This was my first seminar through the USC US-China Institute and I absolutely loved it! I am so glad I persevered and signed up to take this weeklong class on East Asian Visual Culture.The education I have received the past week at USC with Professor Dube and colleagues has been outstanding. My understanding of the cultural history and traditions of East Asian countries has been greatly broaden. This week has opened up so many new ideas and avenues with which to deepen my 5^thgrade students learning. Not only have I gained a new perspective for these countries, but I’ve also found a renewed inspiration to teach my students about this dynamic part of the world.

I intend to use the lessons I learned this week to support my teaching of Ancient China, Japan and Korea through to the modern times in these countries. My teaching will occur over the next 4 years, as I will continue with the same students I currently have. 

China - I have created a lesson plan using their Zodiac and also calligraphy. I plan to read more about ancient China to be able to teach the students and give them a base on which to grow.  In older grades we will look at Mao and communism through the lens of the posters presented in class. 

Korea – After giving a broad over-view of ancient Korea, I plan on teaching my students about the Korean language and doing a craft with mulberry paper. This connects to our third grade learning, 2 years ago, about fibers. In an older grade I plan to bring K-pop and touch on Korea’s modern culture. 

Japan – After teaching students about ancient Japan, we will learn Haiku, how to make paper, traditional dress and try our hand at ikebana.  We will also learn about Buddhism and Shinto. In older grades we will look at the different classes of Japanese people. In 8^thgrade we will be looking at Japan’s role in WWII. 

What a bonus to also have other teacher’s lessons to inspire and take away with me. Many appreciations to the USC East Asia Studies team for a wonderful week of learning.  

First, I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Dube, Catherine, and the professors, I had the pleasure to learn from during this week.  I extend my sincerest thanks.

I was very excited to attend another seminar made possible by the USC US-China Institute.  I was not sure what the structure of the summer seminar would look like? I knew that it will be an academically rich environment.  The forum comments were great and intellectually stimulating.I was in this class to learn about East Asian history, culture, and traditions.  As Dr. Dube pointed out many times, history is told by many perspectives, depending on the player telling the story. We always have to remember who is telling the story.  As Dr. Rosen stated, the victors are writing the history books. I leave this class with much newly gained knowledge, and with gratitude for this wonderful opportunity I had the privilege to take advantage of.  I learned many, many valuable lessons.

I am excited to bring the history of East Asia seen through visual arts into my classroom.  The films, artwork, posters, and postcards are powerful visuals I can incorporate into my IB units.  I teach six units throughout the school year. I will bring in these visuals into all of them. I have started to explore the many websites all professors shared with us during class.  This is an incredible resource for me as I am able to project the artwork to the students.

Consequently, this class has been extremely valuable to me. I saw old friends and made many new ones.  I will recommend it to my peers, and I will expose my students to the lessons I learned and I will implement many of the teaching strategies presented throughout the seminar.

While most  people may shudder at the thought of s willingly sitting in a classroom during summer break. I can now reflect back on the week I spent taking Visual Cultures of East Asia and feel that I had an incredible opportunity. I think it was a good reminder for me to physically feel what it is like to be a student again; I can understand how much my students appreciate visuals including pictures, clips, and videos to enrich the lecture.

Although I teach English to high school students, I know that I will be able to take pieces from what I learned during the seminar and incorporate them into my lessons. I have a lot of energy and love going into details on costuming/dress, theater, and music from a film or play, time period, and country.

I would like to incorporate current events to prepare for our research project in the spring and how to read an article and how to look for bias and what news sources are more credible than others. Learning about North Korea and China made me realize even more how crucial it is that students learn early on that although we have more liberties and freedoms in the United States, we need to be vigilant in our own studies. It may even be helpful to have students read articles talking about censorship to facilitate discussion.

I believe another focus I would want to make is on the use of colors, clothes/costumes, theater, as a launching pad for my Romeo and Juliet unit. Although we will be focusing on England’s theater, I think it would be impactful to demonstrate to students that other countries’ cultures are rich and uniquel. However, the lens we may use looking at literature and even art may hold us back from “reading” the world around us.

