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Marcos RicoThank you for the movie review. It is kind of the theme for this summer week long seminar 🙂 Sounds like an interesting movie to watch. I was looking for it on Netflix, but they do not have it. Oddly enough is cheaper to buy an actual DVD of the movie from Best Buy than to stream it from Amazon of YouTube. I just ordered a copy of the dvd (ready for pick up at my local store in an hour.) I am sure that my wife will not mind watching Crazy Rich Asians with me.
Marcos RicoDear Kim, Thank you for sharing this link. I loved listening to music from East Asia. Besides a handful of my students who have Asian ancestry, I am sure that most of my students have never experience this style of folk music. I followed your recomendation and listened to The Silk Road: A Musical Caravan. Thanks for the tip about opening the info feature to find out more details about each song.
Marcos RicoGreat link to science and enviromental issues. Great to have articles in Chinese, English and even Spanish!! I do not currently teach science, but my coworkers who teach it will find it useful, especially the Spanish articles. https://dialogochino.net/26411-5-low-cost-technologies-that-help-protect-latin-americas-environment/ You can never have enough resources for science.
Marcos RicoThank you for sharing this link. Watching them follow a Sushi Chef Saito as he gets his fish for the restaurant. It great to see the process that Chef Saito has to follow to create his mouth watering sushi. Great video to show how sushi is prepared the traditional way. I saw another video of Simon and Martina titled "Tokio Mario Kart in Real Life" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOchAw1Cwg4 . well to make the story short now I am subscribed. My students will love watching it!! Because my students are 4th graders, I will make sure to always preview any blogger videos, before sharing them with my class.
Marcos RicoDennis, thank you for your resource. I will visit the sites of Haiku with my 4th graders. As you mentioned, it seems simple, but there is more to Haiku than just sillable pattern. I will practice it with my students, after testing as a fun and engaging activity. If my students do well we migh even send a couple of the ir creations to one of the Haiku Society of America Annual Contests http://www.hsa-haiku.org/hsa-contests.htm, https://www.oldpondcomics.com/contests.html (many of them charge an entry fee, but other are free)
Marcos RicoIt was privilege to attend the East Asia: Origin to 1800 Seminar at USC. Thank you, Dr. Clay Dube, Catherine, and the several guest Professors who made this seminar possible.
I love learning about history, being presented with this wonderful opportunity to study and learn more about East Asia was wonderful and I did not mind all the driving from San Diego to USC. I had some basic knowledge about East Asia or “El Lejano Oriente” (Far East) prior to the 1800. But after having attended this seminar I was able to fill in many gaps and increase my knowledge and understanding of East Asia. One of the details that stays fresh in my mind is about the Warrior Gentlemen or Bushi often misidentified in the U.S.A. and Western culture as Samurai.
During one of our classes I had a Eureka moment, when I realized that without China and the Europeans quest to find an easier route to trade with Chinese merchants, the United States of America would not exist as it is right now. Christopher Columbus quest for a route to China took him East and he landed in the Caribbean by mistake. Regardless of our current political and economic issues with China, our history is deeply connected. Someone once said that, we need to understand our past in order to make a better future.
I am fortunate to teach 4th grade Social Studies, were we are able to explore and learn about California’s history and East Asia has a many strong links to our history. With the knowledge that I have earned during this seminars, I feel empowered to do a better job at teaching my fourth graders about this shared history between East Asia and our continent.
Marcos RicoThe other day, during class my students asked me what is an encyclopedia. After explaining the use and purpose of encyclopedias (my students describe it as Google of the past), I looked online for a picture to show them what a full set would look like. Along with the picture of the Encyclopedia Britannica, we found out that the last printed edition was on 2010 (12,000 copies of the 32 book set). Glad to know that it is still alive in the digital world.
Biography.com will be another great reasource to share with my students.
Marcos RicoWe had a great afternoon lecture. I had a wonderful time learning more about East Asia, but the topic of growth vs. development made a great connection to my personal life. As every teacher knows, we do not make enough income as educators to have a comfortable life in beautiful California.
