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2018 J-LEAP REPORTFEBRUARY, 2019: BREEZE ISSUE #136
A FREE MONTHLY E-NEWSLETTER FOR FRIENDS OF JAPAN & TEACHERS OF
JAPANESE2018 J-LEAP REPORTBY YU HIRAOKA
Lincoln Southwest High School
Lincoln, NE
Hello from Nebraska! My name is Yu Hiraoka.
I have been working in Lincoln Southwest
High School since last summer. The
breathtaking beauty of the sunset that I see on
the way back from grocery shopping makes me
feel very lucky to be here. Lincoln has become
one of my hometowns.
When people say “Nebraska,” we might thinkof the vast land with a lot of corn fields, andthe cruel weather, hot summers and cold
winters. Or some might look up the location on
the map first, which I did when I was informedof my job assignment! What I appreciate themost here after six months, are the people. I
feel grateful that I can live and work in such abeautiful place with the nicest people.
Lincoln is the capital and the second-most populous city in Nebraska, with about 285,000people. It is located on the Great Plains. (The Great Plains…I learned the word in geographyclass a long time ago! It is amazing to think about now that I live here!) Lincoln has 6 publichigh schools and our high school is one of the biggest among them, with nearly 2000 students.
It is the only one that offers a Japanese language program. Here, I am assisting the funny,creative, and energetic Lead Teacher (LT), Tammy Cunningham in her Japanese classes.
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Although I came as an Assistant Teacher (AT), she treats me as a co-teacher and she gives me
equal opportunity to teach in the class, which I am very thankful for! It is very fun to plan, do
the lessons, and interact with the students together with her.
One of the characteristics of our high school is that we operate on a 4x4 block schedulingsystem, which means there are four 90-minute classes a day - every day. The advantage is that
we can teach many more things in a day, and our students can finish two levels of Japanese
courses in a year. As a result, the students’ options for classes during each term are limited.
For example, the freshmen taking band, who finished Japanese 1 during the last semester,
couldn’t take Japanese 2 successively due to band being offered at the same time as ourJapanese class. They were some of our most diligent, highly motivated students. That was ashame. They have to wait until next January in 2020 to continue to Japanese 2. They willprobably need to do a lot of review in order to recall what they have learned after a longinterval. What’s more, I can’t see them finish through Japanese 4 while I am here!
Although our high school has provided Japanese courses
since it opened in 2002, many people in Lincoln don’t know
about it. Even the counselor in the nearest junior highschool I met didn’t know, who advises the 8th gradestudents which classes to take in high school! That isshocking! One of the goals of Ms. Cunningham and I is tomake the Japanese program known widely and gain more
students in each class. For that, we visited the nearest
junior high school two times in January. Once with ourJapanese 4 students for a multicultural day and the othertime with Japanese club members after school. Japanese 4students taught a short Japanese lesson to junior highschool students and Japanese club members did a cultural
event with Japanese New Year ’s games. We also finally hada chance to introduce mochi (rice cake) tasting.
As for our daily lessons, we have been trying to incorporate fun activities as much as possible.
For example, in Japanese 1, after learning how to say “Please lend me ~” in Japanese, weintroduced karimono kyoso, which is similar to a scavenger hunt here, and we did it in theclass. In Japanese 3, after learning the different ways to say “to wear”, students wrote thenarrations for their fashion show.
Other than the classroom activities, we assisted with Japanese club events such as a pumpkin
painting contest in October, and cookie decorating in December. In September, we also
participated in the local Chinese harvest moon festival with the students who volunteered, andwe did kingyo sukui, catching a gold fish with a thin paper net, which is often seen inJapanese summer festivals. Ms. Cunningham has done this with her students for many years.
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What an energetic teacher she is! She does
everything she can to make the students
experience Japanese culture. There is so muchto learn from her.
Thanks to all the people I met, my time here
even out of school has been very fulfilling;
doing a “nabe party” (cooking pot) withJapanese mothers, learning how to cook
Brazilian dish, Feijoada, black bean stew, froma Brazilian friend, and doing weekly language
exchange with a Korean friend. In thebeginning of January, she invited me to have soup with Korean rice cakes together with herfamily, which is a Korean tradition for the New Year ’s to become one year older! I am glad that
I have got the chance to learn about other cultures too!
2019 has begun with new things for me. Ms. Cunningham took me to a country dance and I
learned all the different dances, cha-cha, waltz, and line dances with live music. I started
living in a new place with a wonderful roommate, leaving my host family, who helped me tostart my new life here since the beginning.
Additionally, some good news for Lincoln, and more specifically for the Japanese class at
Southwest High School, is the introduction of Round One, a Japanese game center at the localmall. It must be me who is excited the most but I am looking forward to going there withCunningham-sensei and our students for karaoke! We have more things to do now! Please comeand visit us! Now is the perfect time to experience a winter in Nebraska! Be sure to bring asleigh and an ice scraper!

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