After leaving Boston early Thursday morning, I awoke in my hotel on Saturday morning ready for my first day in Japan.
I am in Fukui which is a small quiet city.
My first sight was some animatronic dinosaur sculptures. They really moved and roared! They are in a park near the station because there have been many dinosaur bones, fossils, and footprints found in Fukui and the longest productive excavation project in Japan is here in Fukui. There is a dinosaur museum but I didn't have time to see that.
I then followed the music and found that the whole town had come for what looked like a melon festival. The melons are ripe at this time of year and everyone had come to enjoy them. The line for free samples went all around the square. The fresh melon, melon drinks, melon ice cream, and melon pastries looked delicious. Inside a shop near the square I got to taste watermelon, both pink and white. It was very refreshing.
Later in the morning, I met a professor from Fukui University who is originally from the Philippines, a member of the Ministry of Education in Malawi, and a Japanese/English translator from Nagoya, Japan. All together we took the train to the University for the beginning of the teachers' conference.
After they gave me my lunch box of Onigiri (rice triangles wrapped in seaweed with salmon and sour plum), vegetables and a juice box of green tea, we began the conference. I was able to wear a hearing device so that I could hear the translator's voice telling me what was being said in English while people spoke Japanese. I'm sure many of the Lawrence students wish for that when they arrive. That is why they are so happy to have Yuki and Mr. Nagano in their classrooms.
I listened to a few groups of students give presentations about the projects they have been doing at school. One group of 7th and 8th grade students had been researching different professions and how they have changed over the years. I learned that here in Fukui the coffee shops are not doing very well now that more people have access to the internet in different places.
A few groups of 5th grade students presented about planning a trip to Kanazawa. They planned their whole trip there from the bus times to the museum tickets and then actually got the chance to go! While there, they interviewed local people and tourists about what they knew about Fukui. They were comparing and contrasting the tourist sites of Kanazawa with what is available in Fukui and planning for how they can attract more tourists to Fukui.
The presenters did a great job showing their work to teachers from all over the country and the world. You can see that they all wore their school uniforms, even on a Saturday!
For the rest of the conference today, I listened to educators talking about inquiry learning and how to support teachers and students in fostering inquiry learning in the classroom. Many of the themes and goals seemed very familiar to ways that we teach at Lawrence school. Besides Malawi and Japan, I learned about teaching in Bhutan, Myanmar, and Cambodia. There is certainly more that unites us, as teachers, than divides us.