Over the past couple years I had been working hard on growth, to increase my income. I would work summer school, after school reading, 6 to 6 (now Prime Time), on top of that I would also teach Traffic School on Saturdays. During summer break I would work construction with my uncle. It produced the desired effect of increasing my income, but prevented me from enjoying more time with my family.
With age, comes experience and wisdom (usually). About 3 years ago, without understanding the concepts of growth nor development, I realized that I needed stop focusing on working a lot of hours, and instead start spending more time with my wife and twin sons. I started to focus on improving my skills and earning the needed CEU to move to the next column on my district’s salary schedule ( I am very close now, thanks to USC China-USA institute). I no longer work summer school, or Prime Time and I stopped teaching Traffic School on Saturdays. In order to make up for the loss of income, I do work with a friend in his company training Security Officers to get them certified with California’s BSIS and helping my wife with her business teaching CPR/ First Aid (using old skills, and getting certified to teach them).
I am now spending more time with my family, working less hours and earning a similar income. I am on a development mode. Soon I will be moving the next column in salary schedule.
Marcos RicoI have heard about Marco Polo for a long time, but since I never took the opportunity to read one of the books about his travels, I always believed that the story had been written by himsel and not by Rustichello da Pisa. I had imagined that the Travels of Marco Polo where kind of like the journals of Lewis and Clark. A primary souce, not a secondary source. I just downloaded digital copies of Travels of Marco Polo vol. 1 and 2. I am curios to read them and make my own opinion about his travels.
I might even share some chapters with my students. Thta way we could have a group discussion about the question “Did Marco Polo visited China?”
Marcos RicoI am thinking of using some of the data that we have acquired in this seminar. It could be used to make graphs comparing the different dynasties by lenght of their rule. Also, we could use the data to compare the size of the countries of East Asia and even the USA. Since almost all the countries in the world use metric, we could could practice converting miles into kilometers China is about 3,705 million square miles or 9,597 square kilometers, while the USA is about 3,797 million square miles or 9,834 million square kilometers.
Another idea is practice creating and reading graphs to show levels of pollution in China, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, and even the USA. Or sources of energy, non renewable vs renewable (solar, wind, etc.) We could also create graphs to compare populations by age groups, etc.
Marcos RicoI can see a parallel on the fate of the Manchu's language to what is happening to many Native American languages. A couple of months ago I showed my students a video about the Kumeyaay and how they are currently working hard to save their language and traditions. In California, over the past couple hundred years the Spanish, Mexican and United States governments have tried to make the Kumeyaay assimilate into the main culture and to give up their traditions and ways of life. They almost succeded because most of the Kumeyaay no longer speak their Native Language, only some of the elders still speak it fluently. The political boundaries have separated the Kumeyaay into opposite sides of the U.S.A- Mexico border, but somehow their culture has managed to survive in Baja California. In the video that I showed my class, it talked about an unique approach to rescue their language. They would host a summer camp for young Kumeyaay from both sides of the border. They would purposely pair up a kid who spoke Spanish and Kumeyaay with another who spoke English and Kumeyaay. This would encourage them to use their only common language, Kumeyaay in order to communicate with each other.
I think it would be great for my students to read both articles and to make comparisons about the fate of both languages.
Here is a link to one of the articles:
https://www.wilderutopia.com/traditions/kumeyaay-people-traditions-survive-in-baja-california/
Marcos RicoThe Japanese Friendship Garden Society of San Diego was celebrating its 14th Annual Cherry Blossoms Week (March 18-24) with several special events. Several events caught my attention but due to previous engagements, I could only attend one event. Wa-Shokuiku Wednesday (Wednesday, March 20th, 2019). I signed up for the event and only knew that we would be learning to prepare and eat Japanese food. In class we have discussed about the decrease of rice consumption in Japan.
