Insight into Japan 4 educators from Wisconsin find surprises

Thanks, News & Views – you were responsible for sending me to Japan for three weeks in November with 200 other American teachers.

Many issues ago, News & Views ran a tiny article about the Fulbright Memorial Fund. The article solicited applicants for the program, which differs from more traditional Fulbright programs in two important ways: it has a much shorter duration, and the government of Japan sponsors and fully funds the program.

The FMF sends American teachers and administrators to Japan three times a year (July, October, and November), for three weeks at a time, 200 teachers per group. FMF just completed the second year of a planned five-year effort. In 1998, more than 2,700 educators went through a thorough application process. I was one of the 600 selected. Three other WEAC members also were selected: Anita Zipperer of Green Bay, Amy Gruszewski of Milwaukee, and Darlene Machtan of Rhinelander.

Here are some reasons you should think about applying for this program:

1. It is a first-class educational experience. You spend entire days in Japanese schools, seeing first-hand how they approach learning. Here are some reasons you should think about applying for this program: 1. It is a first-class educational experience. You spend entire days in Japanese schools, seeing first-hand how they approach learning. You meet key members of their educational structures – teachers, administrators, school board members, students and parents. You may wonder, as I did, which issues assume great importance to them (Saturday schooling and student bullying, to name two).
2. It is a first-class professional experience. You will learn as much from the other American educators on the tour as you will from the Japanese. Whenever I heard the teacher from New Jersey describing his schools’ security apparatus (drug-sniffing dogs, metal detectors, etc.) or the teacher from Long Island comparing elite Eastern prep schools to juku (cram schools), my perception of what makes up American schools broadened considerably.
3. It is a first-class cultural experience. Although we stayed mostly in excellent hotels, we each did a short home stay with a family. I stayed with a retired professor and his wife in a three-house compound in Sakai City, a large suburb of Osaka. The traditional Japanese dinner they shared with me in their specially equipped dining area offered me a window into a world quite different from mine. In addition, my group visited the City Hall and museum, an incense factory, a knife factory, a treatment plant, a fish market, numerous shrines and temples, and we experienced Kabuki Theater. We rode the Bullet Train and ordinary subways, ate copious quantities of rice and fish, and struggled with a language very different from our own.

It is rare for teachers to be treated as royalty and applauded just for showing up at school (at least it is at my school). You can imagine what an indelible impression such events had on us.

If you would like to attend a PowerPoint presentation of my experience, I will be presenting at the SWEIO Convention (Southern Wisconsin Educational Inservice Organization) on February 26 at Monona Terrace in Madison. Contact SWEIO Executive Secretary, Jeri Kortkamp, for details at 608 837-2545, ext. 2137.

If the FMF sounds interesting to you, contact the Fulbright Memorial Fund for an application at 1-888-JapanFMF or email fmf@iie.org. The Web site address is www.iie.org/pgms/fmf. The deadline for the 1999 groups has passed, but you can start preparing now to submit your application by January, 2000.

Posted February 5, 1999