Project Grad (Newsletter)
College Institute at California State University, Northridge, for San Fernando High School in partnership with Project GRAD
The Japanese Section in conjunction with CSUN's Center for Community Service-Learning offered a 4-week long College Institute for 49 San Fernando High School students from Mar 8 through Apr 2. The students studied Japanese language and culture in this all-day program.
Project GRAD is a nationwide program for underrepresented or at risk high school students. It aims to help students GRADuate from high school and go on to college. If students successfully complete a summer and a spring college institute, they are granted up to $6,000 in college scholarships.
This is the second year that the Japanese Section hosted the College Institute for San Fernando High School students. Professors Kanzo Takemori and Yuko Terao and graduate students in Linguistics Program Yoshiko Takase and Saori Tauchi taught the language classes. Prof. Aki Hirota taught the Japanese culture course. 9 students minoring in Japanese worked as teaching assistants. Japn304 Advanced Grammar & Composition course was designed as service-learning course, in which the CSUN students served as language partners for the high school students. The students were also exposed to various aspects of Japan through three films, taiko drumming by the CSUN Jishin Group and a tea ceremony demonstration. The filed trips included a Japanese quilt exhibition at CSUN Art Gallery, Manzanar Japanese Relocation Camp, and Aikido dojo, Higashi Honganji Temple, and Japanese-American Community and Culture Center in Little Tokyo, and Suihoen Japanese Garden in Balboa Park.
The students felt the Institute was very educational, and were grateful for this opportunity to go outside their English and Spanish environment and explore new dimensions of the world. The serenity, simplicity, and beauty of the tea ceremony so inspired one student that she went home and cleared all the clatters from her room and put flowers. Many said that other high school students should be given the same opportunity because they would surely enjoy it. One student commented, "The Institute was too short, but memories will last forever." Most felt they definitely learned the skills necessary for succeeding in college.