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Rob_Hugo@PortNWHello everyone,
Welcome to the 2008 California NCTA Study Tour to China and Japan web discussion forum!
This is a space in which we can all get acquainted prior to our April 19-20 Orientation Weekend. To that end, it would be great if you can reply to this post and provide the following:
1. Your name
2. Your school and teaching assignment
3. A photo (if you so desire)
4. Anything else about yourself that you would like to share with the 15 other teachers and four assorted crew (me, my USCI colleague Venus Saensradi and tour leaders Clayton Dube and Raymond Moser) with whom you will be spending three weeks this summer
I will be posting information relevant to the study tour as it comes, so please check in regularly. Also, for the ease and convenience of all forum users, please limit the number of new threads. If something can be shared, discussed or expanded upon under an existing thread, let's do so.
Thank you for your consideration, and welcome to the forum!
-Miranda
[Edit by="miranda k on Apr 4, 12:40:15 PM"][/Edit]
AnonymousHi, My name is Mimy Mac and I am a Social Studies teacher at LACES (Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies). This is my second year teaching history and I love it so far. I currently teach 6th and 7th grade history. I have never been to China or Japan but has always wanted to go. I am reallye excited about the Summer study tour and plan to take lots of pictures to complement my lectures with my students.
AnonymousHi everyone!
I'm Kevin Kung and I'm a chemistry teacher at Palisades Charter High School. I have been teaching for 10 years - 6 in LA and 4 in San Francisco. I am a native of the Bay Area but live in sunnier So. Cal. I too have never been to Asia and am very excited to go. I also look forward to meeting all of you.
AnonymousHi everybody,
My name is Judi Lee and I teach at Mid-City Magnet. I'm the only 7th and 8th grade social studies teacher, so I look forward to collaborating with all of you. I'm in my third year of teaching. I went to Korea 4 or 5 times when I was a child with my family, but I don't really have any memories of it. I went to Korea three years ago, and have really fond memories of it. I've never been to China or Japan, so I'm really excited.
AnonymousHi everybody! My name is Dennis Colato. I am a 5th grade teacher at Encino Elementary School. I am excited about the summer tour and have been looking up the locations online to get acquainted with the places we will be visiting. Hope everybody has those memory cards ready for all the pictures we'll be taking!
AnonymousHi, Travelers! I'm John Keveanos and I teach World Literature to Seniors and English I Honors (as prep for the International Baccalaureate program) to Freshman at Norte Vista High School in Riverside, California. This will be my first trip to Asia and so I am very excited! Besides teaching High School English, I teach two Film classes at a local university. Thus, I have been preparing for the trip by reviewing some of my favorite Chinese and Japanese films that have come out in the last two decades. If anyone is interested I would like to suggest a few films that might provide some greater understanding of the cultures we will be encountering (as well as getting you even more excited about our tour)...Recent Chinese filmmakers have taken on the task of telling the story of 20th Century Mainland China through the eyes of workers and artists. Two indispensible films that do this are: "Farewell My Concubine", a love triangle between two Beijing Opera Stars and a Courtesan that is rocked by national historical events (Director: Chen Kaige); "To Live" follows a married couple through these times of political turbulance. One New York Critic called it "a Chinese 'Gone With the Wind'". (Director: Zhang Zimou) Incidently, both of these picture won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1993 and 1994...Much of Contemporary Japanese film is very disturbing. Beyond all the horror films, the mainstream serious cinema seem to have a "Nightmare' quality to it that a viewer might find haunting and frightening. I am curious to visit Japan in order to ascertain how much of their cinema reflects the Japanese philosophy of life. Anyway, here are a few suggestions: "the eel" by director Shohei Imamura, which also took first prize at Cannes in 1998, is a film about the regret and redemption of a man who murdered his adulterous wife. (WARNING: The murder scene is violently and sexually graphic!); "Maborosi" is an emotional cerebral picture about a recently widowed woman who seeks to find emotional solace in a second (and arranged) marriage. Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda, the film is awash in mood and cryptic imagery.; For comic relief, I suggest "Kamikazi Girls", which is a ambitious, Day-Glo teen comedy that comments quite a bit on contemporary Japanese youth culture (or so I would assume by reading travel guides). Stylistically, The film is kind of a mix between "Desperately Seeking Susan" and "Run Lola Run" (It's only too bad that its theme is rather frivolous....There's more where this came from but I just wanted to share. PLEASE share with your favorite films, books, music recordings, etc.,etc,. I look forward to making all of your acquaintences. Chao, John[Edit by="jkeveanos on Apr 5, 3:58:09 PM"][/Edit]
Anonymous1. Catherine Enos
2. Jordan Middle School; Language Arts, Social Studies, Spanish Immersion; 6, 7 and 8th grades
3. A photo is attached
4. I am very excited to travel to China and Japan this summer with the Study Tour. I am thrilled at the opportunity to learn alongside of other educators. I hope to enhance the learning environment in my classroom for all students with the ideas of units, lesson plans, the realia, pictures, and sources I bring back from the Study Tour. I have never traveled to China or Japan before. Looking forward to meeting you all.
AnonymousHello everyone! My name is Jaclyn Edwards and I am thrilled to be a part of this great opportunity! I have taught at Palo Alto High School for nine years covering both U.S. and World History. I have travelled around the country, as well as parts of Europe, but never to China or Japan. I look forward in meeting you all - see you in a few weeks!
AnonymousHi all,
My name is Anna and I've been teaching English for Los Angeles Unified for 5+ years. This year I've got 9th, 11th, and 12th grade English. At times the seniors are worse then the freshman, and that is saying a lot. Other then that I love my job and the diversity of my school.
I am so excited for this summer. I've always wanted to travel to East Asia and I think this study tour is such an ideal way to do it; we're not just tourists but actually meeting and talking to the people that comprise the countries we visit. Can't wait to get on that plane!
