{"id":11692,"date":"2010-05-12T08:07:37","date_gmt":"2010-05-12T12:07:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=11692"},"modified":"2010-05-12T08:07:37","modified_gmt":"2010-05-12T12:07:37","slug":"wit-life-92-doumo-arigatou-sensei-watson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2010\/05\/12\/wit-life-92-doumo-arigatou-sensei-watson\/","title":{"rendered":"WIT Life #92: Doumo arigatou, Sensei Watson!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"..\/category\/wit-life\/\"><em><strong>WITLife<\/strong><\/em><\/a><em><strong> is a periodic series written by professional  Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator <\/strong><\/em><em><a onclick=\"javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('\/outbound\/article\/www.stacysmith.webs.com');\" href=\"http:\/\/www.stacysmith.webs.com\/\"><strong>Stacy  Smith<\/strong><\/a> <\/em><em><strong>(Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She  starts her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here  she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her  own observations.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Last week there was an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/05\/10\/education\/10teacher.html?th&amp;emc=th\">interesting article<\/a> in the NYT about Chinese teachers who are sponsored by their <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/graphics8.nytimes.com\/images\/2010\/05\/10\/us\/10teacher_CA2\/10teacher_CA2-articleInline.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"190\" height=\"174\" \/>government (with additional support from local school districts) to come teach here in the States for up to three year.\u00a0 It reminded me of JET, as well as my own experience first learning Japanese in high school.\u00a0 The article featured a young woman teaching in rural Oklahoma, and the cultural roadblocks she encountered along the course of her job (American students lack of geographical knowledge, pregnant teenagers, etc.).\u00a0 I love the quote she provides at the end of the article regarding what she hopes to impart to her students: \u201cI want my students to have a sweet, sweet memory of taking Chinese.\u00a0 They won\u2019t remember a lot of words, but I want them to  remember the beauty of the language and the culture.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It calls to mind the power of teachers and how a good one can have a dramatic effect on your future.\u00a0 As for me personally, I can definitely say that I would not be where I am today without the existence of my amazing high school Japanese teacher, Sensei Watson.\u00a0 It was her unique teaching style and incorporation of non-traditional methods, like showing us \u7d05\u767d\u6b4c\u5408\u6226 (<em>kouhaku uta gassen or <\/em>New Year&#8217;s Eve Singing Content) and having us write \u5e74\u8cc0\u72b6 (<em>nengajou<\/em> or New Year&#8217;s greeting cards) before <em>Oshougatsu<\/em> that initially made me curious about this country that seemed to be so different from my own.\u00a0 I am eternally grateful to her for getting me started on my lifelong\u00a0 journey of discovering Japan!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations. Last week there was an interesting article in the NYT about Chinese teachers who are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[42,18,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anecdote-article","category-translatinginterpreting","category-wit-life"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-32A","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11692"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11695,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11692\/revisions\/11695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}