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WORLDLY TEACHERS:

CULTURAL LEARNING AND PEDAGOGY

By

Martha Hawkes Germain

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Teacher Education

1996

ABSTRACT

WORLDLY TEACHERS:
CULTURAL LEARNING AND PEDAGOGY

By

Martha Hawkes Germain

This study is about teacher learning and change. The context for this
learning is experience abroad. The degree to which in-depth international
study and experience affects the pedagogy of a veteran teacher is the question
which drove this inquiry.

I interviewed six experienced teachers from several mid-western and
north-eastern states between October, 1994 and May, 1996. Four had traveled to
Japan and two to China. Their in-depth experience included study of the
culture for at least five years; living and working there for at least six months;
or a combination of the two. Using narrative analysis to analyze their stories,
I have found that, according to these teachers, international experience was
their catalyst for personal growth.

The six teachers give many examples of how this experience changed
their pedagogy. They were able to introduce more authenticity into their
curriculum with artifacts including pictures and stories. Most felt they were
more sensitive and empathetic to students from different cultural backgrounds
than their own. The majority of the teachers discuss their teaching style
before the experience in comparative terms, as if they were unaware of some

aspects of their own teaching until they had a comparative touchstone of

different teaching practices in another society with which to compare their
own work. They all integrated their new knowledge into the curriculum in
ways which they felt greatly enriched their classroom practice.

Energized, motivated, and knowledgable veteran teachers can be a
tremendous force for school reform in the US. Educators at all levels need to
encourage teachers who are willing to invest their own time and energy in
intensive international study and experience to systematically share their
knowledge and experiences with the school community. The work of these
teachers will then not only transform themselves in the Deweyan tradition but

help transform the school context into an authentic learning community.

Copyright by
MARTHA J. GERMAIN
1996

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It is difficult for me to find words to express my gratitude to the people
who have extended themselves so selflessly to me to encourage my work at

every step of this journey.

To MentorsI Friends and Colleagues at M.S.U.

My transition from [(-12 teacher to teaching and learning, and
eventually research in the emotionally nurturing and academically
challenging atmosphere of the College of Education at Michigan State
University has profoundly affected my life and work.

My Committee

The highlight of my three year excursion into higher education has
been my wonderful dissertation committee. Lynn Paine, my advisor and
committee chair, has shepherded me through the process of adapting to a
different culture, the world of higher education, with respect, sensitivity, and
solid support for my struggle to bridge the sometimes uncomfortable gap
between my self-identification as a K-12 teacher to teacher educator and
researcher. Lynn demonstrated to me the finest example of a teaching style
which promotes the Deweyan ideal of self-reflection, collegial interchanges,
and rigorous scholarship.

Jack Schwille supported my work as a high school teacher to engage
colleagues in a K-lZ university collaboration to promote international
understanding in U.S. schools. He also persuaded me to make this transition in

my life to a second career in the university. Jack is a most empathetic listener

whose insights and support exhibited to me the highest standards of
mentoring.

Jack Williams gave me extensive quality time and support in my work to
promote international education as a teacher and has been the driving force
behind another transition for me, to transform this dissertation into a book,
accessible to lay and professional readers.

Steve Weiland has by his own example of scholarship in life history and
narrative analysis provided me with the resources which made my journey
into the world of qualitative analysis pleasurable and rewarding.

My M.S.U. Professors and Colleagues

The following scholar/ teachers who helped me through the demanding
and rigorous course work at M.S.U. each gave something special to me during
this personal and professional journey:

Sharon Feiman-Nemser, whose conception of the ideal teacher as one
who works continually throughout her” life to improve her knowledge,
awareness, and understanding is a model for teachers nationwide. She
inspired me to delve further into the field of veteran teacher learning as an
integral component of substantive school reform in the U.S.

Helen Featherstone, who compassionately helped me to analyze my own
teaching style and whose work promoted this kind of self-reflective analysis.

Suzanne Wilson, who encouraged me to "write, write, write" after I
reacted to her constructive criticism by beginning to tell my story as a K-12
teacher.

Gary Sykes who helped me understand the importance of developing

leadership skills among educators and Maenette Benham, who provided a

*I have chosen to alternate gender pronouns whenever I refer to teachers in
this dissertation.

vi

wonderful example of how to develop creative and challenging syllabi at the
university level.

Deborah Ball, who helped me overcome anxiety about my first
proseminar paper and introduced me to the work of John Dewey and Paolo
Freire.

Michael Sedlak, who helped me explore the lives of Horace Mann and
Bronson Alcott and whose eloquent discussions of the history of U.S. education
fascinated my imagination.

Anna Neuman and Aaron Pallas, who demonstrated how a husband-wife
team could work together in a complementary way to encourage different
kinds of awareness and reflexivity, wedding a respect for the value of
qualitative and quantitative inquiry. The humor and collegiality they shared
with the class elegantly enhanced each other's insights and promoted deeper
understandings.

Sandy Wilcox, who patiently worked to help me develop my overarching
and subsidiary research questions and demonstrated with her own work the
nuances and dilemmas of qualitative research in a school context.

Susan Melnick, who encouraged me to research the relationship
between the Civil Rights Crusade and School Reform through a deeper
understanding of the work of Thurgood Marshall.

David Labaree, who pushed me further on the road toward analytical
thinking and writing and supported the part of me which dreams of shaking
up the school establishment to make the schools into more humane
environments.

Betsy Knox, whose work as Co-Director of the Michigan 4-H included the

commitment of 4—H support for five years to the Pacific Rim Consortium and

vii

support for my work with the 4—H to promote Chinese language and culture in
Michigan's schools.

I would also like to thank many of my colleagues working toward a PhD
in the College of Education who shared their work with me and read my work.
This mutual interchange of ideas helped me develop my research and writing
skills. I especially want to thank the international students, most of whom
must complete this rigorous program in English as a second language, for

their friendship, insights, and support.

To My Special Friends and Wonderful Family:

Nancy Fox, who has worked with me for six years providing technical
support to develop the Center for Chinese Studies in Warren Consolidated
Schools and the Pacific Rim Consortium. She supported me during every phase
of my career since 1987, including my three years of PhD work, transcribing
tapes and typing manuscripts. The sunshine and laughter she exuded made
every project more survivable, more doable. I cannot imagine how my work
could have evolved without her effort and friendship.

My three "adopted sister" friends and exemplary K-12 educators: Joyce
Field, Mary Frost, and Judy Locher, whom I view as family, and who have
encouraged and supported me for almost thirty years.

My step-daughters and step-son, Marci, Mark, and Marylisa who
supported me with flowers, banners, and, most of all, words of encouragement
for all of my academic and professional work. I could not be more blessed in
my wedding with a second family than I have been with all of the Germains.

My granduncle, James Hawkes, whose own example as a scholar and

friend motivated me from the time of my childhood.

viii

My daughter, Elizabeth Drury, who has accompanied me during many
personal and professional struggles and triumphs. I have the utmost respect
for her strength, integrity, and compassion.

My nieces, Ashley and Nicole Hawkes, who have given me great cheer
and delight.

In memory of my kind and loving paternal grandparents, Franklin Paul
and Maude Elizabeth Hawkes, who were my role models in education and in
life, and encouraged me to love learning and other human beings as a very
young child; and my maternal grandmother and namesake, Martha Farley
Kidd, always a loving supporter of mine.

My mother and father, Norma and Albert Hawkes, following in the
tradition of my dear grandparents, who have unflaggingly supported me
personally and professionally. My father, in spite of his seven-year battle
with Alzheimer's Disease, struggles to utter words of love and encouragement.
My mother continually expresses her love and support.

My husband, Frank Germain, whose constant support and
encouragement helped me persevere in this work. He has selflessly taken
care of many of the necessary vicissitudes of life, often cooking and shopping,
in addition to reading and commenting upon this study and working past
normal retirement to help support this project. He more than any other has
made this work possible.

To all of the wonderful students and colleagues I have worked with over
28 years in 1(-12 schools and three years in the university, you have made
teaching and learning a joy for me. To you, my friends and my family: You

mean the world to me.

ix

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................... 1
My Story ............................................................................................................. 1
The Goal of This Study ...................................................................................... 4
Perspectives on International Experience .................................................. 7
Teachers as "Border Crossers" ........................................................................ 10
Cultural Learning ............................................................................................. 12
Self-Reflection to Broad Connections ........................................................... 16
Whose Values? Whose History? ..................................................................... 19
Toward an "Opening of the American Mind" .............................................. 20
The Organization of this Dissertation ........................................................... 22
Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 23

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY .......................................................................................... 25
Participant Selection Criteria ........................................................................ 27
Narrative Analysis ........................................................................................... 3O
Seeking Different Perspectives: My History ............................................... 33
Learning About China ..................................................................................... 34
Coming Home ..................................................................................................... 36
The Question of Voice ....................................................................................... 38
The Question of My Relationship with These Teachers ............................. 42
An Introduction to My Informants ............................................................... 47

CHAPTER 3: THE PERSON, THE LIFE: WHY GO? .......................................................... 61
Why Go? .............................................................................................................. 62
Their Reasons: ................................................................................................... 63

"I jumped at the opportunity" (Mary Ehrhardt)
Family/Community Influences: ..................................................................... 68
"My parents were 'internationalists'" (Paul Vandemere)

School Influences: ............................................................................................ 75

"We felt a combination of anger, being offended and
shame." (Denise Green)

Undergraduate and post-undergraduate influences: ................................ 79
"I saw what appeared to be a giant pajama party off in the
corner of the Cairo airport." (Paul Vandemere)

Teaching practice before the international experience: ......................... 85
"I was hopefully a good teacher." (Bill Notebaum)

Their Preparation: ............................................................................................ 89
"I wanted badly to communicate [in China]." (Mary
Ehrhardt)

Learning Style: ................................................................................................. 92

"I just became fascinated. I knew that I wanted to learn
more." (Paul Vandemere)
Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 95

X

CHAPTER 4: INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE IN THE SCHOOLS: ................................. 98
DIFFERENCES IN STYLE, CONTRIBUTIONS, AND OBSERVATIONS

Their Work: Differences in Teaching Practice ........................................... 99
"What upset the Chinese most is that I wouldn't stand
behind the podium" (Ed Donovan)
Their Contributions in the Schools ............................................................... 103
"They [the Chinese teachers] had not, for example, ever
heard of Piaget or Dewey or Vygotsky."
(Mary Ehrhardt)

The Content and Context of Experience ........................................................ 114
A Case Study: Ellen Stacey .............................................................................. 116
Observations: What They Learned About the Schools ................................ 128

"I must respect my teacher" (a student in China)
Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 1 3 3
CHAPTER 5: "ONLY CONNECT" (E. M. Forster) .......................................................... 135
Living Abroad ................................................................................................... 137

"We bought our toilet paper and milk first from a little man
on the comer" (Mary Ehrhardt)

Support, Connections, and Friendships ........................................................ 148
"Bread on Butter" (Ellen Stacey)

Support ................................................................................................... 150

Language Study to Promote Relationships ...................................... 152

Small Happenings ................................................................................. 155

Friendship .............................................................................................. 162

Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 170

CHAPTER 6: CHANGED PERSPECTIVES: ....................................................................... 173

LEARNING IN AN INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT

The Observations They Made: What They Learned ..................................... 174
"You felt just like you had stepped into the painting"
(Mary Ehrhardt)

Being Strangers in a Strange Land ............................................................... 192
"There goes the United States." (Ed and Heather Donovan)
Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 200
CHAPTER 7: COMING HOME .......................................................................................... 203
Reverse Culture Shock ..................................................................................... 204
"Like Going to the Moon" (Ed Donovan)
Changes in the Classroom ............................................................................... 215
Changes in How They Teach ........................................................................... 216
Changes in the Content of the Curriculum .................................................. 230
Negative Stereotypes Debunked ..................................................................... 242
Empathy in the Classroom ............................................................................... 249
Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 252
CHAPTER 8: TRANSFORMATION .................................................................................. 254
Self-Confidence ................................................................................................. 256

xi

Collegial Sharing .............................................................................................. 259

Cultural Connections and Sensitivity to Others .......................................... 267
Bill Notebaum: ............................................................................................... 271
A Case of Personal and Professional Transformation

Arguing for International Education ........................................................... 281
Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 290
CHAPTER 9: CONCLUSION ............................................................................................. 294

INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE AND SCHOOL REFORM
Veteran Teachers in the Process of Becoming ........................................... 295
Culturally Balanced Perspectives Within .................................................... 299

Pedagogical Content Knowledge

International Experience as a Learning Opportunity for Teachers ....... 304
A Learning Environment in the Schools ..................................................... 307
Friendships and Connections across Borders .............................................. 310
RECOMMENDATIONS .............................................................................................. 313
Who should Go? ................................................................................................. 313
Preparation ........................................................................................................ 315
Language Study ................................................................................................. 321
Administrative and Collegial Support ........................................................... 324
In-depth Experience ........................................................................................ 334
A Final Word: "Yes" ........................................................................................... 337
APPENDIXA. ................................................................................................................... 340
UST OF REFERENCES ...................................................................................................... 344

xii

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

This study is about teacher (K-12) cultural learning: the extent to
which intensive international study and experience may affect veteran
teaching practices. Analysis of narratives from in-depth interviews with six
veteran teachers (age 40-65) is the basis of this work. These teachers describe
their own lives and experiences before, during, and after their international
experience, which they all believe has profoundly affected their lives and
work.

I begin this chapter with an examination of the ramifications of my
own international study and experience, which were the precursor to this
study and then clarify the goal of this research. I turn next to considering
how the works of John Dewey, George and Louise Spindler, and others have
helped me develop a framework for understanding the many rich descriptions
and feelings expressed in these teacher narratives and review the cultural
issues explored and developed in reference to the international experience of
teachers. I discuss how this study elucidates whose values and history should
be emphasized in U.S. schools and offer a response to those who would restrict
or eliminate cultural and international study in the schools on the basis that it
undermines a sense of self, nationhood and basic American values. I end with

an overview of the organization of the following chapters in this dissertation.

