Claire's views of the Skype eventDiana was in charge of the group in the Peer Tutoring Center and her Japanese contacts were Miu and Rensei. I led the group in the Quiet Room and we skyped with Shikoh, Momoko, and Himari. I had met these students at the High School Diplomats program at Princeton.
HSD is a 10 day cultural exchange program each summer for sophomores and juniors. The goal is to share our cultures together. We teach them about American holidays, everyday life and they do the same for Japan. We all made several presentations about our nations, during the program. Categories included government, education, social issues, and regional characteristics. The students we Skyped with were among the 40 Japanese students who came to the US to participate. I learned about the program when I went to a lunch event at WAHS where several current students presented about their High School Diplomat experience. After I participated in the program, I planned a similar event to tell others about it. I put an announcement in homeroom messages and made a slide show to present during a lunch event. About 15 students came and 2 have applied for this summer! Some of the topics in my Skype group:
Several Japanese students talked about how their schools are more heavily academic. They don’t have Spirit Week, but they do have sports festivals, where everyone participates and grade-level teams compete. Once they answered the questions, we had a broader cultural discussion. They talked about the differences between Christmas here and in Japan. It is a holiday, but mostly not a big deal. People work and for many people it is not a religious day. Christmas eve is a huge night for couples. It is aa time to reserve a fancy restaurant, and spend time with your significant other. New Year’s Day is their big holiday. It is Jan 1st and it is a day of celebration, usually with cake. Valentine’s Day is very different there. Girls give guys chocolate and the on White Day, March 14th, guys give girls chocolate. The Skype meeting was fun! It’s so valuable to see my peers interact with these students and learn about their lives. I wish we would seek out opportunities more to interact with people who come from different cultures. Schools need to make it a priority. In the real world, it is really important to be able to collaborate and learn from people who are not the same as you. We need to combine our differences and have a greater understanding.
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Diana Kim, Multicultural Club FounderWhen I first started the WAHS Multicultural Club, the primary goal was to make WAHS more culturally aware. We’ve been going through ideas for events and activities, to keep the club more active. In school, we’re given technology to use, and I think we should use it to our full advantage. I began to research how to use technology at school to learn about culture and one thing that popped up was videochat. Then I looked into how to connect with international classrooms. I talked to Claire Aminuddin, our club VP.. During the summer she had gone to High School Diplomats, a cultural exchange program at Princeton, where she met Japanese students. We decided to connect to the group chat they had.
We picked a date to meet, Feb. 1st, and we skyped with five Japanese students, three on the screen in one room, and two in the other. The best way to adapt to the time difference was to get to school early. 8am for us is 10pm at night for them. Claire developed conversation starters as a plan B in case we didn’t know what to ask. I thought the conversations flowed really well. We had a lot of things to compare. The Japanese students all speak English really well. English is part of their curriculum. I think they start learning English at a young age. There wasn’t much of a language barrier, and we were grateful for their ability to speak English. Topics included:
Diana Kim is a WAHS sophomore. She is active in band,and interested in politics and international relations. In addition to founding the Multicultural Club, Diana is a part of Model U.N., We the People, is an officer of the Crozet Library Teen Advisory Board, and is an intern with the Downtown Crozet Initiative. Read Diana's post about Over The Moon Bookstore for the DCI here. I was in the Virtual Reality lab last year, and Mr. Osborn described A Tech in a way that interested me. I go there and WAHS this year.
I've always done art, but not in a serious way until sophomore year. My mother bought me some watercolor paint and I started with portraits. I didn't have a lot of experience with watercolor and I wasn't happy with my first results. I discovered a technique that made for a more complete look. The color blending was tricky, but I was fiddling around and tried drawing on top of the paint. I wanted to find a method to make clear crisp lines, to highlight the different shades. I drew the shapes with paint, and then outlined them with a black Micron pen. I love Micron pens! They come in a range of sizes and colors and are great for drawing over paint. For the makeup on one of the portraits, I needed a sparkle effect, so I drew circles with a white gel pen on top of the watercolor paint. Then I outlined them with a Micron pen. I like the bright white of the gel pen, it's a pure white. This method allows me to create highlights anywhere, as opposed to using white paint or planning for the paper to be the white element. I had an idea for a digital piece: Checkerboard World. I wasn't sure how I could produce it. I had learned some things in Digital Imaging class with Ms. Burnette, so I looked for an alternative to Photoshop. I ended up downloading PhotoscapeX; it has fewer tools, but it's free. For digital drawings, I use the touchpad on my Macbook Air. I have some of my work up on Depop. It's not an ideal platform, but the tax side of Etsy looked complicated. Etsy seems more for people with a business who are looking to have more reach. After a summer art program in Philadelphia, I decided that I didn't want to go to an art school so I had to find a new career path that included art. I've always been interested in psychology and mental health issues, so when I heard about art therapy as a field, I thought, "This is exactly what I need to do." Macy Baisch is a WAHS/Albemarle Tech senior. In the fall, she'll be studying Art Therapy at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, NC Guest post by Diana Kim, WAHS Multicultural Club President and Crozet Public Library Teen Advisory Board officer The Jefferson School African American Heritage Center presents the soil from John Henry James’s lynching at the Crozet Library. The display features a digital presentation next to the display case where people will be able to learn about the history and the lynching of James. The exhibition provides pictures of documents, and guides the people through the events of what happened. According to the Daily Progress, the display case used to hold the statuette of Robert E. Lee; however, it now contains a jar of soil with history. The day James was lynched, a mob of white and black people stopped the train. He was heading back from Staunton, awaiting his charges of criminally assaulting a white woman in Charlottesville. The African Americans were there hoping to prevent the lynching. However, they were unsuccessful. James was lynched on July 12, 1898. To learn more about the lynching, visit the Crozet Library to see the display, or check out the Daily Progress article here. |
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