Final Reflective Essay- Bacon

[Rob_Hugo@PortNW]

This past semester has truly been an enjoyable and enriching experience. I’ve gained so much more from this class, both knowledge of content and how to be a better teacher, than I ever imagined I could. We have had the privilege of having Professor Dube, Professor Yamashita, and Professor Jung-Kim all share their expertise in their respective subjects. While I thoroughly enjoyed all the information I learned about this semester, it is only natural that I found the more MODERN history of each East Asian nation most valuable to my MODERN World History class. It is form these topics that we can still see some of the immediate effects even today. For Korea, I liked learning about “Korea Since 1945” – everything from the Korean War (I’ll always remember Professor Jung-Kim’s statement that it wasn’t over yet) to the Era of Globalization, and, most especially, the lecture on “What’s Happening in North Korea Today?” I have a large population of Korean-American students at my school and at times, I often feel like I’m doing them a disservice not having known as much about their country than what’s beyond the required material in the textbook. I now have the confidence to venture into further discussions to address the questions they so often have about the state of the countries today. As for Japan, I will certainly share the stories I’ve learned about Commodore Perry’s visit, as it is along allotted a mere 3-sentence paragraph in our book). I will share what I learned about 20th century Japan, particularly WWII era and beyond, focusing on their geopolitical issues and their relations with the U.S. (this can be done in both a U.S. and World History class). Finally, I’ve learned a great deal more information about Modern China that I will certainly use to supplement my lessons. I appreciate the resources we’ve received (PPTs, textbooks, etc). so much so that I utilized sections of the textbook in my lessons for this seminar. These all make great supplementary materials to California State Standard 10.9.4 about the International Developments in a post-war world (i.e. Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, and Tainanmen Square Uprising (there WAS more than one!).
Beyond the historical content, I look forward to using the material I learned to talk about other issues such as stereotypes. People, especially teenagers, tend to buy into stereotypes or make (sometimes insulting) generalizations about a particular group of people because they do not know any better. One thing that sticks out in my mind was when Professor Jung-Kim showed us pictures and described how Korea women were not historically quiet or submissive. That, along with Qin’s character in Last Train Home, break the traditional stereotypes of Asians (women, in particular), being docile, submissive individuals. I am also grateful for all the notes and movie suggestions we received during this course. I plan on typing out my notes for future use and checking out several movies from the lengthy list we received. Finally, one of best aspects of the class was the fact that the professors were able to share many “inside”(not found in textbooks) and personal stories from their education and experiences. As a young teacher, I can only hope to gain similar experiences through my own learning and traveling and have the opportunity to share them with my students [font=Wingdings]J[/font]

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