JAPN 320 S: Advanced Japanese Service Learning
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.
In JAPN320 S: I, along with my group members, participated in service learning by going to King Elementary School in Seaside, California, each week. Under the CPY program (Community Partnership for Youth), we created lesson plans for students in the CPY program revolving around Japanese language and culture. Each week we would create lessons plans designed to teach the students Japanese language such as numbers, greetings, and colors, as well various aspects of Japanese culture. We created games to test the childrens memory after each lesson as well as periodicly demonstrated Japanese culture through visual media. The lessons were also designed around specific service learning outcomes with the goal of teaching both my group and the students the importance of cultural respectfulness, raising awareness of social injustice, and providing community service and outreach. JAPN 320S taught me the importance of classroom management and how difficult it can be to create engaging and influential lessons as well as how rewarding it can be. The students became excited to learn each week about different parts of Japanese culture, which has encouraged me to further pursue a career in education.
Another aspect of Service Learning was to learn more about and become immersed in social justice both in an academic and practical level. Every week we were expected to do certain readings about social issues in the academic world that related to language acquisition, culture and education and give a response to the reading as well as holding class discussions to relay our opinions and convey what we felt we could do to relieve the situation. Our work while volunteering at our school was expected to reflect our understanding of social justice as well, as we tried to make it a point to instruct the students as well on social justice. For example, by giving the students the opportunity to perform extra curricular activities like Japanese class, we demonstrated how higher learning can be both educational and fun and improve their lives both academically and culturally. Service learning was built to promote more cultural awareness as well as give the students a chance to improve their grades that they not have had due to coming from impoverished areas that did not promote education as well as they should. Below are a couple of my responses to the readings for service learning.
readingreflection2.pdf | |
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reflection6.pdf | |
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reflection9.pdf | |
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Below is a link to my final presentation for the class which displays our overall work. Throughout the semester we worked on creating interesting lesson plans for the students that both taught them about Japanese language and culture as well as promoted social justice. The presentation outlines the different lesson plans that we created as well as how they related to our service learning outcomes and social justice.
japn_320s_final_presentation.pdf | |
File Size: | 2180 kb |
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