My Story

In a former life, as a secondary school teacher for 28 years, I thought
that it was important for me to become better educated about the world in order

1

2

to guide the learning of my students. Every few years during this life, I
returned to school to take history and geography courses about China, Russia,
and Europe. I taught 7th and 8th grade Language Arts and social studies, 8th
through 11th grade English, American History, Modern Asian Culture, Russian
History and Culture, Modern European Culture, and American Government. I
took courses to understand more about the world, in order to share this
knowledge with my students. I loved introducing my students to this
knowledge via great varieties of fiction and nonfiction, which we discussed in
our big circle, so that we might look at each other when making our points.
Essays and interpretive papers allowed all students to express how they related
to, for example, Tolstoy's story, The Death of Ivan lllvch (1960).

It was not until I attempted to deepen my understanding of Chinese
history and culture by studying Chinese language for four years to enrich my
Modern Asian Culture course that I became fervently involved in an effort to
promote cultural and international learning in Michigan schools. Contacts
with colleagues in many school districts and my work for the Michigan
Department of Education in 1988 to survey all of the school districts in the State
(some 990) showed that very few schools in Michigan had strong international
education programs. Only a tiny percentage of these schools included non-
western cultures in their curriculum. I was asked by officials in the State
Department of Education to lead a statewide effort to intemationalize the
curriculum, and especially promote East Asian studies, while developing a
model Center for Chinese Studies in my own school district. The effort
culminated in three statewide conferences, targeted to teachers and
administrators, to raise awareness about the need to integrate international

and cultural studies into the curriculum. The fourth year of the program, we

3

initiated a pilot lst-8th grade Chinese and Spanish language program in six
elementary and three middle schools in Warren Consolidated Schools.

I gradually became a more public advocate of the need for international
and cultural study in the schools. I participated in the International
Toastmasters club for 2 years in order to become a more effective public
speaker on behalf of this cause. The foregoing occurred because of my core
beliefs that human beings must understand each other in order to promote
human dignity and mutual respect among individuals and cultures. Study of
works such as The Mass Psychology of Fascism by Wilhelm Reich (1947) had
convinced me that rigid patriarchy, ignorance and negative stereotyping had
combined to thwart human potential in almost every culture. Intensive study
of Chinese language and culture then was the impetus for an activism which
centered mainly upon teachers as the most important players in any effort to
change the focus and content of the school curriculum.

In the process of writing state and federal grants to support our efforts
to intemationalize the curriculum, I looked for research which would help
make a case that teachers need help to understand about the world if they
would be effective teachers in that area. I asked researchers at the American
Forum for Global Education and other organizations for suggestions. They
could not point to any work which would help me support my position. This
study is what has evolved out of that experience.

In—depth cultural learning, having enriched my life and classroom
practice tremendously, eventually led me to probe into the issue of teacher
learning in the College of Education at Michigan State University. This is
because as a teacher advocate for many years, I agree with Milbrey
McLaughlin (1990) that teachers are "key players" in the schools. I believe

that grass roots efforts among teachers to improve the subject matter

4

knowledge of themselves and others in the field must be supported. I also
believe that subject matter knowledge about the world and other cultures is
crucial in a world (to use an overused phrase) that is increasingly
interdependent.

For two years I explored the experience and cultural learning of six
veteran teachers via interviews. Because I have experienced three years of
intensive graduate work about learning, especially teacher learning, and
constantly reflect on this from the perspective of my own long experience
teaching, I believe that in this study I can generate knowledge about the
extent to which in—depth cultural learning of a veteran teacher affects his or

her classroom practice and life.

The Goal of This Stu—dy

The goal of this study is to explore the ramifications of international
study and experience on veteran teachers. To accomplish this goal, we will
learn from the narratives of veteran teacher informants about the meanings
they construct from their international experience.

The literature on multi-cultural global and international education
includes concerns about creating classroom environments which celebrate
diversity and uphold standards of respect and human dignity (Bymes and
Kiger, 1992; Cushner, et a1, 1992). This literature does not include much work
on teacher learning, but on the creation of curriculum such as global
education projects and organizational structures such as "international
schools" which will promote multi-cultural and international understanding
(Enloe and Simon, 1993; Freeman, 1986; Rosengren et a1, 1983; Tye and Tye,
1992; Wilson, 1993). Angine Hopkins Wilson's work on international
Experience in the schools includes interviews of teachers and former Peace

Corps volunteers who have become teachers about the meaning of their

5

international experiences. In almost every case, as in this small sample, they
believe that they are better teachers because of their international
experience.

A New York Times edition of Education Life "What Does it Take to Teach"
(section 4A/January 7, 1996), conjures up an alarming specter of
overwhelmingly white middle class females who are preparing to become
teachers of an increasingly diverse ethnic array of students as a great
problem which must be addressed in education today. To solve this problem,
former Peace Corps volunteers are being encouraged to teach in difficult
inner-city school environments because of their presumed heightened
cultural awareness. An experience living among and working with the people
of another culture for an extended period of time fulfills the criterion for in-
depth international experience, especially when learning the people's
language is part of this experience.

According to the evidence in my small sample of teacher narratives,
there is a link between in-depth international experience and/ or study and
cultural awareness and sensitivity; that is, if this experience is educative
within the Deweyan framework; i.e., the kind of experience or study which
promotes personal growth and transformation. An educative international
experience at least promotes awareness, which is a first step toward cultural
sensitivity and respect. This is why former Peace Corps volunteers might be
likely candidates to teach among students who have been forgotten by many
in affluent America (Kozol, 1991; Grubb and Lazerson, 1982). I argue that in-
depth international experience often generates in veteran teachers
introspection, empathy, and the desire to learn more.

I have learned from the teachers themselves as they told their own

stories about their international experience, their motivations to study, early

6

influences on their lives, and how they think this experience has affected
their teaching practice and professional lives. The key question is: does the
teacher feel his international study has been personally and/or professionally
transformative? Subsidiary issues to this key question are: how does he define
this transformation? What kind of meaning making does he make of his
experience? What about the experience makes it educative or miseducative?
What can we learn about the content and context of international experience
that is beneficial to teacher learning? How can a teacher's cultural learning
augment school reform in the U.S.?

A case could be made that any personally transformative experience
that serves to energize and motivate teachers is something worth exploring. A
breakthrough in psychological therapy for teachers experiencing personal
and/ or professional turmoil might cause a teacher to change her life in and
out of the classroom. Why then am I concentrating on the possible
transformative effects of intensive international study and/or experience?
Why am I concentrating on teachers and not just anyone's personal and
professional transformative experience?

First, I believe it is crucial that teachers make an effort to understand
about the world in order to be effective teaching students about the world.
There is hardly any school subject which does not involve some international
component. Secondly, teachers are the key players in schools. It is they who
must be educated and encouraged to participate in the continual improvement
of classroom practice. It is they who must model life-long learning for
children in order to encourage them to do likewise. Effective teachers must
have in-depth knowledge of the subjects they teach and be life-long learners
(Ball and McDiarmid, 1990; Nemser, 1983). Israel Scheffler (1967) views

teachers as intellectuals, engaged in continuous learning in order that they

7

can make a sense of the world, guide children toward deeper understandings,
and be models for the children. Teachers who have lived and worked abroad
and connected with individuals in another culture are more likely to live up to
Scheffler's idealistic model (and mine) than those who prefer to perpetually

remain within the safe cocoon of their own culture.

Perspectives on International Experience

This study is a qualitative analysis of veteran teacher narratives about
their international experience. I have analyzed these experiences to explore
the circumstances of international experience which might spawn a teacher's
personal growth in the Deweyan sense. I listened to the stories of teachers
who have been "border crossers", not necessarily in the radical political
context of Henry Giroux (1993), but possibly in the context of the work of
anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson (1994). In her long-term efforts to
connect with others in varied cultural contexts, Bateson eventually learns a
great deal about herself. Being aware that, according to Bateson, "experience
is structured in advance by stereotypes and idealizations" helped me analyze
the reactions of each teacher to his or her experience abroad (1994, p 5).

Most important to this study is the work of educational anthropologists
who explore the individual cultural contexts of teachers. The teachers‘
understandings of this context often defines their effectiveness with students
of different cultural contexts than their own. The works which have also
helped me choose questions which draw out my teacher informants'
experience and make sense of their narratives include those by
anthropologists, Mary Catherine Bateson (1989, 1994), Susan Florio-Ruane
(1994), and George and Louise Spindler (1974, 1987, 1994).

John Dewey's work (1925, 193 8) on the issue of experience and education

is key to this study. Self-reflection is necessary for the kind of personal

8

growth that Dewey believes is necessary in effective teachers, whose
experience he would consider to be "educative". Dewey illuminates what
constitutes educative or miseducative experience, the former leading to
personal growth and transformation; the latter fostering stagnation or worse,
degeneration of thought and work. International experience and study which
fosters a life-long passion to learn and understand would be educative in the
Deweyan sense. Conversely international experience which enhances a
teacher's sense of cultural superiority, rigidifies a closed mind, deepens the
chasm between self and other or promotes negative stereotyping of people
would be an extreme form of Dewey's concept of miseducation. This study
includes examples of educative and miseducative aspects of international
experience.

Effective teachers must engage in experience which is the wellspring
of personal growth and transformation. The mind informed by educative
experience is open to new knowledge, insights, and ways of understanding,
from the simple to the incredibly complex. Intellectual curiosity combines
with the will and discipline to learn. Transformative learning is always
reflective; the mind changes as it looks in upon itself from new perspectives.
It is this aspect of in-depth international study or cultural learning which can
provoke new insights about the world and ourselves. I agree with Dewey
(1916) that the mind-world dichotomy is false. The mind is in the world and
transforms itself and the world by looking inward and outward simultaneously
and by praxis, action to change the world. Transformative international
experiences for teachers must begin with awareness and exposure to the world
beyond our national boundaries as well as the cultural worlds within the U.S.

Dewey (1902) eschewed the idea of a retreat into the world of the mind,

of knowledge for its own sake without purpose. He believed that educative

9

learning is transformative, and that it is this personal transformation which
is necessary for the transformation of society. He did not view the individual
human being or the individual school without a social context, a widening web
of connections, relationships, and responsibilities in the world. Meaningful
human existence is in the connections, literally displayed in his use of
conjunctions The Child and the Curriculum, The School and Socieg,
Experience and Education. To Dewey, isolation causes the phenomenal waste
of human potential. In Experience and Educan’on (1938). which Dewey wrote
when he was 79, he criticized simplistic "either or" thinking. His earlier
works had emphasized a teacher's subject matter mastery to enable her to
relate this knowledge to the child and guide him toward more complex
understandings of knowledge as it is organized in the disciplines. The goal of
education leads to what he calls "a fully integrated personality", one who is
able "to extract meaning from his future experiences as they occur" (1938, p.
49). "Education as growth or maturity should be an ever present process." The
teacher's experience and mastery of subject matter knowledge is the necessary
precursor to Dewey's goal of education.

Teachers who study and experience another culture as veteran teachers
are often curious and love to learn; hence they are continually deepening
their grasp of subject matter knowledge. Bateson considers this knowledge to
be embedded in "layers of awareness" reflecting insight, "that depth of
understanding that comes by setting experiences, yours and mine, familiar
and exotic, new and old, side by side, learning by letting them speak to one
another" (1994, p. 14). If this international experience is educative in the
Deweyan sense, teachers will want to attain a view which is as unbiased as is
possible; they will question their own assumptions; they will pursue vicarious

knowledge found in books and articles to put their first hand knowledge into a

10

broader context; the more they know, the more they are aware that they do not
know; they are not arrogant or prejudiced; they are open to experience; and
their work as teachers would be to help themselves and others become better
human beings. This is the Deweyan ideal of educative experience, applied to
teachers as "directors of the soul life" (Dewey, 1904, p. 321). This continuum of
personal growth lasts a life time and is a model to all future generations of
human beings. This is what it means to be a great teacher-guide, whose depth
and commitment to learning transcends narrow national boundaries.
Education in the Deweyan sense is not isolated but is activist in terms of social
responsibility. Teachers like the six in this study, who have experienced
living and teaching abroad and studied international issues, are often actively
engaged in promoting international understanding and breaking down

cultural barriers and negative stereotypes.

_Te_achers as "Border Crossers"

How teachers can cultivate themselves as examples of the educative or
transformative power of international experience brings up issues of cultural
understanding. Does knowledge about the world promote cultural
understanding? Is there a link between understanding about the world and
how teachers might work with students in an increasingly diverse
multilingual society? Is there a link between a teacher's knowledge about the
world and how teachers cope with the reality of the failure of desegregation in
the American north, where overwhelmingly white middle-class students
constitute the student bodies of most northern U.S. suburbs and mostly black
and Hispanic students constitute the student bodies in poor, often dilapidated
urban ghetto schools? According to Anyon (1981) and many other scholars

and journalists, these students and schools are literally and figuratively worlds

11

apart (Delpit, 1995; Grubb and Lazerson, 1982; Kozol, 1991; Spindler and
Spindler, 1994).

This study provides some examples of how individual teachers might
begin to bridge this gap. I believe that by their own example as "border
crossers" in the sense developed by Henry Giroux (1993), teachers of all races
can encourage their own students to break down the social barriers of race
and class, to empower and transform themselves into activists for social
justice. Teachers like those in this study, engaged in the Deweyan concept of
"educative" international experience, could by their own example as cultural
border crossers help their students to understand and respect differences, and
hear the often silenced multiplicity of voices constituting American society
(Delpit, 1989).

The United States has become a multilingual, multicultural society, a
microcosm of world cultures, with students of some cultural groups living in
what many consider to be third world conditions in the inner cities, while the
mainly white affluent Americans live in the suburbs. Teachers who have
taught abroad will bring a different perspective, a different world view to
these cultural realities in American schools. They have experienced minority
cultural status and they have depended on connections with others from
different cultural backgrounds. The small sample of teachers in this study
gives credence to the idea that international experience can affect a teacher's
sensitivity toward foreign or ethnic minority children in his classroom.

