understanding of how different lifestyles exist out there. Perhaps introducing to my students and discussing with them the different cultures and how they feel about these unfamiliar cultures will encourage them to explore their personal unknown feelings that they can express through art. I would especially like to include into my curriculum the topic of women and modern China. Also, using learnings such as the Korean poetry will be something different and new that my students can enjoy and look into- on top of many other topics introduced to me throughout the seminar.

I will definitely include the knowledge I've gained through this seminar. In addition I will also utilize artifacts, films, internet resources etc that will help provide the students with a better understanding of these new topics. I also plan to work with the social science teachers to create a cross curricular lesson plan that will allow students to extend their learning of East Asia cultures through their history courses. Students will not only learn these East Asia topics through visual, kinesthetic, read-write and audio learning but also will express their feelings and opinions on these cultures in a variety of styles through art.

[Anonymous]

I enjoyed participating in this seminar. I enrolled in this course because I had absolutely no knowledge of ANYTHING related to Asia. I know I'm able to connect with my students in various ways. One way that has stood out is connecting with students and families based on a shared understanding of culture. Recently there has been a demographics shift in my classroom with a growth in the amount of Asian students. I found it a bit more challenging to make a connection with Asian students and families. Now having some background I've been able to to have personal conversation with parents and grandparents. Having these types of conversations during community events allows us to build a stronger sense of community. I've noticed an increase in the amount of participation from these families. Also due to the nature of my lead teacher role I support the other 2nd grade teachers with their student discipline and interaction with families. After taking this course I've found myself giving my colleagues advice based on the knowledge I've acquired based on my participation in the forums, readings, and lectures. I've found myself explaining about how some situations might need additional consideration based on possible cultural differences. For example, having to explain the lack of eye contact can be a display of respect rather an inattention or lack of social skills.

On another note throughout this course I was having a difficult time specifically applying what I learned in this seminar into a second grade classroom. The unit I pulled together on geography is going to be used in all 2nd grade classrooms in my school. At our school we pride ourselves on every student in each classroom receiving the same instruction at the same time. All students are given an equal opportunity to prepare for the upcoming grade level. While lesson delivery and lesson scaffolding based on students need varies the content remains the same. I'm excited about sharing this unit with my colleagues during our 1st lesson planning meeting of the new year. I'm also going to take time of the summer to incorporate the Project GLAD method of teaching into the unit.

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