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.
Course Learning Outcomes
Apply your Japanese language and culture knowledge and examine issues of social justice and service that relate to their career field.
Participate in multilingual and multicultural communities within and beyond school setting and demonstrate of becoming life-long learners by using the language and cultural knowledge for personal enrichment.
Compare and contrast various elements of Japanese culture with your own cultures and connect your knowledge with other discipline through service learning experience.
Demonstrate communication skills in Japanese (Interpersonal, Interpretive and Presentational) through service learning experience.
Demonstrate understanding of Japanese cultural practices and the perspectives through teaching Japanese language and culture in the local community
Reflective Narrative
I took the advanced Japanese service learning course the semester that I had returned from my study abroad in Japan. During this class we learned about many issues that related to our multicultural and multilingual community that we live in. I was able to further understand these issues by our assigned readings, class discussions, and our hands on service learning. For my service learning project I was a part of a group of three people, two others and myself, where we volunteered 3 hours weekly for 10 weeks at an after school program at Walter Colton Middle school. During our ten weeks my group and I created lesson plans about Japanese language and culture for a group of about 20 seventh grade students. Some of the the lessons plans that I had created came from my past experience I had from teaching dharma school at the buddhist temple, and a Japanese language and culture summer program. However, unlike my previous teaching, I was able to learn about multiculturalism and multilingualism because the students that I worked with for my service learning were from various ethnic backgrounds, however, there was a majority of students who were of Mexican heritage. For example, in the beginning classes, when we taught Japanese words to the students, they often would tell us how to say the words in their native languages. We noticed that by asking the students how they would say the word we were teaching them in their native language they often remained engaged longer and better remembered what we taught them. Furthermore, we were able to practice our Japanese language skills throughout the semester with presentations about our service learning in Japanese.