Thank you to all of the professors, especially Professor Dube, and to Ms. Gao for all of their hard work in making last week a memorable and powerful week for me academically and professionally. It was great to be in a room of educators as well in the area and from across the U.S. I have already recommended this seminar to other friends and hope that they too will sign up!

Before taking this seminar my knowledge on East Asia was limited to Japanese Cherry Blossoms and the Chinese New Year. What I have learned through the seminar is how much history, politics, and culture is in their visual arts mediums. It was interesting for me to learn the connection between what messages they were trying to convey and what was produced visually. For example, with Mao who influenced many things along with posters used to be a guide to what people should be doing and if it wasn’t politically correct it was wiped out completely. I would like to tie this into my classroom in what different forms of art there are and discuss with my students their feelings on their artwork being censored or decided for them. It can go along with my big question I usually ask to my students on ‘What is Art?’ I think they would find it interesting to learn about the different ideas of censorship throughout art and even tie it into it to the ‘degenerate art’ named and destroyed by the Nazi’s making Germany’s censorship finite. I know they could connect to this in ways that sometimes I have to censor their artwork when they want to create images that are not school appropriate from movies or games they play. I could also go along with how artwork can be used as persuasion tool just like some of the kids videos we watched where they were providing a message using relatable cute cartoons. I would like to show them some of those videos before giving them insight on the message and then see if they can pick it up and then play it again. This again could lead us into talking about how videos/advertisements are used to influence people and make more connections from there.

     This summer I spent one week of what remained of my summer vacation attending the “Exploring East Asian Visual Culture” seminar at USC.  I was a little nervous because I had not sat inside a classroom as a student in so many years. My nerves, however, were gone within the first five minutes.  Professor Dube acknowledged that we have committed our time to attend the seminar.  I looked around the room and saw other educators, just like me, who had also committed their time to learning and exploring this topic together. And I am reminded that as educators, we are all students at heart.  We have built a career out of curiosity and the constant search for knowledge. My own work, as a teacher librarian, allows me to share resources and collaborate with teachers.  What I’ve learned in just a week has provided me with an abundance of resources that I can incorporate when collaborating with teachers.

          After a week full of relevant resources, my mind is swimming with many ideas to use in a classroom.  Chinese contemporary and traditional art, Mao’s propaganda posters, the history of North Korean films, Japanese theatre, the history of postcards, K-pop, international movies, are all essential resources that can be incorporated into a classroom.  What I have gained in this weeklong seminar is a catalog of resources that will enrich a lesson in many classrooms. I look forward to sharing these resources with teachers.

      One particular topic that I am excited to explore is Xu Bing’s work on Square Art Calligraphy.  At first glance, his characters look like Chinese calligraphy.   They are not.  The characters are Xu Bing’s creation of the American alphabet written to look like Chinese characters.  When I saw this artwork, I immediately thought of collaborating with the art teacher.  It was only when the Mandarin teacher, who is also a participant in this seminar, informed me that she would like to also participate in this project did I realize that this can be a multidiscipline integration.  As the librarian, I can create a pathfinder with reliable online resources to introduce the history of Chinese calligraphy and provide videos on Xu Bing, explaining his Square Art Calligraphy.  The Mandarin teacher can explain how Chinese characters are written.  The Art teacher can introduce how to create and hold the brush to create various strokes. I think this project will provide students with a hands-on experience in this important part of Chinese history and culture. And we can display some of the students’ work in the library.

     I am so glad that I took a week out of my summer to learn about East Asian culture.  When Professor Kim kicked off the seminar with the history of North Korean films and showed us clips such as “The Lazy Pig,” I was immediately mesmerized. This seminar did not disappoint, since I was exposed to other perspectives.  In this current global economy, being able to understand the perspectives of others is one that is crucial to our collective humanity. 

I entered this seminar with the intention of building my own background knowledge in order to bring it back to my students as well as to connect with my heritage. Through this experience, I was reminded of how vital visual arts education is in schools, as it can often get lost in the focus on math and language arts. Visual art connects us to each other and the rest of the world, and holds value for all students. During the seminar, I was exposed to many forms of visual art that I had never seen before, and others which I had never examined closely, and I am excited to bring that experience to my students.

