When I saw the photo (above) of the Port of Kobe, I immediately thought of my paternal grandmother, Wakano Mukai, who, at the age of 17, departed on the SS Manchuria from the Port of Kobe on January 10, 1910. She left Japan to join her husband, Buntaro, in California. She had agreed to marry him based only upon a photo that she had seen of him. If Wakano were alive today, I would ask her about what the voyage from Kobe to Honolulu to San Francisco was like and what her life in California had taught her about the world.

The goal of educating youth about the world has been promoted by Kobe City Mayor Kizo Hisamoto, who supported Kobe City’s decision to collaborate with the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE) on the development of a new online course, Stanford e-Kobe. The opening ceremony for the inaugural Stanford e-Kobe course was held on September 18, 2021. The course will help high school students in Kobe expand their knowledge of the United States and U.S.–Japan relations—including topics like diversity and entrepreneurship—beyond just a superficial level. In his opening comments, Mayor Hisamoto noted, “Our city strives to create an environment in which young people could fully realize their potential. We have already implemented a number of startup support programs in cooperation with various universities and private companies in the city.” He continued,

SPICE’s Alison Harsch, Stanford e-Kobe Instructor, and I represented SPICE during the opening ceremony. During the ceremony, Harsch told the 29 students that they will be encouraged to think in an “internationally minded manner”—that is, to think about different points of view. She also emphasized that students need not be concerned if they encounter small setbacks in the course, and to “fail forward.” Harsch offered students a glimpse into what Stanford e-Kobe will be like with its active learning and student-centered focus. Teacher Consultant Tomoko Nakamura, Fukiai High School, commented, “Alison-sensei’s words encouraged our students a lot. They must think that it is important to be positive and express their opinions without hesitation… I am grateful for her welcoming of our students so warmly into Stanford e-Kobe.”

Harsch noted that “students should come away from the course with a much deeper understanding of the United States and its strong history of diversity, including early Japanese immigration.” Wakano was never able to return to Japan after immigrating to the United States in 1910. She died in 1947. I wish that she were alive today to hear me share with the students of Kobe, who are about her age when she left Japan, that her last fading glimpse of Japan—that of Kobe—has become clearer again through students of Kobe who aspire to build bridges between their city and the United States and to encourage their peers in the United States to see Kobe firsthand.

I am grateful to Mayor Kizo Hisamoto for making this course possible and for his vision; and to Superintendent Jun Nagata for his leadership and support. I am most grateful to Masanori Nagamine, former Director, Kobe Trade Information Office in Seattle, and Dr. Takaaki Hoda, Kobe University, for allowing me to consult with them while they were in Seattle and at Stanford, respectively. Importantly, I would like to express my heartfelt appreciation to Tomoko Nakamura from Fukiai High School and Toshihiro Nishiyama from the Kobe Board of Education for their kind correspondence and unwavering support; and to Satoshi Kawasaki as well.

Stanford/SPICE East Asia Seminars for Teachers in Hawaii (“Stanford SEAS Hawaii”) is a teacher professional development opportunity for educators who wish to enhance their teaching of East Asia. Offered by the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE) with the generous support of the Freeman Foundation, Stanford SEAS Hawaii will select 25 teachers to participate in a nine-month fellowship from November 2021 to July 2022. This program is managed by Rylan Sekiguchi and coordinated by Sabrina Ishimatsu.

The application deadline for Stanford SEAS Hawaii is October 15, 2021.

The 2021–22 program is open to all public, charter, and private high school teachers on Kauai, Lanai, Maui, Molokai, Niihau, and the island of Hawaii. Selected teachers—Stanford/Freeman SEAS Hawaii Fellows—will build their content knowledge of East Asia by learning from a combination of experts based at Stanford University and other institutions. Fellows will also receive extensive curricula, teaching resources, and training from SPICE to support their teaching of East Asia in the high school classroom.

The 2021–22 program will consist of two parts:

1. A series of four private virtual seminars with scholars during the 2021–22 academic year (November 15, January 13, March 22, and May 3; to be confirmed), each exploring a different aspect of East Asia.
2. A three-day in-person teacher institute in Honolulu in the summer of 2022 (July 12–14; to be confirmed) that will highlight the geography, cultures, politics, and history of East Asia, including a special focus on U.S.–Asia relations and the Asian diaspora in the United States. Teachers will be joined by the 2020–21 Stanford/Freeman SEAS Hawaii Fellows from Oahu. (Note: The institute will be subject to local health and safety guidelines at the time. Participants will be notified in advance if plans must be changed.)

