Sixty-four Japanese students spent last week at Lux Middle School as part of an annual exchange program with Lux Middle School.
MARGARET REIST / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Sunday, June 29, 2008 7:00 pm
Sixty-four Japanese students spent last week at Lux Middle School cutting up sharks, singing Broadway songs and building tool boxes.
Among other things.
The students, who came to Lincoln as part of an annual exchange program with Lux Middle School, also got a taste of eight different Bright Lights classes.
And on Friday, Lincoln Mayor Chris Beutler made an appearance to officially recognize the six-year partnership between students at Senshu Matsudo Junior Senior High School and Lincoln’s summer Bright Lights program.
Senshu Matsudo, a private school near Toyko that emphasizes learning English, includes in its tuition a trip to Lincoln.
Its students correspond with Lux students throughout the year and stay with host families, most of them from Lux.
Earlier this year, a group of Lux students went to Japan, staying with Senshu Matsudo students and visiting their school.
Now the Japanese students are here, where they spend the first part of their trip with students from around the city in the Bright Lights classes.
“The classes are secondary,” said Barb Highstreet, the coordinator of the international Bright Lights program. “The important part of these classes is building international friendships and helping Japanese students with their English.”
To that end, the eight classes offered to the Japanese and American students included one called “Sharks,” which let students dissect and study all sorts of sealife.
At the end, they’d cook the objects of their study and try them, with one qualification:
“Not the sharks in formalydhyde,” Highstreet said.
American students paired with Japanese students in a class called “Broadway Bound” and worked on show tunes and dance moves that they performed on Friday.
Students also drew comic books in a comics class, built tool boxes in a woodworking class, learned about digital photography, made clay whistles and had an iron chef contest.
In the cooking class, the students learned to make everything from sushi to ice cream, Highstreet said.
They also had a games class, where students played both American and Japanese games, a great way to foster the relationships between American and Japanese students, she said.
After a farewell dinner for teachers and staff, students were to spend the next several days with their host families.
Allowing the visitors to practice their English is just one of the benefits of coming to Lincoln, Highstreet said.
“I think what they gain is an appreciation for a different way of life,” she said.
School in America is very different, and Bright Lights classes epitomize the often more hands-on and interactive approach to education in the United States, she said.
“In Japan,” she said, “they don’t do anything like cut up sharks.”
Reach Margaret Reist at 473-7226 or mreist@journalstar.com.