From the very beginning, Dr. Kim’s lecture on North Korean film showed me another side of a society and culture I know very little about. The “Lazy Pig” animation she showed us was particularly fascinating and relevant to a fourth-grade teacher, whose students love watching cartoons. I would like to show such a clip to my students and have them analyze the theme, as this is a concept we study in depth. I think students can easily see the cartoon’s strong nationalistic messages and would enjoy discussing whether they agree or disagree with them. Throughout the seminar, we saw video clips that could be used in a variety of ways in the classroom. Films such as Flower Girl can give insight into a culture and its history. Visuals such as film are very powerful in engaging students and allowing them to picture the country and the people they are studying. Films such as Tokyo Story can also be analyzed aesthetically, allowing the students to focus on the filmmaker’s techniques and what they accomplish. Clips such as the one showing Mao visiting the USSR can be examined for bias in the news, showing students how video clips can be manipulated or used to show certain perspectives. Clips of portrayals of China in Hollywood movies can be used to learn about the relationship between China and the U.S. The video clips stuck with me especially because they are artifacts of the time they were created, and experiencing those artifacts can be much more powerful than just reading about the period itself.

In addition to the videos, we looked at many other visual art genres. One thing that stood out to me was the use of color and symbolism, which I discuss with my students in the context of the California state symbols and seal. My students have always designed their own California flags, and I think it would be very interesting to expose them to the symbols we learned about in the seminar to show them how colors and symbols can mean different things in different contexts. For example, red might mean strength or courage to the students based on the American and Californian flags, but more commonly stands for luck in Chinese culture. White stands for purity and innocence in the West, but mourning in the East. I think making students aware of these differences will not only educate them about Eastern cultures, but, over time, will help them become better global citizens who are aware of people, customs, and cultures that are different from their own.

Our seminar on East Asian visual culture covered a number of ideas that I hope to incorporate into my teaching. Since we focused on post-1900 culture, most of these points will be connecting our 6^th and 7^th grade studies to the present day. There is also always a possibility of teaching a different course in my future, so I plan to learn more about more of the contemporary issues that potential future classes could include as well.

In middle school, our examination of Asia primarily includes China and Japan. As we study China, it is important to connect to the story of Chinese immigration to the US – incorporating both opportunities and challenges. Prior to the seminar, I had not visited the Chinese American Museum and was not clear as to where it was located. Seeing that the original Chinatown was at the heart of the old city deepened my understanding of Los Angeles’ history. The museum thoughtfully bridges both the old and new stories of Chinese-American Angelenos, and I would like to bring students there if possible. Given its proximity to both Olvera Street and Little Tokyo, the general area could be the site of a day of immersive learning for my classes. The complication at my current school is that dietary restrictions mean my students could not partake in any of the cuisine, which can make long field trips logistically challenging. I also intend to expand my coverage of the Cultural Revolution.

In our study of Japan, I plan to deepen our understanding of the cultural resonance of the Tale of Genji. The manga and film versions can give the students a more vivid insight into this story, its history, and its ongoing relevance today. While I found the postcard and art nouveau lectures fascinating, I have not yet fully fleshed out how I could incorporate those ideas into my current courses.

One of the major through lines of the middle school curriculum is China’s influence on its neighbors, so we also touch briefly on Korea. As such, I hope to share with my students the story of the development of Hangul and the legacy of King Sejong the Great – reflecting on the neighboring countries as more than passive recipients of Chinese culture.

With regard to all of the Asian cultures we examine, I intend to incorporate more modern music. It was fascinating to learn more about pop music and to see the videos we watched. I also plan to discuss the growing influence of the Chinese film industry by showing clips when possible. These windows into present-day society can help students to see history as more than “old dead stuff.” Regular links to today make the classes more interesting to students who live in a digital world.

Given that my prior experiences with the US-China Institute were life-changing (I was fortunate enough to travel to China and Taiwan with Dr. Dube and a fabulous group of teachers), I had high expectations for the summer seminar. Immersing myself in learning from experts refreshed me and left me excited for the new year. More than anything else, I hope my students will come to share my love of learning and will be excited to explore the world.