Demographer Harold Hodgkinson exhorts Americans to think about the
consequences of high birthrates among minority populations when compared
to the white middle-class population. He predicts that by the year 2020, within
many areas of the south and west, a majority of "minority" cultural groups will

reside. Teachers in the inner cities, which include the greatest percentage of

12

minority populations trapped by class and ethnicity, must grapple with the
fact that "350,000 cocaine addicted babies [are] born every year" (1991). The
consequences of the separation of white middle class from the despair and
decay of mostly black and Hispanic inner cities gives a special cogency to
Giroux's argument. Those engaged in "the culture wars" debate, who propose
that schools emphasize traditional, European-based American values, rather
than multicultural values, may unwittingly be building the separating walls

_ even higher (Bloom, 1987; Finn, 1989; Hirsch, 1987; Ravitch, 1983; Hunter, 1991;
Levine, 1996).

Cultural Learning

Cultural learning and the cultural analysis of school can shed some
light upon the possibilities of "educative" international experience. Vivian
Paley, a first grade teacher, discovers and confronts her own biases as a
"White Teacher," the title of her book. She is humbled and mortified when she
realizes that she had been viewing her black girl students as a group and her
white girls as individuals. Negative childhood memories of being treated this
way as a minority Jewish child exacerbated her feelings. She asks, "Was I still
so acutely aware of color that I could see children as individuals only as they
became close to being my color and using my speech?" (1979, p. 137) One can
more easily connect with someone whose experience is similar to our own.
Vivian Paley, like teachers who experience minority status in another culture,
became aware of her interaction with the black girls because she was able to
connect her own experience to those of her students.

Anthropologists George and Louise Spindler have studied the questions
raised by Paley for many years. They contend that without reflectivity about
who we are, a deeply probing personal and professional look at ourselves, we

will unconsciously treat people differently. We will tend to be more open and

13

generous with people like ourselves. Their work on this issue began during
the 1950's with what they call the "Roger Harker syndrome." Harker was
considered by himself and others to be a good teacher, fair and unbiased
towards his students. When the Spindlers shared data with him which
indicated otherwise, he left the meeting, unable to accept the idea that he
reacted more openly and generously with students from his own class and
cultural background than he did with students from other backgrounds.
Roger subsequently returned to work in depth with the Spindlers to become
aware of his own cultural biases and improve his connections with students
from minority backgrounds (1974, 1994).

Today the Spindlers call this work "cultural therapy" (1994), in a
professional rather than a personal, psychological sense. The Spindlers
encourage all teacher educator programs to engage teachers in a process of
reflection upon their "enduring selves," the core values and cultural
traditions embedded within the family and cultural life of all human beings.
The effort is to understand who we really are from that standpoint. The next
step is to understand the "situated self," how the self adapts to contexts similar
or different from those of homes and community. They bring up the question:
is it necessary for teachers to probe deeply into themselves in order to better
understand others from different cultural backgrounds? Part of the
description of "culture shock" in the teacher narratives analyzed in this study
involved a similar introspection, which the teachers believe affected their
classroom practice.

The Spindlers contend that to the extent that a child or adult develops a
sense of "self-efficacy" within the situated self, he can become a self-
actualizing individual. However, a failure to adapt, wherein the conflict, the

barrier is too great for some children or teachers, causes an "endangered self,"

14

to emerge. This is a person who actively or passively acts out his alienation by
withdrawal or overtly self-destructive behavior (i.e., the use of drugs,
violence). John Dewey's conception of educative experience could be the
precursor to this sense of self-efficacy. The example of miseducative
experience in this study is a teacher who has not engaged in introspective
self—analysis which the Spindlers recommend and is alienated from colleagues
and family. The Spindlers can provide one framework for understanding how
a teacher's international experience might promote empathy for another
point of view, another "cultural" way of viewing reality, or conversely be the
basis for rigidity and prejudice.

The Spindlers, John Dewey, and many others in the past and present
reform movement encourage educators to listen to their students, to try to step
outside of their own subjective experience and understand the context and
environment of all of their students' family and cultural backgrounds. The
content of the curriculum must connect with or "draw out" whatever aspects
of the enduring self of the child which will help her develop self-efficacy
(Dewey, 1900/ 1902/ 1990). This curriculum must include international issues
because they constitute the real world of students today. The teacher who has
become a learner, a student again, of other cultures, who cares about the world
is likely to develop curriculum which puts a priority on international issues
and understandings. The teacher has developed his own sense of self-efficacy
about the world, thus becoming a model for his students.

Lisa Delpit (1989,1995) demonstrates cultural learning for efficacy by
challenging teachers to openly confront the dominant power issues by
teaching poor or minority children the code words and traditions of the
culture of power, not from a perspective of inferior status but from the

perspective of tools to open the doors of opportunity. The gatekeepers

15

represent the values and beliefs (enduring selves) of the majority in power.
Formal English language and culture could be taught as a separate and equal
second language, not English as a superior language and culture. A teacher of
native Athabascan children suggested that the class plan a formal English
dinner and then contrasted this with their own dining practices. This is an
example of children learning another way of thinking and acting; to know
and understand the culture of power without encouraging a rejection of their
own culture. This is also exactly how white middle-class children can learn
about the cultures of the world. Teachers with international and cultural
experience in more than one culture are best equipped to authentically
introduce the study of world history, geography, world cultures, and
languages to their students.

The work of E. M. Forster and Edward Said, however, would caution those
people from the privileged, developed world, for example, middle-class
teachers from the U.S., to be aware that they are part of a culture of
imperialism deeply embedded in western culture. Connections between these
fortunate people in the world and what Said (1993) (in derision of western
chauvanism) sometimes calls the "natives" of an indigenous culture can be
fraught with great complexity. As in Delpit's work, the culture of power "holds
the cards", thereby forcing those out of power to learn the ways of the
oppressors, A superior—inferior scenario develops which could skew many
friendships and connections. E. M. Forster in a Passage to India (1924) shows
how a well-meaning young woman, who wants to get to know a "native" Indian
person as a representative to her of all of India, precipitates a near disaster in
human relations. When Forster writes "Only Connect", it is emblematic of not
expecting much in the way of human intimacy when differences in ethnicity

or class exist. This prescript to Howard's End (1921) could also mean that only

16

connecting is the only hope for human beings. This study shows that the
connections and relationships which develop between these six teachers and
people from their host countries are most important and meaningful to each of
them. None of them would consider their experiences "in depth" without these
connections, however fraught with the negative entanglements of western
cultural imperialism which Said describes.

Delpit's vision juxtaposed with that of the Spindlers could provide an
alternative for people who felt they had to go through a period of painful
alienation from their own family and cultural roots in order to cross over
cultural barriers. Richard Rodriguez (1982) describes this partly as a
profound sense of loneliness, a feeling that he had to reject part of himself in
order to break into the dominant culture. Some scholars view schools as places
where the cycle of poverty and despair might be broken by pedagogy and
curriculum which exposes the children to knowledge which opens up other
worlds of opportunity to them, just as several teachers in this study do by
sharing their international experience with students (Floden, Buchman and
Schwille, 1987). This practice might counter the cases of lowered expectations
and less demanding curricula for lower social and economic segments of
society (Anyon, 1981; Kozol, 1991; Resnick, 1987). Teachers equipped to
compare and contrast diverse cultures can present alternatives to children

mentally locked into one particular cultural world view.

Self-Reflection to Broad Connections
Teachers who move out of their own familiar context or their own
cultural comfort zones can become cultural learners. Bateson (1994) considers
the value of multicultural learning to be in how we view ourselves
comparatively: "Seen from a contrasting poing of view or seen suddenly

through the eyes of an outsider, one's own familiar patterns can become

17

accessible to choice and criticism" ( p. 31). This is an example of how
international experience can contribute to the personal growth and
transformation of teachers. Israel Scheffler and John Dewey believe that
teachers must be thinking people in the deepest, most self-reflective sense
(Scheffler, 1967). A teacher "fairly saturated in subject matter" models by the
example of her life and being the attributes of student and thinker to her
students (Dewey, 1904, p. 320). Knowing facts without the context was not
Dewey's conception of worthwhile subject matter knowledge. The teacher
must "psychologize" the subject matter in the context of cognitive
understanding, relating and connecting this knowledge to the realities of life,
from the perspective of the learner (1902). This mental turning over of
knowledge through constant inquiry is the basis for a self-reflective mind,
the kind of mind which exhibits "reflection in action" (Schon, 1987). It is the
ideal of Oakeshott's (1989) "grand adventure", decribing mankind's sometimes
agonizing "predicament of self-disclosure." This self-reflective ordeal of
consciousness distinguishes human beings from other mammals. The very
essence of being human is the self-reflectivity of a thinker.

Dewey hoped teachers would nurture in the minds of children this
respect for the dignity of the human mind . The ultimate goal of promoting
international experience for teachers is to promulgate this basic respect
irrespective of cultural backgrounds as an example to young people. I will
argue that cultural learning does affect the self-awareness and empathic
sensitivity of some teachers. In the affective areas of tolerance,
thoughtfulness, and mutual respect they are better mentors for their students
than they were before their international experiences.

A teacher's international experience could be understood as a break

with experience, in that when she crosses that border, she will have to give up

18

some preconceived notions and assumptions about the culture she is studying
and perhaps some assumptions about her own culture. Teachers who study
about other cultures than their own, with the self-reflection of thinkers and
learners, can demonstrate their own growth and exemplify the Deweyan ideal
of educative experience in action. In Democracy and Education (1916), Dewey
advocates social action for the betterment of society as the natural outgrowth
of educative experience which promotes personal growth. As is exemplified
by the teachers in this study, it is their interactions with others which show
how a person has been transformed by "educative" experience.

Dewey's ideal is evidenced by the many teachers who want to establish
connections with others in different cultures and are part of a network of
people who wish to build a better world. They are among the people who link
up across boundaries, often as part of interest groups known as International
Non-Govemmental Organizations (INGO), such as the YMCA, the International
Red Cross, and Amnesty International (Boulding, 1990). While Bellah, et a1.
(1991), Gutrnann (1987), and others consider how we can build a better
democratic society within the U.S., these people in INGOs work to connect
across cultural and national boundaries for a better U.S. and world. They are a
grass roots movement dedicated to improving life for all of humanity. The
world-wide anti-nuclear movement, Doctors without Borders, and endangered
species activists, are movements dedicated toward working with others to
"make a better humanity," as did Dewey. This is work which gives meaning
and purpose to life, the key to understanding Dewey's "educative experience."
The world of connections of human understanding and mutual respect,
according to Boulding, rest upon many one-on-one relationships; the
friendships across borders of people who are committed to being responsible

for the consequences of human actions on this earth. The connections of

19

these teachers with people and families becomes part of a broader network of
people who work to improve the lives and potential of children around the

world.

Whose Values? Whog History?

My review of multicultural and global literature shows it to be
fundamentally at odds with the work of scholars who feel that this
multicultural emphasis is threatening to basic values embedded within their
conception of the American cultural and historical tradition, a position which
gives credence to Said's interpretation of western cultural imperialism. Allan
Bloom (1987), for example, is disturbed that today young Americans "know
much less about American history and those who were held to be its heroes"
than in the past (p. 34). His work, The Closing of the American Mind, was on
the New York Times best seller list for ten weeks and sold over 1 million copies,
indicating the wide influence of his argument (New York Times, 8/ 21/ 96, p.
A14). Bloom believes that ethnocentrism is a positive value because humans
need to be centered upon their own values and culture or they will have no
basis upon which to make judgments. He describes uncentered students who
no longer can feel moral outrage at man's inhumanity to man, because they
respect all values, even those which would cause people to throw a grieving
woman upon the funeral pyre of her husband (1987, p. 26). Bloom considers
this loss of values, knowledge, and centeredness a result of the values placed
upon openness, diversity, multiculturalism and emphasis on non-western
cultures in the schools. His answer would be to open the American mind by
returning to and acknowledging the superiority of Western cultural traditions
and values. This ostensibly would bring back a dedication to values of right
and wrong, good and evil, and a nationalistic sense of who we are as

Americans. International and multicultural education is Bloom's foil because

20

he believes they promote relativism and take time out of the curriculum which
would be better spent giving students a more thorough grounding in Northern
European cultural values.

Bloom and E. D. Hirsch, author of CulturaLLiteragy (1987), both describe
John Dewey's philosophy in addition to multiculturalism as causes of the
general cultural and historical demise of what is traditional and good in
American culture (p. 31). What is "traditional and good" in American culture
is dependent upon "whose values?" are American values, a question Henry
Giroux (1993) pointedly asks. Harold Hodgkinson (1991) indicates that one
third of American children in American schools will be minority children in a
few years. Giroux's question of "whose history?" is salient to this projection
(1993). He considers Ravitch, Hirsch, and Bloom examples of a "new form of
nativism in the guise of transcending issues of race and class." Giroux would
educate young people to proclaim diversity and empower themselves to work

toward creating a better world.

Toward an "Opening of the American Mind"

I began this study with the idea that the goal of multicultural,
development, global, and international education is to end injustice, man's
inhumanity to man, and to empower teachers to work toward a better world. I
agree with Edward Said that multicultural education should not be
characterized as a "Lebanonization" of education, a separation (1993). It is an
integration of the narratives of individuals in formerly excluded groups, who
have contributed to society and culture. Teachers who deepen their
understandings about others, who begin to think in terms of an all
encompassing "we", may transcend "the restraints of imperialism or national
or provincial limits." (1993, p. 335) To teach respect of cultures is to teach

respect of individuals within cultures and their "enduring selves."

21

Four of the teachers in this study explicity discuss their opposition to
the views of Bloom, Hirsch and others who would limit international and
multicultural perspectives in the school curriculum. The teachers' arguments
involve trade, environment, and health issues which require international
cooperation. I also am especially concerned about the work of Bloom and
Hirsch on culture because it sets up a superior/inferior scenario which I fear
fuels anti-immigrant, nativist sentiments bordering on xenophobia. Bateson
(1994) describes a basis for this bigotry: "Each community believes that its
understanding is not simply good, not even better, but best. We cannot all be
right, so whatever is different is wrong" ( p. 179).

It is important for teachers to learn from other cultures in such a way
as to negate negative stereotypes and encourage mutual respect among
individuals of all cultural backgrounds. Whether or not teachers are
responding this way to their international experience is one area this study
explores. My argument is that if the international experience of veteran
teachers is educative, then teachers with these experiences will be more
capable of encouraging students to work and live cooperatively with those
people in this world who are different from themselves. Bateson, like Said,
would attempt to eliminate the superior, inferior scenario which Bloom and
Hirsch promote.

