JAPN320S: ADVANCED JAPANESE
SERVICE LEARNING
Course Description: This course gives students opportunity to deepen their knowledge of Japanese language and culture through their community service and to develop communication skills through discussions, reflection essays and presentations. Taught in Japanese.
No MLO: University Wide Required Course
However, this course is based on Service Learning Outcomes (SLO) 1-4:
1. Self and Social Awareness
2. Service and Social Responsibility
3. Community & Social Justice
4. Multicultural Community Building/Civic Engagement
No MLO: University Wide Required Course
However, this course is based on Service Learning Outcomes (SLO) 1-4:
1. Self and Social Awareness
2. Service and Social Responsibility
3. Community & Social Justice
4. Multicultural Community Building/Civic Engagement
Reflective Narrative:
JAPN320s has wholeheartedly contributed to my fulfillment of the outcomes of this class. In this case, this does not fulfill an MLO but rather fulfills the Service Learning Outcomes (SLO) 1 through 4.
In this course, groups of 4 students went to various elementary schools in the area and taught weekly lessons of Japanese culture. My group in particular taught things such as how to hold chopsticks, a Japanese new years card, simple Japanese words and even how to fold a samurai hat. Aside from our weekly lessons at the school, we had site reflections where we would reflect upon our experience of the lesson that we just had. Our classroom time centered around reading articles and discussions on how they connected to the SLO's. In my opinion, our weekly readings and activities contributed the most to my fulfillment of the outcomes.
One of our first activities was to do the Indentity Wheel. This activity directly correlated to SLO 1, Self and Social Awareness because we had to sit down and critically think about things like which identities we thought about most often, least often, and more identities we want to learn about. I had never really thought about where my identity belonged so doing that activity was challenging and took me a while. But at the end of it I was able to see where I found my identity on that wheel. The other work that contributed to my development of learning the outcomes were my reading reflections. Each week we had to read articles and different students would present on them. We would then write a reflection about what we thought about the article while reflecting upon our service experience thus far, our experiences in the past and examples from the text when talking about how we could or could not relate to it. For example, we read an article that was called "The five C's: World Readiness Standards". It discussed communcation, cultures, connections, comparisons and communities. I reflected back on the 5 C's when doing site reflections because I was able to experience interpersonal and interpretive communication through going to our site every week and doing the lessons for the kids.
The biggest knowledge I have gained from this course is to be patient and put care into teaching. It can be stressful to teach kids something new when they just want to go and play outside, but each week the kids became more and more interested in the Japanese lessons and wanted to learn more. This course has taught me to be very patient as well. The area that I want to develop further is my ability to come up with ideas for the lesson plan. It was very difficult for me to come up with ideas about what to teach. The first week where we had to come up with lesson ideas was the biggest challenge for me. So my goal is to improve my abilitiy to come up with lesson plan ideas.
This course was very similar to my lower division service learning course, especially because I volunteered at the same school for both courses. I was able to see the students grow 2 years into more adventurous and curious students, and having weekly lessons was just like when I was in Japan and taught at an English cafe. I think this course made me very interested in working with kids, especially because I worked at a pre-school in Japan and that also made me want to work with kids in the future.
JAPN320s has wholeheartedly contributed to my fulfillment of the outcomes of this class. In this case, this does not fulfill an MLO but rather fulfills the Service Learning Outcomes (SLO) 1 through 4.
In this course, groups of 4 students went to various elementary schools in the area and taught weekly lessons of Japanese culture. My group in particular taught things such as how to hold chopsticks, a Japanese new years card, simple Japanese words and even how to fold a samurai hat. Aside from our weekly lessons at the school, we had site reflections where we would reflect upon our experience of the lesson that we just had. Our classroom time centered around reading articles and discussions on how they connected to the SLO's. In my opinion, our weekly readings and activities contributed the most to my fulfillment of the outcomes.
One of our first activities was to do the Indentity Wheel. This activity directly correlated to SLO 1, Self and Social Awareness because we had to sit down and critically think about things like which identities we thought about most often, least often, and more identities we want to learn about. I had never really thought about where my identity belonged so doing that activity was challenging and took me a while. But at the end of it I was able to see where I found my identity on that wheel. The other work that contributed to my development of learning the outcomes were my reading reflections. Each week we had to read articles and different students would present on them. We would then write a reflection about what we thought about the article while reflecting upon our service experience thus far, our experiences in the past and examples from the text when talking about how we could or could not relate to it. For example, we read an article that was called "The five C's: World Readiness Standards". It discussed communcation, cultures, connections, comparisons and communities. I reflected back on the 5 C's when doing site reflections because I was able to experience interpersonal and interpretive communication through going to our site every week and doing the lessons for the kids.
The biggest knowledge I have gained from this course is to be patient and put care into teaching. It can be stressful to teach kids something new when they just want to go and play outside, but each week the kids became more and more interested in the Japanese lessons and wanted to learn more. This course has taught me to be very patient as well. The area that I want to develop further is my ability to come up with ideas for the lesson plan. It was very difficult for me to come up with ideas about what to teach. The first week where we had to come up with lesson ideas was the biggest challenge for me. So my goal is to improve my abilitiy to come up with lesson plan ideas.
This course was very similar to my lower division service learning course, especially because I volunteered at the same school for both courses. I was able to see the students grow 2 years into more adventurous and curious students, and having weekly lessons was just like when I was in Japan and taught at an English cafe. I think this course made me very interested in working with kids, especially because I worked at a pre-school in Japan and that also made me want to work with kids in the future.
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