AnonymousCompliments my fellow educators, I am excited to meet with and travel with you all. We are very fortunate to participate in such a grand learning adventure...in EAST ASIA! I cannot wait to spin the experience into my social studies repretory...see you all next weekend.
Frank Wiley
AnonymousHello, Fellow Travelers:
My name is Leigh Clark. I teach AP English Language and AP Engliish Literature at James Monroe High School in North Hills (several miles east of CSUN in the San Fernando Valley). I, like most of you, have never been to Asia, although I have admired things Japanese (films, poetry, philosophy, architecture, pianos, gardens, food, cars) for decades now and have always wanted to go to Japan. After having studied the history and culture of China in the Spring 2007 NCTA Seminar, I am equally excited about visiting the Middle Kingdom, exploring its complex past and immersing myself, for a time, in the contemporary culture of the emerging (or present?) dominant world superpower. I remember meeting the late Susan Sontag back in the early 1970s when she was preparing to make her first visit to China (at that time newly opened to American travelers through the efforts of that inveterate foe of Communism, the late Richard M. Nixon). Sontag was so excited about the prospect of seeing China for the first time that she could hardly talk about anything else. She even published a poem about her anticipated visit in The New Yorker. I now know exactly how she felt.
Thanks to John Keveanos for his list of films. I intend to view the Chinese films as soon as possible. The "dark" Japanese films sound intriguing as well. But then, Japanese cinema has always had its dark side, has it not? Going back forty, fifty, even sixty years or more, we find films such as Kurosawa's Stray Dog, Ichikawa's Fires on the Plain and Kobayashi's Kwaidan, and that's just off the top of my head. I'm sure if I think about, there are lots of others. (In fact, come to think of it, all those Godzilla and Rodan movies are rather dark and post-nuclear, even if sometimes "silly dark"--a subject explored, by the way, in Sontag's "The Imagination of Disaster" in her first collection of essays, Against Interpretation.)
From reading your postings, it sounds like we have an outstanding group assembled for our "Journey to the East" (as Hermann Hesse once put it). I had the pleasure of studying with some of you last spring and look forward to seeing you again and to meeting all the other members of our Summer Study Tour next weekend.
Leigh Clark
Monroe High
clay dubeHi Folks,
It's great to have this chance to meet some of you for the first time and to get reacquainted with others. This will be my fifth study tour (some of us learn a bit more slowly than others) and I'm looking forward to the adventure. We have a bit of info about me (and about Ray Moser) at our Teaching about Asia pages:
http://china.usc.edu/ShowArticle.aspx?articleID=288
http://china.usc.edu/ShowArticle.aspx?articleID=903
Miranda Ko and Venus Saensradi are also part of our team. Miranda Ko is a UCLA grad (East Asian Studies/history) and also studied East Asian Studies in the Berkeley graduate program. She joined the USCI team last November and has been managing our teacher training effort. Venus Saensradi earned her bachelors degree in political science at UCLA. She's a founding member of the USCI team and wears many hats including overseeing our publication efforts, our links with community groups, and working closely with students. Miranda and Venus have lived and traveled extensively in Asia and are great sources of information on cultural norms.
AnonymousHello my name is John Yamazaki. My parents are both from Japan, making me Nisei. I grew up in Moorpark CA, speaking Japanese at home so I am familiar with the language. I have been to Japan twice in '89 and 2000. In college I gained greater appreciation for my culture so I earned a minor in Japanese along with a BA in History and from UC Santa Barbara.
I currently teach World History and Geography at Granada Hills Charter High School in the Northridge area. In my spare time I enjoy singing, playing the guitar, running, and spending time with my wife. We both share a love for country music, and Asia. They don't really go together so I guess that makes us a perfect match.
I am looking forward to meeting all of you this weekend!
AnonymousHi Leigh!
Reflecting on the Ichikawa and Kobayashi films that you mentioned, I guess not much has changed when it comes to the psychologically self-destructive mood of Japanese Cinema. I can name a bunch of other contemporary titles that fall into this catagory, in differing levels of quality.(Maybe that's why "Kamakazi Girls" is such a departure. "Tampopo" is also a upbeat rarity).
When we all get together next weekend, I would like to hear more about Sontag's "Silly dark" theory. It seems rather contemporary when one reflects on the fashionable Hedonist/Nihilist Goth and Gangsta culture. It has been over 20 years since I read "Against Interpretation" (although I remember that I was, as everyone else who read it, mightily influenced. Even if we were reacting to it rather than agreeing with it.)
And speaking of "that invenerate foe of Communism" Richard Nixon, I would suggest you take a look at "Nixon And Mao: The Week That Changed The World" by Margaret Macmillian, which just came out in paperback. Those of us who were lucky enough to be alive and vital then remember just how mindboggling his visit was.
Cheers. John
AnonymousHello fellow travelers... My name is Betse Amador and I teach 7th grade World History at Fleming Middle School in Lomita near San Pedro and Torrance. I am really excited to get together with some of the Fall 07 members again and also to meet the rest of the Study Tour Team. My most recent "big adventure" was in December 2006 when I went to India and Nepal for 3 weeks. I grew up in South and Southeast Asia as an "oil brat" but was not able to see much of China due to it being closed; and I only really saw downtown Tokyo while in transit back and forth. I was an Asian Studies major and have a masters in business so I am very interested in art, history and the current business issues of China and Japan. I have had the good fortune of getting to know Ray Moser while we were getting our Single Subject credentials at Cal State Dominguez and really enjoyed getting to know Clay Dube and Miranda Ko. I am thrilled that we will have such capable and knowledgeable guides as we develop curriculum to bring back to our schools. Looking forward to meeting everyone this weekend!!