The program was from Wa-Shokuiku, Learn, Cook, Eat Japanese! A program that focuses on teaching healthy cooking that looks good. I had the opportunity to learn about basic rice cooking and how to properly hold a knife for cutting vegetables. One important thing that I learned was that proper Japanese cooking requires you to use 5 colors in every meal. The colors are white, black, yellow, green and red. Also, try to use 5 flavors. The flavors are bitter, sweet, salty, sour, and savory. When it comes to savory, I am still unsure if it means the plant or full of flavor. It is also encouraged that people will be able to use their 5 senses while enjoying the food. Another important concept in Japanese cooking is “Me de taberu” or eat with your eyes. The food should look appealing, we had different mold to shape our onigiri (riceballs), rockets, kittens, pandas, or balls.
It was a great experience, I used the kitten mold to make my onigiri with regular rice, and the ball mold to make onigiri balls with rice sweetened with coconut milk. I was able to fill my bento box with vegetables and fruit (used a special cutter to create apple stars). I was successful on using at least 5 colors, and it achieved “Me de taberu”. It looked so great that I almost did not want to eat it. I am attaching a picture of my masterpiece on that wonderful evening.
Marcos RicoCurrently in Social Studies we are reading about the Mission system in California and their secularization. My students where shocked to learn about the way the Spanish treated the Native Americans in California. We read a couple different points of view from several Native Americans and Spanish priests. Priests and soldiers would whip the Natives, whenever they broke the rules or made a mistake.
Originally when the Mexican government decided to secularize the Missions is California, the idea was to give all the land to the Native Americans who worked and lived there. Unfortunatelly due to the corruption of high officials the land was sold to ranchers, friends and family of the corrupt officials. The great majority of the Native Americans did not get any land, and ended up working for the people who had illegally acquired the Mission lands that they should have received.
I mention this because by reading the Proclamation of the Hongwu Emperor, my students will learn that corruption of government officials was not just a problem in 1800's California, but also in other parts of the world such as China in the late 1300's (almost 5 centuries before). It would be an example of how the Emperor tried to fight against corruption and the harsh treatment of people who broke the law.
Marcos RicoThe way things are currently going it seems like China is our last hope at saving the planet. After reaching an all time high level of air pollution( along with water pollution, and soil pollution), China has started to make a big change for the best. It took China a long time to realize that ecomomic benefit should not be achieved at the expense of the environment. It is more expensive to clean up the environment, than to avoid polluting it.
Unfortunately the other world big player, United States of America, under the current administration has done a big u turn on the protection of the environment. Trump has claimed that global warming is a Chinese hoax, and withdrew the United States of America from the Paris Accord. Currently the United States is the only country in the world that is not part of this accord. Currently the United States policies are favoring economic profit over the environment, a big step backwards from former policies that offered more protection to the environment.
https://vimeo.com/189466561 (The Paris Agreement in a Nutshell)
Marcos RicoI was doing some research online and found out that in India less than .08% of the population practices Buddhism (according to their 2011 census), the birthplace of Buddhism has such a low percentage of people who still practice it. Once I found that information I had to look at percentage of Catholics in Israel, according to some sources 1.5% of the population. Mathematics is interesting and percentages can be misleading .08% of the population in India is about 8 million people, while 1.5% of the population in Israel is only about 200,000 people. I started to do the same for Islam, but stopped after learning that in Saudi Arabia (birth of Islam ) it is against the law to practice any other religion (non-Muslims are allowed in the country, but are not allowed to practice their religions), and that all citizens are required by law to be Muslims. Non Muslisms are not allowed in Mecca and in most areas of Medina.
I started to search for those statistics about India to compare it to China, Korea (Both North and South), and Japan, where Buddhism has played a great role in their history. In China's about 18.2% of the population (in 2010) practices Buddhism, it is about 245 million people. In South Korea (could not find information on North Korea) about 22% of the population (in 2010) practices Buddhism, it is about 11 million people. Japan has a larger percentage with 36.2% of their population (in 2010) practicing Buddhism, almost 46 million people.
In 2010 China had about 46% of all the world's Buddhist population, followed by Thailand with about 12%, Japan in third place with abouth 9 %, South Korea was in 8th place with about 2% of all the world's Buddhist population.