The basic challenge we face today in an interdependent world is to
disconnect the notion of difference from the notion of superiority,

to turn the unfamiliar into a resource rather than a threat . We know
we can live with difference--men and women for instance have lived
together throughout history. We know we can benefit from difference.
But the old equation of difference with inferiority keeps coming back,
as fatal to the effort to work together to solve the world's problems

as the idea of competing for a limited good ( Bateson, 1994, p. 233).
Lawrence W. Levine, a cultural historian at the University of California

at Berkeley, has written The Opening of the American Mind (1996), which

refutes Bloom's thesis on the basis that multiculturalism, an anathema to

22

Bloom, is "the inevitable and praise worthy product of constitutional
democracy [and] means that in order to understand the nature and
complexities of American culture, it is crucial to study and comprehend the
widest possible array of the contributing cultures and their interaction with
one another" (Honan, 1996, p. A14). Levine talks about the disappointment of
his own undergraduate education during the 1950s at the City College in New
York.
We studied Northern and Western Europe Nothing on Africa, Asia and
Latin America. Even Canada was a great blank. My own father was an
immigrant from Lithuania and my grandparents were from Odessa, but
we talked only about Northern and Western Europe. There's something
wrong with that (Honan, 1996, p A14).
Bateson argues that the study of culture stimulates creativity and insight.
We know that difference stimulates creativity. When we talk about
going beyond the traditional canon, we are talking about opening up a
library not of great books but of versions of humanness--some of them
never written down in any form at all, but many of them in written
form, often in rather surprising places (1994, p 171).
Levine also stresses the positive aspects of multicultural and international
study; that opening "America to great diversty has not lead to repression as

Bloom argued, but to the very opposite--a flowering of ideas and scholarly

innovation unmatched in our history" (Honan, 1996, p. A14).

The Organization of this Dissertation
In Chapter 2, I will discuss the methodology of this study, which is an

analysis of veteran teacher narratives. This includes a description of the
criteria upon which my informants were chosen, in addition to the
circumstances of the interview and a brief introductory vignette about each of
them. Chapter 3 will explore the life experience of these teachers before they
traveled abroad, including their family background, K-12 schooling and
undergraduate influences, their post-graduate and early teaching

experiences, including how they characterized themselves as teachers before

23

their international experience, and each of their unique learning styles
throughout their lives before they traveled to China and/ or Japan. Chapters 4,
5, and 6 will analyze the content and context of their international experience,
Chapter 4 concentrating on the school experience of those who taught abroad;
Chapters 5 and 6 on their experiences out of the classrooms, especially the
connections they made with people in the host country and their learning
within that country. Chapters 7 and 8 explore the degree to which these
teachers believe their teaching practice and their lives have been affected by
their international experience, with Chapter 7 exploring the changes theyfelt
when they returned home and in their own classrooms, and Chapter 8
analyzing their feelings of personal and professional transformation.

In the conclusion, I analyze the precursor to the experience, the
experience, and the post-experience ramifications. This research has
provided background for my recommendations relating to exchange programs
for teachers to promote international experience which will foster the kind of
personal growth and transformation in veteran teachers that John Dewey
envisioned.

Conclusion

I hope my analysis of interview data in this dissertation will begin to
fill a gap in the research literature about how we might view a teacher's
learning about cultures different from his own. I hope that my story of
teacher's stories will help educators and policy makers understand the
possibilities of educative international experience. How a veteran teacher
analyzes his own work in the classroom, within the context of his own
personal and professional growth, can add to our understanding of the
precursors to and ramifications of a teacher's cultural learning and a veteran

teacher's learning in general.

24

I have engaged in this study because I am concerned about the ability of
teachers to create an environment which acknowledges and upholds standards
of respect and human dignity in the classroom (Byrnes and Kiger, 1992;
Cushner, et a1, 1992). Because of the increasing diversity in the American
classroom and society, James Lynch (1992) believes that it is essential that
American teachers be better educated about world cultures that are reflected
in the many faces of children before them. This is one major reason why I
will study teacher's stories about their own efforts to develop a knowledge base
about another culture.

The world is very close to all of us. Within and beyond our man-made
boundaries the world is reflected in our senses and in our attempts to
understand and make sense of our lives in connection with others. Kindness,
compassion, caring for others, and cooperative, productive work can grow and
flourish as we struggle to understand each other. The work of teachers is
paramount in this world-wide human effort. This is why I believe it is most
important that educators learn from teachers' stories about the meaning they

make of their own efforts to understand cultures different from their own.

CHAPTER 2
METHODOLOGY

In this study I argue that there is a link between in-depth international
experience and/ or study and cultural awareness and sensitivity of teachers if
this experience is educative within the Deweyan framework; i.e., the kind of
experience or study which promotes personal growth and transformation. An
educative international experience would at least promote awareness, which is
a first step toward cultural sensitivity and respect. In-depth international
experience is likely to generate introspection and the desire to learn more and
lead to actions which promote a teacher's further study. This study of how
intensive international study or experience affects a teacher's pedagogy helps
us understand why and how veteran teachers learn, specifically in the area of
what I call cultural learning. The latter reflects learning about society, either
vicariously through sources such as books and articles and/ or in person,
interacting with individuals and through observations.

In this chapter on methodology, I will discuss why I chose narrative
analysis as a methodology; my criteria for informants; my methodology in
interviews and in data analysis; how my own background, experience, beliefs,
and values have brought me to this study; dilemmas I have struggled with
concerning issues of voice; and how I, a teacher advocate, can develop an
account which is true to the meanings constructed by informants and still
organize and express the data to make a socially useful statement. I will
conclude with vignettes describing each of the six teachers in this study.

Jerome Bruner in Acts of Mean—ing (1990) encourages us to look more

seriously at the way people construct meanings through narrative style.
25

26
Bruner writes that we can learn from not only what we do, but what we say

about what we do. I have enjoyed hearing from teachers in their own "voices"
how they have learned from their lives and work (Dishino, 1987; Stumbo, 1989;
Wiggington, 1986). Bruner's view of the importance of narrative in an
individual's meaning making of his own experience goes deeper than just an
individual's interpretation of experience, but enters into the essence of

culture itself.

Our capacity to render experience in terms of narrative is not just
child's play, but an instrument for making meaning that dominates
much of life in culture To be in a viable culture is to be bound in a set
of connecting stories, connecting even though the stories may not
represent a consensus. (pp. 96-97)

Within the purview of poststructuralist feminist researchers and
others, the narratives of teachers can represent ways of seeing that will give
us different insights into human experience. Susan Krieger (1991) writes that
in expressing herself through her own voice, she is opening herself up to a
deeper, more empathetic relationship with others, a level of understanding
which underlies the facades and barriers, protection we humans create
because we fear self-disclosure. Krieger wishes to connect with her own "self"
and reach out to others through her story of their stories in an effort to
understand the perspective of others more fully, more deeply. The reflexive
and self-conscious nature that some examples of narrative can be is expressed
also by psychoanalyst Roy Schafer:

We are forever telling stories about ourselves. In telling these self-

stories to others we may, for most purposes, be said to be performing

straightforward narrative actions. In saying that we also tell them to
ourselves, however, we are enclosing one story within another. (cited
in Bruner 1990, pp. 112-113, and Weiland, p. 34, emphasis in original)

My analysis of the narratives of these teachers has allowed me to gain

greater insight into my own experience and life. These narratives have

opened up different ways of looking at this experience as I move forward

27
composing my life along the way, just as my informants are (Bateson, 1989). I

agree with Ivor Goodson (1995, p. 97) that these stories, although they have a
beginning and an outcome, are never actually finished. Who is to say where
the impact ends? While we may be gone, the stories continue evolving into
new forms, becoming part of the experience of others, enriching their lives.
Those who have continued learning and growing, for example John Dewey in
his life and thought, have profoundly affected the lives of others (Iamont,
1959; Ratner, 1939; Westbrook, 1991). And in the critical theoretical positions
of Giroux (1993) and Freire (1982), carefully interpreted stories can motivate

people to social action.

Participant Selection Criteria

This study is based upon in-depth interviews with veteran teachers, the
definition of veteran being five to seven years (Nemser, 1983). To understand
how a veteran teacher's in-depth international study has impacted his
pedagogy, I have relied on each teacher's narrative: the stories of their
experiences. My plan to analyze the narratives individually and thematically
across narratives necessitated that I limit the scope of this study to six veteran
teachers. I have limited this study to veteran teachers because it is veteran
teachers who, to a great degree, embody the context of schooling and create
atmospheres in which novice teachers evolve their teaching personas.
Veteran teachers determine the school culture to a far greater extent than
beginning or novice teachers. Therefore, veteran teachers affect the context
to which beginning teachers must adapt. Sharon Feiman—Nemser concludes in
her article "Learning to Teach" (1983) that reforms must take place in the
school context to change the culture of teaching. Milbrey McLaughlin in the
"Rand Change Agent Study" (1990) considers teaches as key players who must

be empowered to embrace school reform as an act of will, or the reforms will

28
be shut out by the classroom door. Michael Fullan (1991) argues that an

atmosphere of continuous improvement and collegiality must be part of a
school culture before meaningful change can occur.

Studies suggest that this school context is generally conservative (as it
was for me), and thus inhibiting to the creative and reform-minded preservice
academic background of many novice teachers (Goodlad, 1984; Howey and
Vaughn, 1983; Huberman, 1989; Lortie, 1975; Nemser, 1983; Tyson, 1994; Waller,
1967). This study presents a different and more positive view of veteran
teacher learning from those studies, which emphasize the negative,
constraining effects of the school culture upon novice teachers. Because most
veteran teachers are generally beyond the struggle to develop a teaching
persona and to establish control in the classroom, they are secure enough to
evaluate and try to improve their own pedagogy and knowledge base for the
subjects they are teaching. Veteran teachers, such as those in this study, can
be examples for young teachers of professional growth, transformation and
life-long learning. Nemser (1983) quotes a teacher with thirty-five years of
experience who is ambivalent about retiring because she still has so much to
learn, however she is not portrayed as an example of the mainstream teacher
today. She is portrayed as an exemplary teacher who will hopefully be an
example of the mainstream teacher in the future. Teachers like those in this
study could be useful as mentors for novice teachers, and in this process begin
to change the school culture into an authentic learning school community.

As there are different degrees of what is educative about an experience,
there are different kinds and degrees of in-depth experience or study. I have
accepted the following criteria for in-depth international experience: 1) the
length of time in country or engaged in study showing commitment, i.e., more
than six months; 2) the quality of the experience, meaning significant face-to-

J

29
face relationships and friendships with individuals within the culture, for

example: teaching for a semester, year or more, living with a family, or
attempting to learn the language; and/ or 3) the understanding which has
come from reading and studying about a culture for a period of years.

All of the teachers I interviewed had studied about the culture, three
including the language, for at least one year before they traveled abroad.
Most had studied the culture of Japan or China for several years in order to
expand their knowledge base for the courses or units they were teaching. One
of these teachers studied the issue of U.S.-Japan trade relations for eight years
before he went to Japan. The time dedicated to this study or experience in
every one of these cases reflects a considerable commitment for veteran
teachers, who function within the constraints of jobs and family
responsibilities. I considered in-depth experience to be a criterion for my
choice of informants because it would eliminate superficial kinds of
experiences, such as flying to Hong Kong to shop or the "been there, done
that" scenario described by one of the teachers in this study. I do not claim
that people cannot learn from such superficial experiences. However, in-
depth international experiences are more likely to spawn the kind of personal
growth and transformation that these teachers describe, and I must
realistically limit the parameters of this study.

I interviewed veteran teachers whose international experience
intersects their careers because I wanted to understand the teachers'
perceptions of their own teaching style before and after the international
experience. I was interested in teachers whose professional lives were not
initially dedicated to international experience such as foreign language
teachers. The teachers I interviewed were initially generalists--elementary

teachers, secondary English or Social Studies teachers-mot cultural specialists

30
to begin with. This approach was necessary to help me understand how

cultural learning and experience might be transformative for a veteran
teacher.

I used my protocol mainly as a guide. Kathleen Casey (1993) asked the
"open ended" question: "Tell me the story of your life" in her research about
women teachers engaged in radical political activities. By that standard, I
consider my interviews to be flexibly structured. I asked my informants about
formative family, community and school influences on their decision to
engage in intensive international study. I also explored the nature of the
international experience and how the teacher believed her teaching practice
had been affected by this experience. I was very interested in whether or not
the teacher felt this experience was personally and/ or professionally

transformative and why.

Narrative Analysis

The goal of this qualitative study about the possible impact of intensive
or in-depth international experience and/ or study upon the practice of
veteran teachers is not to test a hypothetical link between international
experience and cultural awareness; it is to explore what might be learned
about the ramifications of international experience upon veteran teachers.
This study is not based upon a testable hypothesis. It is an effort to learn from
the narratives of veteran teacher informants about the meanings they
construct from their international experience. A small sample such as this
can enlighten us in different ways than empirical studies based on control
groups and quantitative analysis. We can learn a great deal from each case in
this study. Autobiography and biography are sources of learning and
enrichment, often providing examples for others to emulate. Harry F. Wolcott

defends qualitative studies such as this:

31

Cowed by the powerful contempt for generalization that characterizes
much scientific posturing, we limit unduly the extent to which we
accept individual cases as legitimate sources of professional knowledge.

We quite forget how little encumbered we feel by similar conditions in

our everyday lives as we constantly generalize from small samples,

fully realizing that our generalizations or stereotypes may later prove
incorrect or ill-founded. With awakened interest in qualitative
research, the answer to a question once posed as implicit criticism, "But
what we can learn from a single case?" is now more helpful: "All we

can!" (1988, p. 16)

Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln argue that not only is the
researcher today more accessible in her work, but often she is an activist
researcher with a clearly stated social purpose.

