Help 2000 students from US & Japan connect online!

KAC President, Ayako Smethurst, and I just returned from a fun and productive trip to Japan. We visited eight participating Global Classmates schools and finally got to meet face-to-face with some of this year’s outstanding teachers and students we work with!

On these visits, we learned more about the different ways the Global Classmates program is impacting students and teachers.

For example, a student from Iwaki Midorinomori High School in Fukushima said “I saw a photo of a river that a partner classmate in the U.S. posted and I realized how different even rivers look in America. I really want to go to that river and visit the U.S. now! I didn’t used to like English at all, but now I enjoy it as I realize it’s a tool to connect with people.”

Another student from Inagakuen Sogo High School in Saitama told me, “The English I get to learn and use in Global Classmates is English with feelings – it’s alive. With a textbook, I can’t get that. I only learn set phrases and vocab, for example. But in Global Classmates I’m communicating with teens in the U.S. who are all expressing their feelings using different words, sentence structures, etc., so I get to learn so much. I love it!”

In addition, for the first time we learned how participating in Global Classmates can impact students in the long term. Several students who participated in the 2012-13 program from Fukushima Minami High School in Fukushima were asked by their teacher what they are doing now and if Global Classmates had any long-term effect on them. What we learned is exciting. One student, for example, was so touched that there were people outside of Japan enthusiastically learning Japanese, that he has decided to become a Japanese language teacher in Japan for foreigners. He knew he wanted to be a teacher, but wasn’t sure in what. He credits his experience connecting with and talking to his partner classmates in the U.S. to where he is headed with his future career today. 

And finally, like participating students, I could personally experience the joy a friendship forged through the Global Classmates program has. Over the past four years I have gotten to know Kurosawa-sensei through our communications via email and Facebook, as he first began participating in the 2012-13 program. After 4.5 years of only online communication, we could finally meet face-to-face. What a wonderful meeting it was! It reminded me of the powerful connections we can make via online communications, and further instilled in me a passion to provide a similar experience to all those participating in Global Classmates. It is my hope that the students can meet their new friends across the Pacific someday as well and continue to build on the bond they have forged.