Twenty-four teachers from Oahu participated in the inaugural year (2020–21) of Stanford SEAS Hawaii. In their reflections, many commented on the rich subject matter content that was delivered by the Stanford scholars. Dr. Robert Straton (Punahou School) commented, “To my mind, the Stanford SEAS Hawaii program is spot-on! In a nutshell, you get down-to-earth professors who provide extremely interesting talks, then do their best afterwards to answer all questions in clear, straightforward language… Each session includes a shortlist of further readings, useful primary source documents, and more.” Shawna Poitra (Kapolei High School) noted “The Stanford SEAS Hawaii program was a great opportunity for educators to learn about multiple aspects of history. The presenters were engaging and knowledgeable; the depth in their content area made it a rich experience. The SPICE coordinators did a fantastic job creating meetings that were useful and manageable as working teachers. This experience was well worth my time.”

To apply for this opportunity, visit this webpage.

To be notified of other professional development opportunities, join SPICE’s email list and follow SPICE on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

In addition to Stanford SEAS Hawaii, SPICE offers teacher PD opportunities virtually to teachers nationwide and locally in California to middle school teachers, high school teachers, and community college instructors. For more information on those programs, please visit the webpages below.

• East Asia Summer Institute for Middle School Teachers
• East Asia Summer Institute for High School Teachers
• Community College Programs

Gathering educators from across the Bay Area for our in-person summer institutes on East Asia and the Asian American experience has always been a highlight of our year at SPICE. Teachers soak up content lectures from Stanford faculty and other experts and discuss pedagogy, and, most importantly, form a meaningful learning community in which diverse ideas and varied perspectives are encouraged and shared. Teachers also gain valuable insight and feedback from SPICE curriculum specialists. Sitting eye-to-eye with like-minded educators seeking deeper content knowledge and authentic voices is a special experience, and it’s one that we look forward to every year.

The COVID-19 pandemic, of course, necessitated a change of plans. We moved our middle school and high school teacher professional development programs online amidst concerns that the deeper person-to-person connections that we valued would be lost. Much to our surprise, these fears proved to be unwarranted. After 18 months of teaching under the most challenging and exhausting of circumstances, teachers were eager for a safe space to connect, share, empathize, listen, and learn. Perhaps we had all become used to interacting as little squares on a Zoom screen.

Moving to an online model enabled us to broaden our reach considerably, engaging teachers from all across North America and beyond, with participants joining from as far as China and India. This geographic diversity—as well as the wide range of subject areas taught by the participants—enhanced the learning experience of these summer institute cohorts in surprising ways. Rich curricular and pedagogical resources were shared generously in the discussion boards on Canvas, our online learning platform. One of the most rewarding aspects of the posts was to hear about the diverse communities of students with whom the teachers work—from inner city schools on the West Coast to rural schools in the Midwest and suburban schools in the South.

Seventeen educators gathered online from June 28 to July 1 for the 2021 Virtual East Asia Summer Institute for Middle School Teachers, deepening their content knowledge on Asia and considering new perspectives and pedagogical approaches for the upcoming school year. The first three days focused on the Silk Road, Chinese dynasties, and Tokugawa Japan respectively. On the final day, teachers explored and discussed ways to incorporate more authentic Asian American voices in their teaching, culminating in a panel discussion with Asian American authors of YA fiction and memoirs.

During the final week of July, the 2021 Virtual East Asia Summer Institute for High School Teachers engaged 20 teachers with content lectures, small group discussions, and curricular resources highlighting the geography, cultures, politics, history, and literature of East Asia, with a special focus on the Asian diaspora in the United States and the diversity of the Asian American experience. Teachers absorbed subject-matter content from a range of guest speakers and collaboratively discussed ideas for implementing the content into their classrooms.

“I gained so many valuable takeaways from this summer SPICE seminar to be able to adapt meaningful content points and activities,” noted Kelly McKee, a social studies teacher at Lake Forest High School in Illinois. “It is such a challenge cultivating an effective online learning community. This summer I participated in several online PD [professional development] programs, but the SPICE seminar was certainly one of the most engaging and worthwhile.”

With the fall 2021 academic term under way, the teachers now face the challenge of taking their newfound knowledge and finding ways to incorporate it into their classrooms. Mike Vazquez, a history teacher at Brenwood Academy in Nashville, Tennessee, commented that he appreciated the opportunities to interact with other educators, and that “it is up to us to continue those relationships in the future.” With this in mind, we hope to convene additional virtual gatherings with these two cohorts later this year, and to continue strengthening this learning community as educators continue to face new challenges brought about by the pandemic.

SPICE’s teacher institutes are offered in partnership with the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia, which is generously funded by the Freeman Foundation. For more professional development opportunities for educators, visit our Teacher Programs webpage, join our email list, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.