On November 7th early in the morning, my peers and I departed Waseda International Student House for Nakano Junior high school to conduct classes regarding different countries from around the world. This year, we talked about 6 unique countries/region, which were the US, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. Our objective was to interact with the middle school students through lessons, educating them about the different cultures and traditions of the areas that we originate from and expanding their understanding of the world. We did this by creating a presentation that lasted approximately 30-45 minutes.
Prior to this event, my peers and I had spent close to a month preparing, making presentations and visuals, to accompany our discussions. The majority of us worked in pairs but some of us had to work individually which was a struggle, as there were fewer hands available. Even though all of us faced many difficulties, we persevered, and alongside our supervisor, we prepared ourselves to the fullest by conducting rehearsals and feedback sessions to make sure that the middle schoolers would enjoy the session. Nevertheless, even with the amount of preparation, many of us were extremely nervous. After all, none of us have met any of the students, and many of us had little to no experience teaching so we were unsure how things would unfold.
Thus, even when the day came, we were having confused thoughts and we did not know how to react. On one hand, it was exciting to be in a teaching position for once educating individuals instead of the ones being educated, but on the contrary, we were venturing into the unknown which scared us a little. However, because of the warm reception that the students, teachers, and school principal, all these emotions we had disappeared and we were able to comfortably proceed with our presentations and introduce our homeland to students. To our surprise, the students had researched our countries/region beforehand and had a basic understanding which made the process considerably easier. Additionally, they were very cooperative and answered all our questions with enthusiasm and participated in the quizzes that we organized with tons of energy. Consequently, our enjoyment drastically increased and we were able to comfortably introduce where we are from to the middle school students.
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- United States of America
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- Thailand
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- Taiwan
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- South Korea
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- South Korea
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- Singapore/Malaysia
Through the interactions we had, my peers and I were able to exchange cultures and traditions with the middle school students and learn new things about one another. We were able to take part in a unique and valuable experience that was quite exciting and interesting, and we are all thankful to the many individuals who helped organize this event and made all of this possible. We had a blast and we hope the students of Nakano Junior high school did as well!
(T.Y.)
