Editors: Reporters are welcome to attend the teacher workshops on China, April 11, and Japan, April 24. The China workshop will be at the Regal Harvest House and the Japan workshop meets at the Marriott, both in Boulder. For more information call Monteith Mitchell, (303) 492-5526.
The department of East Asian languages and civilizations at the University of Colorado at Boulder recently received two grants totaling $2.3 million from the Freeman Foundation. The grants will provide funding for a national outreach program to encourage teaching and learning about Asia in K-12 education.
The three-year grants fund three specific initiatives: a China studies program, a Japan studies program and the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia, all of which are now underway.
"The knowledge and skills to work and negotiate with Asian countries is fundamental to 21st century citizenship. More than half the world's people live in Asia. Economically, the United States and Asian nations are integrally tied, and Asian security issues are of global significance," said Lynn Parisi, director of the grant.
"Cultural ties are equally as important, with a significant U.S. population of Asian origin and a global human heritage indebted to the arts, philosophies, religions and literatures of Asia."
The overarching goal of the Program for Teaching East Asia is to address the need for better education about Asia and U.S.-Asia relations by enhancing and expanding teaching about East Asia at the elementary and secondary school levels. Specific activities for teachers include curriculum consultation, instructional materials development and professional development programs including workshops, seminars, summer institutes and study-tours. An underlying mission in all TEA programming is to bring current research and scholarship on Asia to K-12 teachers and elementary and secondary students.
Project staff includes Lynn Parisi, director; Janet Hoaglund, Japan project coordinator; Karla Loveall, China project coordinator; Zhang Huicong and Hong Yue, graduate assistants. Faculty from the department of East Asian languages and civilizations, and history, geography and religious studies departments, are central to the programming.
Major components of the program include the following:
Teaching East Asia: China offers workshops on Chinese history and culture for K-12 teachers in Colorado and the West, as well as summer institutes and study-tours for teachers. A workshop on "Global Currents in Chinese History" is being offered to Colorado teachers on April 11, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Regal Harvest House in Boulder. The registration deadline is April 4. The program has also just selected 18 teachers from around the country, including four Colorado teachers, to participate in a 21-day study tour of China in July. The tour will focus on "China's Geographic Issues and Challenges" and include study at China's controversial Three Gorges Dam.
Teaching East Asia: Japan offers workshops on Japan to K-12 teachers and a summer institute for high school teachers on "Japanese History through the Humanities." The first teacher workshop in this series, "Enduring Issues in U.S.-Japan Relations: Teaching about Hiroshima and the Japanese American Internment," will be held on April 24 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Boulder Marriott. There are a few spaces left and the registration deadline for the workshop is April 18. The summer institute this year is " Starting Over: Japan's Occupation Years, 1945-52." The program is in the middle of a national recruitment and will select 20 high school teachers to participate in the institute that will feature CU faculty and specialists from around the country.
"It's Elementary" is an outreach project that brings CU undergraduates majoring in Japanese into Boulder Valley School District classrooms as service interns. The program has selected six students for this service project. They receive training in teaching methodology and are placed in first-grade classrooms during the spring semester where they assist teachers and offer lessons in Japanese language and culture to the first graders during the district's required first grade study of Japan. This year the interns will make multiple visits to approximately 25 classrooms and work with approximately 600 first graders.
The pilot program provides CU students with an authentic experience applying their own study of Japan, while also offering them the opportunity to provide service to the community and explore teaching as a career option. For first graders, the program offers access to a rich array of experiences and artifacts about Japan.
Teaching East Asia Teacher Resource Center. The Program for Teaching East Asia also provides a curriculum library of more than 6,000 print and audio-visual materials on Asia to teachers in Colorado. As part of that service, staff and faculty are available to assist teachers and schools in selecting materials and enriching their curriculum units on Asia.
All programs are conducted by faculty and staff with expertise in K-12 education and Asian studies. All programs are designed to address state and national standards of instruction for K-12 education. More than 300 teachers, and through them 30,000 elementary and secondary grade students, are expected to benefit from the workshops and summer programs offered by the Program for Teaching East Asia each year.
The National Consortium for Teaching about Asia (NCTA). CU-Boulder is collaborating with five national institutions -- the University of Washington's East Asia Center, the East Asia Center at Indiana University, the East Asia Institute at Columbia University and the Five College Center for East Asian Studies -- on a $6.8 million grant, to be divided among the institutions over three years. Through NCTA, the institutions work together to support 25-30 high school teacher seminars annually on Asian history, geography and culture.
Each year 500 teachers who complete the seminars are eligible to enroll in study tours to China, Japan and India. This year, the Program for Teaching East Asia at CU is coordinating teacher seminars in Denver, Salt Lake City, Lincoln and Omaha, Neb., and Ames, Iowa. Currently 107 teachers are enrolled in these seminars, which run from February through May.
For more information or to register for workshops, call Lynn Parisi, director of the Program for Teaching East Asia, department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, at (303) 735-5122, send faxes to (303) 735-5126 or e-mail lynn.parisi@colorado.edu.