2016 IIME REPORTCountry/Region [USA]School[John Adams Middle School] Teacher [Jen Joyce ] Grade (8)Member (28)
JP school [Hyogo Prefectural Ashiya International Secondary School 3-A]Teacher[ Oda Syohei ]# Subjects, Activities and Times of the lessons
Subject
Conception of the lesson

Hours

About ourdifferent schools
and cultures

We spent many lessons sharing about our schools and different cultures
through Videos written, created, and shared by students. Videos included
information about our foods, campuses, social interests, holidays, traditions,sports, and individuality.

6ResearchingImmigration andOrigins

Students interviewed family members to discover what was known about family
origins. Some found a deep and intricate web of information, while others
found nothing depending upon family background. We shared information wechose to with each other and each chose an image to represent ourbackground that could potentially be included in the mural. We also took a field
trip to the Japanese Heritage Museum in downtown Los Angeles where we tooka tour, had a lesson in origami, taiko drumming, and enjoyed a ramen lunch.

13Art

Students conceptualized what our side of the mural should look like in responseto sketches we saw as the Japanese school developed their plan. We
eventually painted, celebrated on display, and sent it back to Japan along withindividualized greeting cards what we created..

12# Theme and Message of the mural
Theme

Honoring our past and embracing our future

Message

Many of us come from many different countries and cultures, but we are all human. We
don’t need to be afraid of our differences, but embrace them, learn about one another,respect our differences, and celebrate our commonalities.

United thoughts toshare with the world

# Effects and the Problems
Effects your students have gainedStudents learned a lot about themselves and their own cultural
heritages. They also learned a lot about the culture of Japan,
and the immigration experience for people coming to theunited states. In the process, we learned and discovered thedifferences between our countries in discussing backgrounds,
immigration, and in general, many of the students could relate
to one another and Japan through discussing and finding
similarities. In general, our students really enjoyed the school
we were paired with, and related to the students of theJapanese middle school in sharing many interests!

Points for further improvement
Students noted what we often could understand amain idea, sometimes the translation was a little
difficult to understand. From my perspective, I
really preferred former forum formats because wecould get notification of posts more simply that themoodle format.

# How has your impression toward your partner’s country/region and the world changed?
Changes in the students
Changes in the teachers
We learned a lot about the differences and I am continuously learning new and interesting things
similarities between us and Japan. We live in a very about Japanese culture through participating in thediverse and culturally rich part of the world, even mural exchange over the years. This year it waswith some students at our school originally from interesting to learn about the differences between us
Japan, so there were not a lot of huge surprises for in regards to immigration, and more about theus. However, we really enjoyed the experience of experience of Japanese Americans through ourcollaborating together!
museum experience.

# Flow of the Activity
ContentMonthMEET
Selfintroduction

SHARE
Research onthe theme

UNITE
United message/

Mural design

What you did
Communicated via the forum
through videos and posts

Your students attitude/reflection
It was fun getting to meet students inanother country who are the same age.
They felt the students were fun!

Oct.

Students researched andsharedbackgroundinformation with each other,
as well as continuing to learn
about Japanese culture.

Nov.

As we learned about theJapanese culture, and made plans
to visit the Japanese Heritage
Museum in Los Angles, students
became interested in the conceptof our common experiences as
our families have come toAmerica, or even moved within
America. They wondered whatthat experience was like forstudents at our partner school
because it was “international”.
We originally decided on theimmigration experience as atheme, but found throughresearch that the topic is moretaboo to speak about in Japan.
This was a valuable experience.
Ultimately we decided to focus
on our similarities and differenceswith more focus on tolerance andunderstanding.

They were very interested to learn about
their own backgrounds, as well as thesimilarities and differences between
each other, as well as our partner school
students.
Learning about the fact that Japan has
taboos about discussing family origins
was new to me. It made me sad to learn
that there are some of the same
prejudices in a county that is so much
more homogeneous than the UnitedStates. It gave me more a perspectiveon the similarities between our countries
because despite our best efforts, there
are still a lot of inequities and prejudicesprevalent in the United States.

August andSept.

Subject
English/SocialStudies

SocialStudies

SocialStudies

CREATE
Mural painting

APPRECIATE
Reflection/Appreciation

Jan.

Jan.

Students
paintedin
response to the Japanese
student’s design. We madestrategic choices that werebased on plans, but alteredslightly as we encounteredchallenges. This was very
valuable in seeing that art isoften problem solving and awork in progress.
Overall, students were very
proud of the job they did.
Other students on campus
werevery
impressed,interested, and motivated tolearn more about our partner
school and Japan. Many
students asked how they
could potentially participate
in future years.

As the art teacher, this is always thebest part of the exchange for me. I love
to see the different groups of students
over the years find their way through theprocess of this project.

Praise and appreciation are always nice,and seeing everyone enjoy the mural somuch is pleasing also!

ArtArt/SocialStudies# Aim of the Lessons and Result
Aim: Rank A to C in order you put emphasis on (A: very much/ B: much / C: not so much)
Result: Rank 5 to 1 (5: very effective / 4: effective / 3: so- so / 2: not so effective / 1: not effective at all)

Expected Effect
Understanding our owncultures
Understanding theother’s cultures
Communication ability
in the class/with partners

IT skills

Creating friendshipin the class/with partners

Collaborationin the class/with partners

Attitude in learning
Expression ability
in words, in pictures

AimResultA

5A

5A

4

B

5A

5A

5

B

5A

4A

3

Appreciation ability
Appreciate the mural and thewhole collaborative learning

How your students have reached it
Research, interviewing, writing, and creating artwork.
Research, videos received on the forum, visiting our local
Japanese Heritage Museum and Little Tokyo.
Class discussion through meetings, cooperatively responding toposts, and working in smaller groups.
Students created response videos, edited, and posted them tothe forum. They also used the internet for a portion ofresearch.
This was a big bonding experience for both our classroom, andthe classes feelings towards our partner school. The processcreated a better understanding of how despite differences, manyof us share very similar experiences.
Students struggled more in our class working through theprocess of collaborating through effective communication,strength of personalities, and varying levels of dedication tosticking to a time table. In relation to collaboration with ourpartner, we were able stay on schedule, and agree to terms verysmoothly.
The nature of the project being so personal intrinsicallymotivated students.
Our communication was very often, and varied in format. There
were times we needed to clarify for understanding, but that ispart of the learning and understanding process.
We always feel very rushed to create our half of the mural, get it
sent back on time, while still allowing adequate time for us tokeep the mural on display for appreciation. This year we had asickness come to our school that affected so many students, welost a lot of time and felt extra pressure to meet the deadline.