Event

The University of Pennsylvania Center for East Asian Studies is pleased to announce that it will offer the Phila-Nipponica Project, the 14th year in a series devoted to preparing educators in schools in the Philadelphia region to convey knowledge and understanding of Japan to their students and colleagues. Nearly two hundred Philadelphia-area educators have enhanced their classroom teaching about Japan through seminars, a summer study-tour, and curriculum development workshops.

In 2015, the Center for East Asian Studies will offer a "graduate" program with a focus on: Teaching about Japan's Religious Culture. Teachers who have previously participated in Phila-Nipponica (or have equivalent experience through the study or travel of Japan), are invited to apply.

For 2015, the Project entails:

• Three full Saturday seminars on February 21, March, 21, and April 25, 2015
• A group study tour in Japan from Friday, June 26-Tuesday, July 14, 2015 (exact dates of departure and return are tentative).
• The total cost of the program is $1500. The remaining costs are funded by the US-Japan Foundation and the Center for East Asian Studies.

For the last decade the University of Pennsylvania has partnered successfully with the US–Japan Foundation in the Phila-Nipponica Project, preparing educators in our area's schools to convey knowledge and understanding of Japan to their students and colleagues. We have prepared a total of 120 teachers in the introductory Phila-Nipponica projects: 20 teachers in each of six years intensively studied Japan during seminars conducted by Penn faculty and in faculty-led study-tours of Japan .

The results from these efforts over the course of the decade are both widespread and deep in impact. By a conservative calculation, the total number of students who have been taught about Japan in the Greater Philadelphia area as a result of the Phila-Nipponica Project is about 30,000. The depth of the outcome is measured in the classes, after-school clubs, and special inter-school projects that are now devoted to the study of Japan, and the on-going relationships that have been established between American and Japanese schools and students.