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2016 J-LEAP REPORTNOVEMBER, 2016: BREEZE ISSUE #109
A FREE MONTHLY E-NEWSLETTER FOR FRIENDS OF JAPAN & TEACHERS OF
JAPANESE

2016 J-LEAP REPORTBY SAKURAKO HIROIKE
Perry High School
Massillon, OH
Hello. I am Sakurako Hiroike.
I am currently teaching Japanese with my Lead
Teacher, Deana Kramer sensei at Perry HighSchool in Massillon, Ohio.
Massillon is in the north east part of Ohio, which is about the same latitude as Aomori in Japan.
Although it is not a big city, there is a lot of green landscape and scenery. The people are niceand friendly. Right now we are enjoying pretty autumn trees and leaves. What surprised memost about this city was the fact that I literally could not go anywhere without driving. There isreally no public transportation. Although at first I found it a little inconvenient, now I feel it ismore comfortable not having to use public transportation. All in all, I LOVE living here.
Perry High School is in a community between two small cities. There are four levels ofJapanese; 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, with a total of about 120 students. Kramer sensei uses
Japanese almost all of the time in class. The students are very nice and respectful, and I am
surprised at how enthusiastic and passionate they are toward learning Japanese. They always
give their best effort to what we give them, and as a language learner myself, I have beenlearning a lot from them. This is my first time to work in a real class room, and I feel so lucky to
be with an experienced teacher like Kramer sensei. I have been learning a lot from her everyday.

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Kramer sensei and I teach Japanese history and cultural events as well as language. This year,
we have been teaching Japanese history, in Japanese, to our third year students. Initially, wetaught history only using slides with visuals, but found it wasvery difficult for the students to understand. Kramer sensei
and I decided to change the way we were teaching. After
showing a brief overview of each era, we decided to create
short, fun stories which include important events andcharacteristics about each era. Some days students listen tothe stories. Other days the students work in small groups todraw pictures to illustrate the stories. This approach hasreally helped the students understand history better.
Before I started to teach here, I used to think teachers
always plan and teach in the same way. Through thisexperience, however, I learned that teachers have to beflexible and adjust to meet the students’ needs. We use a
lot of different strategies during each class period to help
them learn better.
Outside of the classroom, we have Japanese club which includes fun activities. We want
students to be interested in Japanese culture and language. In our last meeting, we held anomikoshi competition. After an officer of the club introduced the concepts of omikoshi as aportable Shinto shrine, students made their own omikoshi in groups. This week, we visited theintermediate school in our district and began a Japanese club for fifth and sixth grade students.
We introduced teruteru bouzu , listened to the song and made teru teru bouzu together. We
also did a chopsticks race using marshmallows. I am amazed how our officers and clubmembers prepare and work hard to plan the meetings. I was so impressed to see the highschool students working with the younger students. They taught the kids basic greetings andhow to write a few hiragana. With the younger children, the high school students looked evenmore mature than usual. The fifth and sixth grade students looked like they were having fun
doing these activities. Through these activities, we hope students will be more interested inJapanese cultures and be inspired to learn Japanese when they get to the high school.
Three months have passed since I came to this country and I am having the greatest time. I
would like to show my deepest appreciation to Kramer sensei, our students, my host family, myfriends, and all of the people who have been involved in this experience. I am sure thisexperience will be the treasure of my entire life, and I am looking forward to building stronger
connections with all of these people as I continue living and working here.

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Breeze #109

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Japanese Langauge Education Update 362016 J-LEAP Report: Akiko Inagaki

2016 J-LEAP Report: Sakurako Hiroike2016 Short-Term Teacher Training Program: Kristin Wingate

2016 Short-Term Teacher Training Program: Madeleine Graham

2016 Japanese Language Program for Specialists: Lin Li2016 Japanese Language Program for Specialists: Samuel Timinsky

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