The concept of the aloof researcher has been abandoned. More action-,

activist-oriented research is on the horizon, as are more social criticism

and social critique. The search for grand narratives will be replaced by
more local, small-scale theories fitted to specific problems and specific

situations. (1995, p. 11)

There is subjectivity in all arenas of research, in the composition of social
research questions which can be studied via quantitative analysis to the
qualitative analysis of an individual case study of a teacher. It is important to
understand the motives and background of the researchers in order to
enhance the reader's understanding of the point of view underpinning each
study.

In my analysis of each teacher's story, I have concentrated on the
"intrinsic" value of his narrative: intrinsic in the sense that I have initially
studied each teacher's narrative from the perspective of the uniqueness of
this story. My goal was to develop a clear view of each teacher's story before I
began to compare and analyze across cases. In his discussion of narrative
inquiry, Donald Polkinghorne (1995) discusses the use of a series of case
studies which "alongside each other provide greater insight and

understanding of the topic than any single vignette." (p. 21) Multiple

interviews became necessary as issues developed which I needed to further

32
explore. Data analysis involved what Stake (1994) calls the "instrumental"

value of each narrative, that is how this person's narrative elucidates a larger
issue, in this case the effect of international experience upon a teacher's
pedagogy.

Because I worked from the data inductively to create categories and
concepts which evolved into emerging themes, this research is an example of
Glaser and Strauss's (1967) notion of grounded theory (Denzin, 1995, p. 508;
Janesick, 1995, p. 218; Polkinghome, 1995, p. 10). According to Polkinghome:

Inductive analysis includes the recursive movement from noted similar

instances in the data to researcher-proposed categorical and conceptual

definitions. Through these recursions, the proposed definitions are
altered until they reach a 'best fit' ordering of the data as a collection of

particular instances of the derived categories. (1995, p. 13)
Polkinghome describes narrative analysis to include outcomes, an
organization of the "data along a before-after continuum." This is how the
themes and categories emerged in this study from pre—international
experience influences to the context and content of the experience to the post—
experience outcomes. The research question "In what ways and to what extent
does a teacher's study of other cultures shape his or her own pedagogy? "
drove this analysis as much as it provided the basis for data collection.

D. Jean Clandinin and F. Michael Connelly explore Dewey's conceptions
of the connectedness of life that is related to their work on narrative inquiry.
They write: "For Dewey, education, experience, and life are inextricably
intertwined. In its most general sense, when one asks what it means to study
education, the answer is to study experience." (1995, p. 415) The effect of
international experience on a teacher's classroom practice cannot be
completely separated from the effect of experiences on a teacher's life.

Therefore, in this study I have included Chapters 5 and 6 on the teacher's life

abroad outside of the classroom and Chapter 8 on the teacher's self—analysis of

33
personal as well as professional transformation. Clandinin and Connelly cite

the autobiography of Sarason who "makes the point that his life as a
psychologist and his life at large are intertwined." They write: "He is a human
being as a psychologist and he is a psychologist as a human being. Keeping
this sense of the experiential whole is part of the study of narrative." ( 1995, p.
415) In agreement with Clandinin and Connelly that experience is the way
people live their stories, I have found narrative interpretation and analysis to
be my window into this lived international experience of teachers. It is my
hope that this study will generate knowledge and insight about the way

teachers learn and are transformed by such experiences.

Seeking Different Perspectives: My History

I became interested in other cultures initially when I read Fyodor
Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground (1961) in a philosophy class during
my sophomore year in college. From the time I began to teach in 1964, I used
autobiographies, biographies and novels to augment textbooks in every social
studies class I taught until 1993, my last year teaching secondary school in
Michigan. I hoped that the personal perspectives of others might imbue my
presentation of the dry American history textbook, for example, with
humanity and passion.

During the early 19708, I encouraged my white, middle-class students to
read books which were personal accounts of what it felt like to grow up in a
majority white, racist society; we read for example, The Autobiography of
Malcolm X (Malcolm X, 1965), and Sammy Davis Jr. Yes I Can (1965). We also
read novels such as |ohnny Got His Gun (Trumbo, 1939) and The Ugly
American (Lederer, 1958) to offer a different perspective on U.S. foreign
policy. For political history, we read Mike Royko's m (1971) and the political

novel, The Last Hurrah (O'Connor, 1956). I believed in empowering students

34
(before we used such a word) to think for themselves. We used the text with

these books to look at history: that is human life from different perspectives.
In the Russian history and literature course which I developed, we started our
exploration of Russian history and culture with Nicholai Gogol's satirical
novel, Dead Souls (1842/ 1961). The version that I used included a section
which was censored by the Czarist Russian government about the corruption
and inefficiency in the bureaucracy. My students realized that the entire
book was a brilliant satire exposing the Russian upper class and government
authority as essentially being mindless fops, worthy only of mirth and
derision. (One character in Dead Souls had book marks on page 14 of every
book in his voluminous library.) It was Gogol's different perspective on
Russian life and society (different from that of the government and upper
class) that I wanted the students to begin to grasp.

I was consistently curious about other cultures and ways of viewing the
world. The first writer who really moved me, after Charles Dickens in ge_at
Expectations (1860/ 1963), which I had read in high school, was Dostoevsky. I
became fairly obsessed with his writings, which led me to seek out
undergraduate senior thesis credits to write "A Comparative Study of Dickens
and Dostoevsky." Authors such as Dickens and Dostoevsky represented to me
an elucidation of the human struggles and dilemmas in 19th century societies
which were controlled by forces which negated what I believed to be the
inherent dignity of every individual. Twentieth century struggles of the

disempowered resonated within a similar context.

Learning About China

In this research on the cultural learning of veteran teachers I am
promoting experience which I felt was inaccessible to me during the 1960s and

19703. When I stepped off a plane in 1981 in the middle of a very dark night at

35
a tiny airport, for the 13 million people in Shanghai, I took a blurry picture

capturing evidence in the print of my shaking hands. This was fifteen years
after I began my study of Chinese history at the University of Michigan in the
summer of 1966.

I am promoting in this dissertation the kind of international experience
which might affect a person's perspective as it has mine. Living and learning
in a culture which I had studied and taught about for fifteen years was almost
overwhelmingly to me. The two years before I traveled to China, I had studied
Chinese language in order to deepen my knowledge of Chinese culture.

This ten week experience studying Chinese at East China Normal
University in Shanghai emboldened me to formally study the language for 1-
1/2 more years and incorporate this study into my teaching. The experience
in China, in addition to many years of study about China, had greatly enriched
the course I had developed and taught for ten years, "Modern Asian Culture".
The Chinese language introduced me to a very different perspective: an
exquisitely beautiful human expression, the music of finely spoken Mandarin,
and the grace, elegance and balance of written characters. Because I felt I was
becoming transformed in the process of learning this language, a part of my
own ethnic and cultural background came to the fore: the New England
preacher and missionary. Two of my great-grandfathers were ministers, one
Episcopalian and the other Baptist. Many of my ancestors were Quakers.
Biblical names such as Ezekial and Jedediah are common first names in one
branch of my family tree. Some of my ancestors were missionaries in Hawaii
and other lands. Transformation in life often inspires advocates somewhat
akin to ministers and missionaries. True to this part of my family tradition, I
became an advocate of gaining and sharing international experience and

knowledge with students and colleagues in the schools.

36
Learning Chinese was a gift, a luxury for me, like Russian literature had

been earlier. I wanted to share this gift with others, students and colleagues.
My students seemed to enjoy this gift, especially the 7th grade learning
disabled and emotionally disturbed students I taught in a "basic" social studies
class in 1982. They liked the language much better than the world geography
book with big print. My colleagues thought I was weird, practicing characters
on administrative memos during faculty meetings about schedules and
assignments. Some parents and colleagues criticized me for using Chinese
language to elucidate the few paragraphs on China in the world geography

textbook.

Coming Home

Like some of the participants in this study, the most difficult part of my
study about China and the world was the isolation and alienation I felt when I
returned from China in 1981. The school principal, who had been trying to
expedite my involuntary transfer out of the building because of my union
activities, assigned me to teach basic English classes instead of the Modern
Asian culture course I had developed. Three weeks into the semester, he was
overruled by a central office administrator who informed him that North
Central Accreditation would not accept a teacher's single Russian history
course twenty years earlier as qualification to teach Modern Asian culture. I
was abruptly returned to that class for the rest of the year where I had a
wonderful time sharing this experience in China with my students. At the end
of that year, enrollment decline gave my principal a legal basis to evict me
from the building to a middle school where I would teach basic and general
social studies classes to 7th and 8th grade students.

A new superintendent and the principal of another high school, who

believed that my teaching and work in Chinese language merited a second

37
look, encouraged me to develop a Center for Chinese Studies in the school

district. When the State Department of Education officials learned about this,
grant applications mysteriously appeared in my mailbox. After we filled in
one application and were notified of its acceptance, State officials asked me to
lead an effort to develop a network of educators who would promote
international education in the schools, focusing on education about East Asia.

I eventually accepted this responsibility, which was part of my own personal
and professional transformation, that is from classroom teacher to director of
a Center for Chinese Studies, an academic magnet for four high schools and
chairperson of the Pacific Rim Consortium Steering Committee. This latter
evolved from including thirteen to thirty-eight public and private schools,
intermediate school districts, community colleges, and universities in the state.
The last state-wide consortium conference was a joint effort with the Michigan
Council for the Social Studies and attracted 600 some educators from Michigan
and midwestem states. High school students were encouraged to participate
with their teachers via a scholarship program administered by the Michigan
4-H Youth programs and funded by twenty-three Japanese banks and
corporations and Ford Motor Company. I also directed a lst-8th grade Chinese
and Spanish language program in nine elementary and middle schools in
Warren Consolidated Schools.

During these activities, I continued teaching Chinese history, culture
and language to 9th-12th grade students in the Center. My students helped me
raise $15,000 for five students in the Center to live with a family and study
Chinese language and culture in Beijing. International study and experience
had significantly transformed my personal and professional life. I, like Mary
Catherine Bateson, included my eleven-year-old child, Elizabeth, in this

experience by taking her to China with me during the summer of 1985. I

38
worked with educators to promote different perspectives in the schools,

especially the inclusion of non-westem cultures in the curriculum. The way
Bateson (1994) describes the awareness she has developed because of her
international experience studying, living, and working in other cultures is
like the gift I feel that this experience has been for me. It has immeasurably
changed and transformed me and my life.

In this study of veteran teachers who, like myself, feel transformed by
their international experiences, I hope to show the potential that a different
perspective within and among teachers can have on classroom practice. John
Dewey's holistic approach to human experience expresses the world as a place
where human beings can learn from themselves and others how to live and
work together to promote mutual respect and personal growth. Pedagogy
cannot be separated from the life experiences and personal characteristics of
each teacher. This is why this study connects the background of these
teachers, the content and context of their experiences, and their views on
post-experience ramifications. Their international experience changed them

as human beings, not just as teachers.

The Question of Voice

I include this narrative of my own experience because I want to make it
more clear about who I am. I am not portraying myself as an objective
authority in any positivistic empirical sense. I began this study in 1994 by
engaging in a life history project during my graduate course work. It is
important to consider Donald Polkinghome's discussion of criteria for life
histories "'to include a recognition of the role the researcher had in
constructing the presented life story and the effect the researcher's views
might have had in shaping the finding." ( 1995, p. 19) I came to this research

with a point of view which evolved out of my own background and experience.

39
Thirty years ago, while pursuing an MA. in history at Michigan State

University, I had learned to disguise myself in passive voice. Catherine
Emihovich asks: "Why did we resort to the clumsy device of saying 'one says' or
'the author says' instead of '1'? Why wasn't the author's voice acknowledged?"
(1995, p. 42) "Objectively" reporting, analyzing about the 17th century rule of
Oliver Cromwell made my work seem more authoritative, even "classy", like the
work of Becker's young woman student (1986, p. 28). I also never questioned
the idea that objectivity in reporting historical data was of utmost importance.
I thought I was searching for the truth via the right assortment of facts to
come up with a valid historic analysis. Nevertheless, I was never very good at
keeping my point of view completely out of the work. I believed that my way
of looking at the facts was objective and right. My teaching persona allowed
me to get up on my soap box enough times to make that "rightness" feel like a
comfortable old shoe.

These three years of work in the Academy has brought me to a dilemma
of voice, since one side of my background promotes a positivistic stance toward
data and another stronger side reflects a passionate advocacy for certain ideas.
I wish to make the basic beliefs and values which underpin my work very
clear. They include the following: the right to equal justice and human rights
for all human beings irrespective of national boundaries; the rights of
teachers to have their voices heard to partake in decision making about the
classrooms and schools in which they teach; the right of all children to be
nurtured within loving and caring atmospheres that we adults create in the
homes and classrooms of this society; the right of children to be raised and
educated in the context of open-mindedness, tolerance for and acceptance of
those whose background and ideas are different from their own; the

encouragement of multiple perspectives among human beings, reflecting

40
flexibility of thought, actions, and introspective self-reflectivity; the

development of the habit of inquiry rather than stultifying miseducative
habits of mind which close off reflection and inhibit understanding; and the
habit of inquiry which evolves into life-long learning from infancy until
death.

I would also argue passionably against any form of intolerance, bigotry,
or negative stereotyping. The most raw wound I suffered during my formative
first year teaching junior high school in 1964 was inflicted by my fellow
colleagues. They banded together to forbid my suggesting to some 8th graders
that they read John Howard Griffith's Blacl_< Like Me (1962), to understand from
a white person's perspective what it was like to live in the prejudiced white
dominated society of the south at the time. These were my beliefs before I read
John Dewey, whose work has validated them. His work spoke to my core beliefs
about the meaning of my work teaching for almost thirty years. Reading his
work was another gift, a luxury to a veteran teacher who had never taken that
opportunity.

A key question for me about my methodology then is: How would I
approach my research data objectively in light of these strongly felt beliefs?
Reading the literature on voice in ethnographic, qualitative research has
helped me work through this question. I want the reader to understand that I
am not a dispassionate observer or interviewer. Much literature concerning
qualitative research methodology expresses the expectation that we must be
clear about ourselves as researchers, what has caused us to engage in our
studies and what are the lenses through which we try to understand and make
sense of our data. Donald Blumenfeld-Jones describes how difficult it is to keep
this sense of fidelity to the stories of our informants and our own stories as

well.

