Japanese Classes and Programs

** Winter/Spring 2012 Japanese Classes Schedule **

2010 Norrie Elementary School Visit Photos

2010 Japanese Cultural & Art Classes Photos

Great Lakes Center for Youth Development (GLCYD) has offered a couple of Japanese Cultural Classes partnering with Peter White Public Library through the City of Marquette Arts and Culture Center. The classes were held in January 2008 for elementary school students and in March 2008 for middle and high school students. The students learned geography, language, culture, and arts such as origami and Japanese calligraphy. Also, the classes went to Temaki & Tea at NMU for their last sessions and tried some Japanese foods by using their chopsticks. These classes will be offered again in the winter/spring 2009. Also, we are planning to provide an art class sometime in the winter or spring. Tomoko Inoue is the instructor of these classes and is from Japan. She has lived in Marquette area for about 10 years, and she loves learning English. The classes are educational but also fun. Students will experience hands-on activities at every session.

GLCYD is a non-profit organization which provides technical assistant to non-profits and youth-serving organizations including fund development, survey development, evaluation process, board development, media approach, and youth related workshops. Also, GLCYD tries to support young people in the U.P. to grow healthy and strong. GLCYD uses the 40 Developmental Assets framework which was created by the Search Institute to assess the needs of youth. The organization helps schools administer the 40 Developmental Asset survey every other year to evaluate students' needs and presents the results to the public, so people know which areas we need to work on to increase those assets in our youth. GLCYD believes that the 40 Developmental Assets is useful and very important for people to understand and recognize, so we all use the same language and work together to support our kids and young people.

One of the 40 Developmental Assets is Cultural Competence. Cultural Competence means that young people have knowledge of and comfort with people of different cultural/racial/ethnic backgrounds. This asset has been evaluated as one of the lowest assets in young people in our area. It is a very important asset for young people to have. However, since Marquette and other counties in the U.P. are rural and not diverse like Detroit, there are not many cultural opportunities and it is quite difficult to build the cultural competence in our youth. It is vital for kids to have this asset since many young people move out of the U.P. to go to college and/or to work in different parts of the U.S. or even in the different countries. "It is very interesting and amazing that there are so many countries and different kinds of people in the world. There are some similarities and differences in each culture and country. We don't have to like everything about every culture and country, but we need to learn to tolerate and understand them so that we can respect and appreciate each other," said Tomoko, the class leader.

GLCYD hopes these Japanese Cultural Classes will help your children and you to be more interested in many different cultures and countries. Please consider signing up your kids for a Japanese Cultural Class or/and Japanese Art Class in 2011. "There is no charge for kids and young people to take any of the Japanese classes. It is very important to start building their ability to tolerate different cultures while they are young," said Tomoko. Watch for a new class schedule coming up. Please call the Arts and Culture Center, 228-0472, to register for classes. The Arts and Culture Center offers many different kinds of great workshops and classes for kids, youth, and adults through out a year. Don't miss them! These workshops and classes are good asset-building opportunities for everybody. Please join us and let's have fun. We look forward to hearing from you!

2010 School Visit - Norrie Elementary School in Ironwood

 

2010 Japanese Cultural & Art Classes Photos

2nd-5th Grade Class
Middle & High School Class
Japanese Art Class