It's been a whirlwind and tomorrow I'm heading home. Kumano sensei moved some meetings around and instead of meeting with representatives from the Ministry of Education tomorrow, I met with them today, on top of teaching science education methods classes at Shizuoka University. We then finished the day participating in meetings with educational researchers from other universities and representatives from the Center of Educational Research and Testing.
Every day for the past week I learned what it means to be a Japanese "salaryman", these are the people who work for businesses or in educational institutions where they work as many hours in the day as possible since that are earning a salary instead of hourly wage. For the past six days I've been picked up at the hotel between 7:00-7:30 am, driven to where I would teach, lecture or participate in meetings and return back to my hotel sometime around 8:00-9:00 pm. Each meal during the day was another important meeting with school administrators, faculty members or university researchers, all of whom were very interested in asking me questions that were way beyond my limited Japanese to explain, but I did my best all while trying to eat one unrecognizable marine creature after another.
I learned that professor Kumano, and several other faculty at Shizuoka University, are working to build an international coalition of STEM Centers from places such at the University of Minnesota, Jakarta University in Indonesia, Shizuoka University and Hiroshima University, plus STEM Centers in South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the UK & Germany. What I found most fascinating was how the faculty researchers were most interested in learning more about American student's attitudes and perceptions of STEM education and if it affected student motivation towards learning, more than academic performance on standardized exams! The research we have been doing for the past six years on students perceptions of STEM is now on the forefront international education!
One of the biggest challenges I faced today was the 90 minute interview session with sensei Kuamno's PhD students and trying to communicate with Indonesian students who had both limited English and Japanese and I had no Indonesian. We got along well with combinations of English and Japanese and we laughed as our group worked through Google translator until our thumbs were numb from typing! Sensei Kumano wanted to teach the "story in the snow" lesson again with his undergraduate students at Shizuoka University. This time Kumano Sensei felt more confident in team teaching with me since he had observed me teach the lesson yesterday. It was blast to go back and forth and he and I would jump back and forth between English and Japanese, sometimes I would ask questions in Japanese and he would speak in English and the students would look shocked and laugh and everyone had fun and learned a lot too!
Tomorrow a PhD student will escort me back to the airport and I will return to Minnesota, arriving 4 hours before I left Tokyo, and I will begin building bridges between Owatonna MN & Shizuoka Japan through STEM education. Kumano sensei told me this evening as he drove me back to my hotel that he believes that I should be writing down all my ideas about STEM education to publish them and when I'm published he will share my writings everywhere people will listen to him. No pressure, but Kumano was the keynote speaker two weeks ago at the Southeast Asian International Conference on Science Education. He told me that he believes that the schools in Owatonna MN are some of the best in the United States and that each time he introduced me he would explain to the audience that he had visited our schools and seen for himself the best of all American schools; I couldn't agree more!
Every day for the past week I learned what it means to be a Japanese "salaryman", these are the people who work for businesses or in educational institutions where they work as many hours in the day as possible since that are earning a salary instead of hourly wage. For the past six days I've been picked up at the hotel between 7:00-7:30 am, driven to where I would teach, lecture or participate in meetings and return back to my hotel sometime around 8:00-9:00 pm. Each meal during the day was another important meeting with school administrators, faculty members or university researchers, all of whom were very interested in asking me questions that were way beyond my limited Japanese to explain, but I did my best all while trying to eat one unrecognizable marine creature after another.
I learned that professor Kumano, and several other faculty at Shizuoka University, are working to build an international coalition of STEM Centers from places such at the University of Minnesota, Jakarta University in Indonesia, Shizuoka University and Hiroshima University, plus STEM Centers in South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the UK & Germany. What I found most fascinating was how the faculty researchers were most interested in learning more about American student's attitudes and perceptions of STEM education and if it affected student motivation towards learning, more than academic performance on standardized exams! The research we have been doing for the past six years on students perceptions of STEM is now on the forefront international education!
One of the biggest challenges I faced today was the 90 minute interview session with sensei Kuamno's PhD students and trying to communicate with Indonesian students who had both limited English and Japanese and I had no Indonesian. We got along well with combinations of English and Japanese and we laughed as our group worked through Google translator until our thumbs were numb from typing! Sensei Kumano wanted to teach the "story in the snow" lesson again with his undergraduate students at Shizuoka University. This time Kumano Sensei felt more confident in team teaching with me since he had observed me teach the lesson yesterday. It was blast to go back and forth and he and I would jump back and forth between English and Japanese, sometimes I would ask questions in Japanese and he would speak in English and the students would look shocked and laugh and everyone had fun and learned a lot too!
Tomorrow a PhD student will escort me back to the airport and I will return to Minnesota, arriving 4 hours before I left Tokyo, and I will begin building bridges between Owatonna MN & Shizuoka Japan through STEM education. Kumano sensei told me this evening as he drove me back to my hotel that he believes that I should be writing down all my ideas about STEM education to publish them and when I'm published he will share my writings everywhere people will listen to him. No pressure, but Kumano was the keynote speaker two weeks ago at the Southeast Asian International Conference on Science Education. He told me that he believes that the schools in Owatonna MN are some of the best in the United States and that each time he introduced me he would explain to the audience that he had visited our schools and seen for himself the best of all American schools; I couldn't agree more!