41
Even to tell your own story is to invent yourself, to select what you will

tell, to suppress what you will not tell, to forget altogether what might

be of most importance to your listener or even to yourself How much

more so is the alienation when the narrative inquiry is about another.

The alienation is twofold: as the subject is diminished by his or her

telling, and the narrator further diminishes as she or he selects

material. (1995, p. 32)

The litmus test of good research it seems to me on this issue of voice is that it
not interfere with the voices of others in our data and that we do not skew our
data into categories set by our own preconceived notions. According to
Bruner,

The danger is putting the personal self so deeply back into the text that

it completely dominates, so that the work becomes narcissistic and

egotistical. No one is advocating ethnographic self-indulgence. (1995,

p. 578)

A belief in egalitarianism in life and society would likely preclude the
researcher from egotistically drowning out the voices of informants. The
informants or participants (1 will not call them "subjects") would have then
been manipulated by the researcher into this set, preconceived point of view.
I believe that researchers must probe their own biases and preconceptions
continually as they collect and analyze data to make sure they are not
obscuring what is coming out of the data. This is why I agree with those
qualitative researchers, such as Susan Krieger (1991), who promote the
analysis of self as a key part of any study. It was a struggle for me to find the
right balance in this study so that my strong voice would not overwhelm the
voices of participants and still make it clear who I am; that I am a long-term

public advocate of international study and experience, especially for teachers

who I believe can profoundly affect the "soul life" of children (Dewey, 1904).

42

The Question of
My Relationship with These Teachers

In addition to the issue of voice, I have found another research dilemma
which I had not seriously considered before I became immersed in the work of
data analysis and writing. This dilemma is how to reconcile my long-term
work as a teacher advocate and a union leader with the judgment role entailed
in analysis of the stories of my respondents.

Sitting behind manila plastic tables on the bargaining team of a teacher
association as their first female elected vice-president made such an
impression that pushed me into becoming what others considered a "radical"
teacher union leader. The preppy, freshly scrubbed lawyer for the
administration and school board characterized the only useful function of
teachers as enforcing the following conditions in the classroom: straight rows,
no paper on the floor, and quiet. My proud profession in this view was akin to
that of a warden or animal trainer, to keep the "little beast children" in
control. As a result, I began my career as a teacher union activist for the next
ten years until I felt that teachers as role models for children were being
treated with the respect and dignity they deserve.

I became a leader in a teacher movement which would culminate in
teachers obdurately facing police in riot gear and their dogs to promote their
own livelihood and dignity when faced with a society which used the majority
female status of the profession to deny them fair living wages, benefits, and
control over their professional lives. In spite of many positive evaluations of
my teaching, the central administration and school board tried to fire me
several times. The strong support I had from my fellow union members
prevented my firing. We filed and won an unfair labor practices charge in

the Michigan Employment Relations Commission and another law suit, filed by

43
the ACLU in Federal District Court, was settled out of court. The board and

administration was finally convinced to stop the harassment of me and other
teacher advocates. Relieved, I found the time to study Chinese, a wonderful
welcome respite to the confrontation and struggle in which I had engaged for
ten years. I felt proud that we won contracts for teachers which became
models for the State of Michigan.

Three years of graduate work in academia has not diminished my strong
identification with teachers from the perspective of teacher advocate. My
deeply embedded teacher persona enabled me to interview teachers in the
context of a collegial conversation. I did not consider myself an authority or
superior in terms of knowledge over what they had to tell me in spite of the
fact that I had had what I consider the luxury of time to read widely in the
international, multi-cultural, and cross-cultural literature.

I wanted to learn from their stories, to understand more from their
perspectives, an experience which had been so important to my life. Thus, in
my own mind I became a learner in these interviews, inquiring, clarifying,
and drawing out their experience as best I could from my perspective as
someone who had also lived similar experiences. This egalitarian relationship,
the respect for them and their profession as teachers, enabled these
interviews to contain what Geertz might categorize as "thick description"
(1973; Denzin, 1995, p. 505).

I had known four of these teachers for a minimum of eight years
because my work had enabled me to attend and actively participate in many
state and national conferences, such as the National Council for the Social
Studies or the American Forum for Global Education. I consider my informants
friends and colleagues. One of these teachers was recommended to me by an

administrator colleague in graduate school, and another through a friend who

44
knew about my study. All of these informants knew of my work promoting

international education, including the two that I did not know personally.

Before each interview, I discussed with each of them my research
question: "In what ways and to what extent does a teacher's study of other
cultures shape his or her own pedagogy?" Therefore, they understood that I
wanted to learn from them and that I was an advocate for international
education. The transcripts of these interviews, which averaged about four
hours each (the range being between two and six hours), reflect very little
talk by me except with references to things I had experienced which
resonated with their experiences. They were very open, expressive and
enthusiastic about the opportunity to share their experiences. This interview
experience was not a "subject" vs. academic authority interchange, which
places the interviewer in a superior position to the interviewee. They felt
secure that I, as a veteran teacher and colleague, would treat them and their
words with the respect and dignity they deserve.

Why then do I consider this relationship a research dilemma? The
collegial conversation worked well. We learned from each other. I cared
about their international experience and what it meant to them. The problem
this relationship posed has emerged in the analysis and writing about this
data. I am drawn to emancipatory studies which empower the participant
voices in the study, voices like those of teachers which have been silenced
over the years (Denzin, 1995, p. 509; Freire, 1982; Goodson, 1995, p. 96; Nespor
and Barber, 1995, p. 52).

When I set myself up with a theoretical framework, such as a Deweyan
perspective, and begin analyzing the data about what it all means, I begin
judging their words. I felt like including every piece of the transcript of their

words with a minimum of analysis to let them tell their own stories without my

45
interference. Even choosing what was meaningful to me seemed an affront to

these people who trusted me to tell their stories honestly. Harry Wolcott
describes the task of a researcher "to strike a balance between extremes of
telling too little and telling too much." The trouble with feeling unable to cut
sections of narrative in order to "wholistically" preserve the integrity of an
informant's voice in practical terms is expressed in the question Larry
Reynolds asks: "Who wants to read a 600—page Ethnography?" (Wolcott, 198 8, p.
28)

Therefore, I have worked to portray their stories within the framework
of what I have learned from them that has value for educators and school
policy makers. Donald Blumenfeld-Jones cautions narrative analysis
researchers about the issue of fidelity to the informant's story: "if we are
attempting to distinguish fidelity from truth, linking individual events to
larger social and historical contexts runs the risk of losing the original teller's
perspective." (1995, p. 28) Lincoln and Denzin discuss feminist perspectives on
ethnographic research from Judith Stacey's point of view. Although
egalitarian research is

characterized by authenticity, reciprocity, and trust The subject is

always at grave risk of manipulation and betrayal by the ethnographer.

In addition, there is the crucial fact that the final product is too often

that of the researcher, no matter how much it has been modified or

influenced by the subject. (1995, p. 577)

Although my subject is not a classic ethnography of a teacher's life because
my research question was limited, I feel a strong responsibility to give a fair
and authentic account of these teachers' experiences.

Clandinin and Connelly capture my dilemma in wanting to protect and
preserve the voice of my teacher informants, that I have to be vigilant to keep

my "eye on matters of relevance." They understand a common torment of

"those who focus on experience in all its messy complexity is that they lose

46
track of the forest for the trees and find it hard to draw closure to a study."

(1995, p. 46) This is especially difficult when finding meaning in this
international experience for teachers. I am a strong proponent of John
Dewey's holistic philosophy which connects the experiences of teachers in the
world to those of individual children in the classroom, colleagues in their
schools, parents and others in the community to the society at large and
returns full circle to the world. However, this holistic view can make it
difficult for a researcher who wishes to tell each teacher's full story, leaving
little space for narrative analysis.

Nevertheless, an unanalyzed story could be just an interesting tidbit of
information. It does not answer the infamous "So What" question. What is
important about this? What can we learn from their international
experiences to engage our own personal growth and understanding? Nancy
Zeller (1995, p. 76) considers the real dilemma to be whether the goal is to
interpret or present the data. Ivor Goodson (1995) argues that telling stories,
such as emancipatory narratives without theoretical frames and contexts of
meaning, plays into the hands of the economic and political power brokers in
this world, by failing to critically analyze the structures which are the context
for these individual stories. For example, in only telling the story of a
teacher's life and allowing it to speak for itself we can be ignoring "these
contextual parameters which so substantially impinge upon and constantly
restrict the teacher's life." (p.96) For example, when one of the teachers in
this study returned, the principal of her school showed little interest in her
experience, expecting her like another teacher informant, to go back into her
"slot" as if she had just returned from a weekend trip, not an intense life-
transforming international experience. I agree with Goodson (1995) that to

have meaning, stories must be told in context, "stories of action within

47
theories of context." ( pp. 89-98) Stories then can be the beginning of a

collaboration, an analysis of the social context in which we live as a first step
to changing that context in this case, specifically, classroom practice, for the
better. Therefore, it is my 'choice to interpret these narratives rather than
simply present them, this interpretation being within the purview of critical
theory, that is with a purpose to gain understandings about teacher cultural
learning, to help educators work toward a more creative and democratic

learning environment in the schools.

An Introduction to My Informants

The six veteran teachers in this study represent my emphasis on
demographic and professional balance in addition to the criteria for in-depth
experience. I have changed their names and the cities and states in which
they live in order to protect their anonymity. Three are male and three are
female, one of the latter is African-American, while the others are white
European-Americans. Two teach elementary school, one teaches middle
school, and three (the males) teach high school. Five returned to their jobs
teaching in public schools and one to her job in a private New England
preparatory school. Four of the public school teachers taught in the mainly
white suburbs, two in very affluent areas, while the fifth public school
teacher, who is white, taught all African-American students in a public
charter school in the inner city. All had studied about the area before going,
while three (the females) had studied the language formally as part of their
required preparation. Four teachers had studied and lived in Japan; the
remaining two, in the People's Republic of China. Four of the six are married,
one of these without children. Two were accompanied by their wives, while
one woman's husband visited and traveled with her in China for two weeks

after her responsibilities were over. Two are single, one of these being

43
divorced with three children. I am fortunate to have access to a wide network

of teachers from many states from which to choose informants.

Because this chapter sets the stage for a thematic analysis of data in the
following five chapters, it is important that the reader have a clear view of
each informant within the context of his or her work and life. Therefore, I am
pleased to invite you to meet six very special teachers who have chosen to
study and experience a culture very different from their own and share their

experiences with others.

Ed Donovan

Ed Donovan is 65 years old and not talking about retirement yet. He is a
pale-skinned blue-eyed Caucasian of German and Irish ancestry, medium build
in very good shape for his age. His head is a Yul Brynner or Michael Jordan
(depending on your generation) bald and he smiles often. He speaks slowly
and precisely, clearly thinking about what he is saying unless the emotion of
the moment overtakes him and he explicates something like, "It was a ball!"
referring to his experience returning to visit friends or traveling "hard seat"
on a train in China. Ed is married with four older children and several
grandchildren.

He works in a high school in a very wealthy suburb on the east side of
Detroit surrounded by trees, lovely green grounds, and large houses, which
reminded me of Jean Anyon's (1981) description of the executive elite school
in a study of the effect of social class upon schooling. In his curriculum vitae
is the statement that this school was "cited for excellence by the National
Commission of Education." During my visit to the school, I noticed that it was
very clean and the classrooms had many large windows, which always
impresses me because I taught for ten years in a "fortress" high school

without windows. The classroom where I interviewed Ed was a clean, light and

49
airy place, with a minimum of student graffiti. on desks. Ed had taught at this

school for thirty years, before that having taught writing and American
literature for five years at a very rough training school in Detroit, where only
two of four hundred students did not have juvenile police records. Ed
currently teaches in what he refers to in his vitae as a "team taught,
humanities-oriented course with special emphasis on writing and ritual
reading."

Ed has been an active member of the State and National Council for the
Social Studies, an officer in the local parent/ teachers association and the local
teachers association, with the elected positions of vice-president, executive
board, treasurer, and representative of the State teacher's organization, the
MEA. He has been chosen to be the school district's Teacher of the Year,
received recognition from the University of Chicago as "an outstanding high
school teacher," has been a member of the North Central Association
evaluation team and a consultant for a large school district in northern
Michigan. Although I had known Ed through the international education
network, I knew nothing about these achievements and activities before I
interviewed him.

Ed is the son of a doctor who studied and worked in Germany during the
19303. Ed's father was accompanied by his wife, who traveled to Russia during
their years in Europe. His description of maids from abroad who had helped
raise him and family entertaining indicates that he was brought up in a
family of some means. Ed's schooling through college was in private Catholic
schools.

Ed's international study and experience began early in his career, when
he was asked to teach about China within the humanities framework. He

educated himself informally and formally in anthropology to prepare for this

50
work. His first experience in China was a year-long English teaching

assignment at a medical college in Kunming in 1986-87, accompanied by his
wife Heather. Subsequently, he has taught during the summers of 1991 and
1995 at a provincial university and a teacher's college. During his 1995
experience, he traveled widely from Beijing to Hainan Island to see friends
with whom he had been communicating for nine years since his first year-

long experience in China.

Mary Ehrhardt

Mary Ehrhardt is 54 years old and also not discussing retirement. She is
a pale-skinned Caucasian of German descent, blue eyed with short curly light
brown hair. She is also slight of weight and in very good physical condition,
as her description of living in China will attest. Mary speaks rather softly but
with near perfect diction, her description being very precise and full of detail.
Often in the telling of a story her eyes sparkled and she laughed quietly, or in
the case of her concern for individuals in China, her face became deeply
serious and thoughtful. I interviewed Mary in her house, although I have
visited her school and classroom. She provided refreshments, Chinese tea, a
gift to her from a Chinese friend in Beijing which went well with the home-
made chocolate cookies she had prepared.

Mary teaches 2nd grade in a very old well known New England
preparatory school, where most students' families pay high tuition and other
students are given scholarships to provide some demographic and social
balance. The school is located in a lovely, hilly wooded section of a small town,
its buildings featuring high ceilings and cozy rooms adequate for the small
class size with tables or desks in circles, and very large windows in every
room. Mary's bulletin boards are full of colorful and interesting pictures and

student work. Mary has taught at this school for nearly thirteen years which

51
qualified her for a year-long sabbatical to use as she wished. This was her

opportunity to experience China as a teacher and learner, a subject she had
taught and for which she had developed curriculum for nine years.

