Please use this section of the board to reflect on our visits to schools in Seoul and the Tokyo suburbs.
What did you *know* about education in Korea and Japan prior to our trip? What did you believe the strengths and weaknesses of their systems to be? What were your sources of information about these systems?
To what extent were your beliefs confirmed, challenged, or modified by what you saw during our visits?
What were the teaching strategies that you saw employed in the middle and high school? Were these different from those observed in the cram school? What might account for the differences?
How would you characterize the students you observed and spoke with? In what ways are they different from or similar to the students you work with? What did you learn of their hopes and fears? What do they like and dislike?
How will what you observed affect how you teach?
What project might you seek to work with a class in Korea or Japan on? (Using the discussion board or perhaps the fax option we looked at during orientation.) Perhaps your students and a group in Korea or Japan could carry out a comparative survey of some sort....
Please share any resources (books, articles, websites, and so on) that you've uncovered.
You don't need to try to answer all or even more than one of the questions above. Just pound out your thoughts and be sure to use a subject line that reflects what you've chosen to address.
smiling,
clay[Edit by="Clay Dube on Jul 15, 9:47:56 PM"][/Edit]
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