Friday, November 21, 2008 East Central Illinois

Mansfield teacher to share experiences in Asia with students

By Margo L. Dill
Wednesday, August 13, 2008 1:16 PM CDT

MANSFIELD – Meghan James, sixth-grade teacher at Mansfield Elementary, experienced a trip of a lifetime to Asia this summer and plans to share it all with her students this fall.

Janes and 23 other educators traveled to South Korea and Japan for three weeks. They toured temples and museums, witnessed government protests, observed in Korean and Japanese schools, rode crowded subways and even tasted a McDonald's Oreo McFlurry – Japanese style.

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James went to East Asia as part of a study tour through the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia (www.nctasia.org), which is supported by the Freeman Foundation. She applied and was selected for the trip after she took a course in 2006 on teaching East Asian culture in public schools through a partnership of two programs at Indiana University and the University of Illinois.

For the class and the study tour, James created curriculum projects. These projects blended her experiences with East Asian cultures and her sixth-grade curriculum to teach her students that the world is a large place with many opportunities waiting for them.

"A lot of my kids haven't traveled out of state," James said. "For me to be able to stand up in front of them and say, 'I went there, and I came back; and I am a real person. Here's a picture of me in front of the picture of something that's in your textbook, too.' I think that's the most important thing I bring back to my kids."

One project her reading class did last year was to make Japanese wood block prints and write haiku to go with them.

Her upcoming project for this school year focuses more on public speaking and language in different cultures.

She hopes to "discuss cultural differences between what body language means in one culture versus body language in another – personal space issues, the way you hold yourself, whether or not you make eye contact, hand gestures."

She said a main focus of the class and the study tour was that people are people, even though our cultures and languages are different.

She hopes to convey this message to her sixth-graders this year – "basically human beings love their families, and they have the same needs. They have the same goals and desires," James said. "They just may go at it differently."

Since James was overseas in June, Principal John Weaver spoke on James' behalf at the June Blue Ridge school board meeting and asked the board to reimburse James her $500 fee for the trip. Board members voted unanimously to reimburse her because they agreed her trip will greatly benefit the students, especially since she teaches social studies to all sixth-graders.

James is looking into future travel opportunities with programs such as the Fulbright Memorial Fund. "The more experiences I have, the better I am going to be for my kids," she said.

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