Mary had majored in English at Oberlin College and received an Ed.M.
degree at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education. During the 19603
she had taught third grade for six years in Oberlin and Ann Arbor where she
was a "cooperating teacher for student teachers" and "devised a plan for multi-
aged grouping and team teaching". Mary then devoted herself to raising two
children and being a docent at a local art museum until she returned to
teaching, first as a parent volunteer in 1976 and in 1984 as a full-time teacher.
As a parent volunteer, she coordinated "Creative Arts" from 1976-1978 where,
according to her vitae, she administered an enrichment program on a "budget
of $900 which provided cultural experiences to augment the curricula."

During the summers of 1985, 1987, 1990, 1992, 1993, and 1994 she
attended summer institutes in the following areas: elementary math, teaching
writing in the elementary school, reading and writing, computer usage, and
Chinese language. During 1991-92, she took a year-long "Multicultural
Training" course at her school. She has been active in the PTA boards, school
committee elections, the Whole Language Association and the Unitarian
Society. Before I interviewed Mary, I thought I knew about her
accomplishments until she gave me her vitae.

Mary lived in Beijing, China with the family of a Chinese teacher at the
school where she taught for four months in the winter and spring of 1995.
She "drove" to school like most Chinese people on her bicycle, cycling 1/ 2
hour each way. Mary taught English to elementary and middle school students
and organized a weekly seminar for the teachers at a "key" school (an official

term designating a school as excellent and conveying it as an academic track

52
school receiving particular support and carefully selected students). As an

exchange teacher with one other U.S. teacher and five U.S. students, she
prepared for her experience by studying Chinese with them and planned and

supervised with her colleague their trips in China.

Denise Green

Denise Green is a slightly built, light-skinned African-American
woman in her early 403. She has high cheek bones with a very expressive
face and shining eyes, which widen appreciably when she is telling a story.
We laughed together at her funny and creative descriptions of herself, others,
and events in Japan. She stood up and acted out the posture and demeanor
expected of her as an American exchange teacher in Japan. She filled her
stories with a great deal of descriptive detail which helped me envision what it
was like to be there. Denise was my first interview in this study and our
conversation lasted late into the evening. She spoke so fervently and quickly
that I gave up trying to take some written notes and just relied on the tape
recorder. This interview with Denise helped me feel that I was exploring
something very worthwhile and meaningful to her as well as to myself, a
feeling that has been borne out in all of my subsequent interviews.

Denise teaches reading in a racially mixed elementary school in
Indianapolis, Indiana. Before she went to Japan, she had been teaching a
third/ fourth grade split class. She had taught in Little Rock, Arkansas after
graduating from the University of Indiana during the early 1970s. She had
taught for twelve years also in Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana before
she went to Japan during the 1987-88 school year. During Denise's junior year
at the University of Indiana, she was a university exchange student in Ghana,
where she studied and traveled widely, learning one of the local dialects in the

process.

53
Denise's family came to Indiana from Prince Edward County, Maryland

where her father taught history, losing his job at the height of the Civil
Rights crusade. He later received a Ph.D. in educational administration at
Indiana University. Denise's schooling was in the public schools of the
Bloomington area during the 603. The stories she tells about her schooling,
unlike the other teachers in this sample, are full of the tension she
experienced as a minority African-American student in a dominant majority
social context. She describes struggles against racism in her school
experience, while the other teachers in this study describe a bland, mostly
unexciting and uneventful K-12 experience. The key factor in Denise's family
background was the consistently strong support her parents gave her in all of
her quests for knowledge (studying languages) and equal treatment in the
schools.

Denise's experience in Japan was as an exchange teacher of English for
seven months under a state-run program which required that she take one
year of Japanese before she would qualify to participate in an exchange. After
a six-week training program in Japan, she was assigned to a different school
every two weeks for the duration of her stay, that is five months. She planned
and taught English classes with Japanese teachers, and presented slides in
talks about American culture, where she showed family and school pictures
portraying the tremendous diversity in American family and school life when
compared with Japan. During these self-introductory talks, she made her
status as a divorced African-American woman clear, especially when these
issues were left out of a Japanese educator's introduction of her. She believes
that her very light skin had caused many Japanese to consider her to be white,
a factor which she felt made her treatment different than it would have been

had she been darker skinned. The window on American culture which she

54
opened for Japanese students and teachers was quite different from those of

the other participants.

Denise has continued to study Japanese language, having studied
Spanish and French during her high school and college years. She has
presented many workshops and programs for teachers at the state and

national levels about Japan as well as other subjects such as reading.

Bill Notebaum

Bill Notebaum is 46 years old and is a fairly stout, pale-skinned
Caucasian man of Dutch descent. When I had met Bill several years earlier, he
had seemed rather thin. I hardly recognized him in a dark blue suit on release
time working to develop a new charter school in his district. Bill, while even
in a rather pressure-packed context, spoke in a very relaxed and thoughtful
way about his international experience and how it had affected him. He spoke
more theoretically about his thought processes and evolving ideas as he
developed the issues and experiences which were a precursor to his study tour
in Japan. He considers the latter to be a catalyst for his subsequent decision to
ask for administrative support in 1991 to initiate and direct an international
high school with an International Baccalaureate degree.

Bill taught in the wealthiest public school district in the state of Ohio, in
a suburb of Cleveland. Many of the homes surrounding this school could
hardly be seen through gates and trees. This school would fit well within Jean
Anyon's (1981) description of the most elite schools, where some students are
being prepared to become CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. There is a relaxed,
laid-back atmosphere here and the rooms again have large windows letting in
a great deal of natural light and allowing students to look out at wide expanses

of green grass and trees.

55
Bill is married with two daughters, now teenagers. He had taught

Humanities, Advanced Placement Economics, Advanced Placement European
History, Introduction to Economics, and Japanese Language and Culture. Bill's
most recent project is the International Academy, a public magnet school of
choice in which ten school districts in the Cleveland area have decided to
participate with students and teachers who apply to study and teach there.
This school will emphasize international and cross-cultural studies, its
curriculum and teachers implementing team—teaching programs with
authentic performance-based assessments taking the place of traditional
multiple-choice and true-false tests. The curriculum will include many
different language and cultural studies courses including Japanese, Chinese,
and Russian.

Bill's vitae includes many publications and examples of leadership such
as his membership on "the writing team for the Michigan Social Studies Task
Force to write a new state core curriculum" and his authorship of a unit
entitled "Rufus the Toothpaste Millionaire", in addition to the "U.S. That Can
Say Yes" described in Chapter 7 of this text. In addition to all of his work
making economics presentations and writing papers for the Federal Reserve
Board's educational outreach program, he also directed his city's ski club of 500
members with a budget of $6,000 and 50 employees.

Bill's family background was in the Dutch Calvinist community in
Pennsylvania. He went to private Dutch Calvinist schools from elementary
school through college, by which time he was aware of the narrow
perspectives inherent in those parochial schools. While many of his aunts
seemed very traditional and narrow-minded by his description, his parents

lived in Japan twice for six months at a time while he was in high school in

56
the U.S. His father was engaged in a business relationship with a Japanese

company.

Bill's Japanese experience followed a five year period of studying U.S.-
Japanese trade relationships. While his actual experience in Japan was only a
one—month study tour, he credits this experience as being the catalyst for his
decision to go forward with the International Academy idea. He visited schools
and businesses in Japan, where he observed practices such as the Japanese
home room, which he plans to incorporate into the International Academy. I
consider Bill my Abe Lincoln example because his in-depth international
study predominated over his relatively short, but powerfully, motivating
experience in Japan. His experience is different from the others in this
regard and provides another perspective on the impact of in-depth

international study and experience.

Ellen Stacey

Ellen Stacey is a tall (5'9") striking Caucasian woman of Lebanese and
Irish descent in her early 40$. Her long, shiny, straight brown hair included
one small streak of gray, giving her a very distinguished look. She speaks in a
low resonant voice and a very warm down-to-earth manner, often using her
hands and arms dramatically to make and emphasize points. She was the most
emotional of my informants, expressing strongly positive and negative
feelings. She was also the most ambivalent of these teachers about what this
international experience meant to her. The contrast between the kind of story
she told about her first experience in Japan and her second experience there
was stunning. Transcripts of my interviews with her were the most difficult
of all six to analyze because of the complexity of and ambivalence she felt

toward her experience.

57
Ellen's schooling was at private Catholic schools through college. She is

single, having experienced a three-year marriage and divorce during the
early 19808. Ellen has taught English with a concentration on writing skills in
the inner city of Milwaukee for 24 years. Since she is only certified to teach
elementary school, she now teaches English and Japanese to 8th grade
African-American students and an evening Japanese course at a local
community college.

The description of her work life the year before she went to Japan
almost exhausted me: workshops during weekends as a writing consultant for
the State; Japanese classes two nights and study group another two nights each
week; and responsibility for National Honor Society at her school in addition to
teaching 7th and 8th graders full time. She has written articles such as "All
the World's a Classroom for Cultural Exchange" for the local newspaper and
also the reading association. She was chosen the Outstanding Teacher of the
Year for the schools of Milwaukee in 1989 and the Teacher of the Year for the
school where she worked in 1990. She presented many workshop programs,
such as: "Japan Powerful Molder of Young Minds," in addition to the subject of
writing.

Ellen's first experience in Japan in 1988-89 was similar to that of Denise
Green. It was a state program which required a year of Japanese language
study as a prerequisite. After her six week orientation in Japan, she was
assigned to teach English and work with teachers one school a month for the
next five months. Ellen's second experience in Japan for three years between
August of 1990 and August of 1993 occurred through a sister-city arrangement
rather than the Department of Education. For two years she was assigned to a
different school each day, the third year first semester, one school a week, and

the last semester to one school every six weeks.

58

Paul Vandemere

Paul Vandemere in his early 40s is a medium-height, very fit, handsome
Caucasian man of Dutch descent with wavy, brown hair. His voice is deeply
resonant in the way of a gifted and eloquent speaker, which he is. Paul is very
well read and knowledgeable about many subjects, but he seems to enjoy most
speaking about international issues and experiences, especially his two-year
experience in Japan. I interviewed Paul in his office as an associate principal
in a high school located in a sprawling suburb of Chicago. The school was
built with many windows along corridors brightened by lockers painted royal
blue and yellow. He had returned from two years in Japan in 1986 to direct and
teach in the newly created East Asian Institute in his district until 1994 when
he decided to change his career path and work in school administration.

Paul grew up in a family and community context which included
teacher union leaders, civil rights activists, friends from Israel, neighbors
from Saudi Arabia, and exchange students from Nigeria. After studying
international relations in college, Paul's first teaching assignment was in
Cairo, Egypt for two years, after which time he returned to his home area and
began teaching social studies forensics and debate courses at the local high
school. After ten years of teaching and coaching debate and forensics, Paul
attended classes at the Fletcher School of Diplomacy to better prepare himself
for teaching international studies. When he saw an ad from a Japanese
company which needed an American skilled in forensics and public speaking,
he and his wife, a veterinarian, applied and were accepted in the program.

Paul's two years experience in Japan was under unique circumstances.
He tutored executives, some of which were CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.

Although he visited Japanese schools, traveled widely, and participated in

59
cultural events, the part-time work he did with Japanese executives precluded

his involvement in the schools, except as an occasional observer. It is
interesting that he was as impressed with the Japanese home room concept as
Bill Notebaum and hoped to influence his colleagues to include it in his high
school.

Since Paul returned from Japan, he has participated on numerous state
committees to write state-mandated core curriculum guidelines for social
studies to include global studies. He has worked hard with his colleagues to
include world studies as a required course for all students in the high school.
In 1993, Paul was chosen Teacher of the Year for his district and for the state.
He was given release time to travel widely in the state to speak at schools and to
community groups. Paul incorporated some of his international experiences
into these talks as an advocate of international education in tandem with
school reform and excellence in education, which his own life and work
personified.

We will get to know these teachers fairly well in the next six chapters.
Our focus will be to understand their background and lives before their
international experiences in Chapter 3, the context and content of their
experience teaching abroad in Chapter 4, the content and context of their
living experience in another country in Chapters 5 and 6, their views about
the impact of their experience upon their pedagogy in the classroom in
Chapter 7, and their perspectives about how their experience might have been
transformative for them and why in Chapter 8. In most cases during these six
chapters, they speak for themselves within a framework that initially came
from the data, their narratives. I have analyzed and reorganized their

narratives in themes so that they could enhance our learning about the

60
complexities and the possibilities for veteran teacher learning in an

international context.

CHAPTER 3
THE PERSON, THE LIFE: WHY GO?

What causes an experienced teacher to embark on an in-depth
international study and/or experience? Is it a case of who the teacher is, the
lump sum of all her previous biological and environmental inputs equaling
the sort of person who is curious and wants to learn, who jumps at an
opportunity to experience another culture, another way of speaking and/ or
being than he had experienced within his own first language and culture? Or
is an opportunity such as this made meaningful by the quality and character
of the experience itself, a case of an experience which is constructed in such a
way as to promote personal transformation? I am reminded of heredity and
personality traits vs. environmental conditioning debates among Psychology
101 classmates in the freshman dorms, or the discussion in a graduate seminar
on 17th century English history centering on Oliver Cromwell, a man who
made the moment or who was made great by the times, a man who was in the
right place at the right time in human history to make a difference.

Every one of these six teachers seized the moment; "jumped at the
opportunity" to have this experience. All had studied their respective area
intensively (several for years) before embarking on their international
adventure. Five of them had demonstrated an interest in learning about other
cultures during their K—12 family and schooling experiences. Their attitudes
toward learning and education are overwhelmingly positive. This chapter will

explore the backgrounds, home and school environments in which these

61

62
teachers were educated, college and post-college influences, their early

teaching experiences evolving into the kind of teacher they considered
themselves to be before the experience, and their attitudes toward learning,
what I will call their learning style. This chronological order helps to put
each phase of these teachers' lives into the framework of their prior
experiences. The one constant theme which connects all of these phases and
relates to their decision to engage in international experience and cultural
learning is their learning style. An analysis of the latter partially defines
these teachers. Who is this person before she embarks upon a potentially life

changing experience and how might who she is impact upon his experience?

