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Mary Graybill, APR, Fellow PRSA,
Graybill Communications
310-441-2899
mary@graybillcom.com
GFBNEC HOLDS TEACHER TRAINING IN VIRGINIA
(FALLS CHURCH, VA - April 1, 2009)—The Go For Broke NationalEducation Center (GFBNEC) of Torrance, California,and partners National Japanese American Memorial Foundation (NJAMF) and Japanese American Veterans Association (JAVA) held a one-day teachers training workshop for 21 Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) teachers on March 10, 2009, at Jeb Stuart High School in Falls Church, Virginia. This is the second of such program held by GFBNEC and partners. The first was held at Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) in Rockville, Maryland on February 2, 2008.
Kurt Waters, Social Studies Specialist at FCPS, opened the program on behalf of Alice Reilly, Coordinator, K-12 Social Studies for FCPS, saying "this is an opportunity to pause during our teaching of the World War II period to examine with Japanese Americans who were directly affected by their mass incarceration and other WW II experiences." Ms. Reilly, a participant of the training program at MCPS and who had a schedule conflict, arrived after the program started and remained for the balance of the morning session. Dr. Lisa Sueki, GFBNEC Chief Operating Officer, said GFBNEC is "honored to be invited to share GFBNEC's training expertise with east coast and other area schools."
Ms. Reilly told the JAVA reporter the relevance to FCPS of the day's program: "We feel that FCPS teachers and students will benefit from the interactions with people who lived the history they are teaching and learning about. The Go For Broke curriculum and the participation of JAVA provides opportunities for teachers and students to learn about content through a new perspective, that of the Japanese Americans. It is important to remember the 'story' in history so that students realize history is much more than random facts. Hosting this workshop allowed FCPS to provide the content knowledge to do that."
The GFBNEC trainers were two educational consultants, both retired California school teachers. Esther Taira has 36 years of experience in education, including teaching at Foshay Middle School and Lincoln High School, both in Los Angeles, and Kubasaki High School in Okinawa, Japan with the Department of Defense. Mark Elinson has a similar length of service at Lincoln High School and other schools. He also served as curriculum consultant at schools and institutions.
The morning discussion, led by Taira, covered the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; the uprooting from their homes and incarceration of 120,000 ethnic Japanese; the activation and deployment of the 100th Infantry Battalion and also the 442nd Regimental Combat Team; Japanese language training and assignment of 3,000 Japanese Americans Military Intelligence Service specialists in the Asia Pacific Theater; the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion's (of the 442nd RCT) liberation of Jewish inmates from a concentration sub-camp in Dachau, Germany; and a working bibliography.
In the afternoon JAVA and NJAMF Executive Directors described their respective education programs. This was followed by Elinson splitting the participants into 4 groups to develop questions on the points covered in the morning program. One person from each group was selected as the interviewer, who interviewed three WW II veterans: Kelly Kuwayama (442nd RCT); Grant Ichikawa (internee and MIS); and Ranger Hall of Famer Grant Hirabayashi (MIS and Merrill's Marauders).
Consensus of the attendees is that they derived a useful additional tool to teach their students about the Japanese American experience during World War II.
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