Why Go?

Why in the world would anyone go through such a life disrupting
experience even for one month, much less for three years, when he could
have spent a month or more sunbathing, golfing and shopping on Barbados?
Teaching per se is one of the most stressful occupations in the U.S. It would
seem that rest and relaxation ought to be the reward for people who are
charged with the responsibility of motivating children and young people to
learn, some with 150 or more high school students whose part time schooling
competes for their attention and commitment with jobs (for cars), TV and
parties. Reports abound about the "dead wood," the many burned out teachers
shuffling their way to retirement, hoping their bored and rebellious students
won't slip drugs into the strong coffee they use to help them get through each
day unless stomach ulcers take away that one small crutch. Why would
veteran teachers want to take on the daunting task of learning about another
culture, when information overload is already causing angst and anxiety and
the cultural critics are shouting that we are all too ignorant about our own

culture to function at anything beyond a very low level in American society?

63
Wouldn't a teacher be too exhausted after working with often unruly,

disruptive, disrespectful young Americans to devote months or years to the
study of another culture? Wouldn't a teacher feel too fatigued from working
with students who have had too much too soon or too little; too much hurt, too
much disappointment, to expand her own knowledge, even to study a second
language at age 54? Who are these teachers? What drives them? Why did they

go?

Their Reasons:
"I jumped at the opportunity" (Mary Ehrhardt)

Mary Ehrhardt used her sabbatical to participate in a student/ teacher
exchange program between the Chinese students and teachers in Shanghai
and her own home town, Cambridge, MA. Denise Green says: "I jumped at the
chance" to participate in a teacher exchange program in Japan run by the
State Department of Education in Indiana. "My hand shot up my colleagues
thought I was crazy," when Ed Donovan and his fellow faculty members were
asked by a program leader if "any of you guys were interested in teaching" for
a year in the People's Republic of China. Bill Notebaum was 1 of 25 teachers
chosen out of 800 applicants to attend an all expenses paid month long
educational experience in Japan, which included visits to schools, businesses,
and cultural sites. Paul Vandemere answered an ad in the Teacher Association
paper for an overseas teaching assignment in Japan with an interpreting
company to teach English, public speaking and forensics to business
executives.

What seemed to be the driving force behind their decision to spend up to
three years teaching or learning in a culture very different from their own?
The common motivating factor among these teachers was a desire to improve

and deepen their own knowledge of the subject matter they were teaching.

64
Most had studied for years the history, geography and culture of the area they

eventually lived in or visited before they decided to go. Paul Vandemere, Mary
Ehrhardt, Ed Donovan, and Bill Notebaum all had taught about the area, with
little to no formal education about the subject. They each had embarked upon
their own self-education projects in order to offer more to students than the
text and to enrich their classes. Initially, one might say that the curriculum
and text educated the teachers. However, these teachers expanded upon and
went far beyond this elementary survival stage in teaching a new subject by
doing their own research and/ or going back to school for more formal
education. Secondarily, several of these teachers were feeling unchallenged,
burned out, or depressed about their lives and work; this represented another
motivation for the decision to go.

Ten years before going to China, Ed Donovan had taken summer courses
in anthropology at the University of Minnesota "just to pick up something to
share with his students." He viewed his year in China in much the same light.
In the 1960's he had been hired to teach humanities curriculum that included
a unit about China, about which he knew very little. It was then that he began
his efforts to educate himself about China. By the time his "hand shot up" some
twenty years later in response to a query about his interest in going there, he
felt the need "to get my batteries recharged I was burning out." The only
possible obstacle was his wife's feelings about living in a very remote area of
southwestern China for a year. A Christmas party was held with professors
from the sponsoring university and the university in China whereupon his
wife, a nurse who could also teach at the medical college, was "hooked" into the
excitement of going on this adventure with her husband.

Denise Green had been fascinated by languages, Egyptian hieroglyphics

and Chinese characters as a young person. She liked to imagine what the

65
strange words might mean and vowed one day to go to China. Denise felt that

her experience in Japan and a side trip to China would help her make those
places "come alive" for her children. The enjoyment she had experienced
learning Spanish and her general interest in other languages and cultures
encouraged her to tackle Japanese as a way of qualifying her for the State
teacher exchange program in Japan.

After recuperating from surgery, Ellen Stacey learned from a
girlfriend about a similar exchange program to the one Denise Green had
experienced. "I was really depressed at the time." Ellen Stacey entered the
program with the hope of qualifying to go to Japan. The prerequisite for the
program was a one-year Japanese language and culture course. Ellen found
that learning Japanese was "too demanding" and time consuming in addition to
her responsibilities as a reading consultant for the State Department of
Education and full time teaching, but her friend urged her to stay as a study
partner. In spite of her ambivalence about these classes, Ellen was one of
three out of fifty teachers in the program selected to teach English in Japan
for seven months. Ellen expressed less enthusiasm about going to Japan than
the other five teachers. This becomes more significant as we explore her
experience there.

Paul Vandemere, like Ed Donovan, was feeling somewhat "burned out"
by heavy professional demands. He had been teaching international relations
and nonwestern civilization in addition to coaching winning teams in debate
and forensics. He, like Ed Donovan, felt the need to educate himself more fully
about the nonwestem world. Therefore, he took courses at the Fletcher School
of Diplomacy at Tufts in the summers of 1983 and 1984, where he became
motivated by East Asian scholar, William Perry, to learn more about East Asia.

Perry made this area "come alive" for Paul Vandemere, and Paul, like Denise

66
Green, aspired to use his study and experience to do the same for his own

students.

Because he was low in seniority at the high school, Bill Notebaum was
asked to teach economics. He had majored in history in college and had not
taken economics. Unfortunately, this is a common occurrence in U.S. high
schools (Powell, Farrar, Cohen, 1985). Bill began his own crash course in the
area the summer before he taught it. This began a six-year course of self-
directed study spurred on by his students' questions about the trade imbalance
between the U.S. and Japan, especially in the automotive industry. Like Paul
Vandemere and Ed Donovan, his effort to educate himself led him to study the
U.S.-Japan trade conflict with as unbiased an approach as he could. Bill was
not comfortable with his students' assumptions about U.S.-Japan trade.

The principal point of view of my students, I think, would reflect the

prevailing view at that time, particularly among automobile executives,

that Japanese competition was unfair, it was unbalanced, that it was a

result of extremely inexpensive labor costs in Japan, that their industry

was overly both protected and subsidized by government. Being the
normal social studies teacher that I am, I always wanted to make sure
that I bring some balance to any position the students take or even that

I take. I just wasn't comfortable with that as assumed to be true.

His research and work lead him to form a liaison with an official in the Federal
Reserve Board. Their work together to present workshops to educators on the
U.S.-Japan trade relationship fulfilled part of the Reserve Board's educational
mission. Bill was granted a fellowship to visit Japan for one month, the high
point of his international study and experience.

The desire to educate herself in the area she was to teach drove Mary
Ehrhardt to begin a 10 year study of China. This culminated in her experience
living with a family and teaching for four months in a key elementary and
middle school in Beijing, People's Republic of China. Just as Ed Donovan, Paul

Vandemere and Bill Notebaum felt they had to be better prepared in their

subject matter before teaching it, Mary Ehrhardt felt she needed to delve into

67
the subject matter first before she taught her 2nd graders. "I had to be a

learner first" in order to construct a curriculum for he students. She
researched in the library, "read a very great deal" about China, viewed and
took copious notes on every one of the BBC H_e_art of the Dragon series shown
on PBS in the U.S. She used the "wonderful materials from Stanford" on the
SPICE program on China for teachers. After several years of teaching the
China unit, she did all the preliminary work for a Fulbright Hays grant in
order to deepen her knowledge to share with her students. "I was ineligible as
an early elementary teacher for a Fulbright Hays grant. But the networking
that I did to achieve that actually turned out to be very, very helpful when I
had the sabbatical and knew that I wanted to try once again."

The ten-year effort she put into learning about China helped Mary
Ehrhardt to decide that she wanted to live with a family and experience life as
a Chinese person might as much as was possible. She felt "shaky" about her
knowledge of issues such as the communist system and the place of religion
within the society. "There were enough little seeds of doubt in my mind about
what I was doing that I really felt I needed the reassurance of first-hand
experience." She felt that she must know the subject matter well before she
could appropriately develop the curriculum for her 2nd graders, just as
Deborah Ball and Bill McDiarmid (1990) suggest: that a teacher must know her
subject matter well before she can effectively translate it into curriculum for
students. Mary viewed knowing subject matter in such a way that would allow
her to translate it into a form which 2nd graders could understand as well as
having a clear view of what she expected the students to eventually know and
understand.

I guess that my educational training, especially in science and social

studies, primary sources were so important that I felt I needed to really

delve into these topics and become a learner myself. I was not going to
use the textbook. Therefore, I needed to learn a lot and then develop a

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curriculum that would be appropriate for children at the grade level
that I was teaching.

John Dewey promotes this kind of knowing in the concept of a teacher's
"psychologizing" the subject matter, the way a teacher translates his in-depth
knowledge to connect with the understandings of a very small child and helps
him build and develop his own knowledge base. Perhaps this is what Paul
Vandemere and Denise Green mean when they talk about making the area
"come alive," a fascination with learning about another culture, another
country, and other people wherein the strange becomes familiar to themselves
and to their students.

Finally, why go? To learn, to break out of the cobwebs restricting the
mind, to know a little more, to understand the complexities and dilemmas
others face within a society which is very different from their own, and a
family very different from their own. Considering family influences will
help us begin to understand their motivations, why they were so open to the
chance for an international experience. They each considered family and
community influences to have been very important precursor influences to

their later interest in international study and experience.

Family/Community Influences:

"My parents were 'internationalists'" (Paul Vandemere)
What family and community influences may have played a role in each
of these teacher's decisions to intensively study and/ or experience another
culture? In the case of Paul Vandemere, the work of Elise Boulding can bring
a perspective to this question. Boulding (a former President of the WILPF) in
Building a Global Civic Culture (1990) promotes what she calls "imaging," that
is imagining a world without conflict. In this world the purpose of the UN

would be fulfilled, that people from different cultures and ethnic groups would

69
talk out their conflicts and compromise to the disaster of war. The prominence

of the United Nations as a formal vehicle for this purpose and the informal
networks in INGO's where people from 3 or more countries can connect
together in pursuit of common goals is reminiscent of the most influential
aspects of early family influences‘in the Vandemere family. To them the UN
was essential to world peace and harmony.

Paul Vandemere's parents were strong members of the United Nations
Association, his mother a member of the Women's International League for
Peace and Freedom (WILPF). They were politically active charter members of
the United Auto Workers and the first teacher union in the state. Close family
friends from Israel who visited regularly at Christmas were working with the
Rockefeller Foundation to help new governments in countries such as India
establish themselves in the late 19408. These Jewish friends "opened up worlds
to my brother and I" and their stories about India and Africa fascinated him.
The family also hosted exchange students from Nigeria in the early 19608. He
remembers "endless summer nights" on his neighbor's porch discussing world
politics and issues in a small almost rural midwestern town. Down this dirt
road drove a limousine with Saudi Arabian flags flying. His neighbors were a
Lebanese family who hosted Crown Prince Faisal, soon to become the King of
Saudi Arabia.

Even though Paul Vandemere's father died when he was thirteen years
old, it seems no wonder that his brother later went to India for two years as a
member of the Peace Corps and Paul taught in Egypt his first two years of
teaching. Because his family was very involved in the Civil Rights Movement,
he remembers when he was a High School student marching with Dr. Martin
Luther King and hearing a version of the "I Have a Dream" speech. Bristling,

he remembers when their next door neighbor forbid her daughters from

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playing ice hockey with Paul and his brother because of their inclusion of a

Nigerian exchange student guest in the game. The ugliness of the woman's
racism really stood out for Paul who was only 12 or 13 years old, as well as his
parent's outrage at her behavior. His parents also took him and his brother to
lectures by speakers such as John Kenneth Galbraith who spoke about
international issues.

My parents were definitely intemationalists from their perspective.

They were strong members of the United Nations Association before it

became controversial, back in the 508. My mom was a member of the

WILPF, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. My

parents had a very strong interest in politics and in social issues and in

international issues. We had exchange students from Nigeria, from

India and other places who would come and stay. Good friends of the

family would come every Christmas. He helped Golda Meir and others

set up things in Israel in 1948 and 49. Their friends and their lives
opened up on one level worlds to my brother and myself. My dad died
when I was 13 so a lot of what he did I really didn't comprehend. I was
just maturing to the point where it was beginning to make some sense to
me and I was showing some interest. But clearly, I grew up in a home
that was more international than most.

It was not until Paul went to the Fletcher School that this core of his
family experience was really activated. He and his wife, a veterinarian, chose
to accept a 40% cut in pay to go to Japan for 2 years. He considered his parents'
friends, a generation of "the last pioneers, people that were exploring areas,
territories, setting up new countries." Paul may be carrying on a tradition in
being a pioneer himself who can make these places "come alive" in his
classroom and in his work as an educator by bringing many of his experiences
in Japan into his classroom.

Mary Ehrhardt also believed that because she was raised during the
formative years of the United Nations, she later became fascinated with art as a
facet of world culture. She explains: "I suppose it's probably having been a
young person in the formative days of the United Nations."

Similar to Paul Vandemere, Bill Notebaum involved himself in the Civil

Rights movement by leading a group of high school students to lobby

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Christian Reform Church (Dutch Calvinists) ministers to speak out about civil

rights to their congregations. He was, he thought, reacting to what he called
the "soft racism" of his aunts. To him they were narrow and mean-spirited, out
of their own cleanliness is next to Godliness phobias in which they connected
minorities to their conception of uncleanness. In telling me about them, Bill
corrected himself saying rather than cleanliness is next to Godliness,
"cleanliness i_s Godliness I mean those ladies are serious." In spite of being
vehemently criticized by his aunts, Bill and his friends volunteered at day care
and job training centers in the inner city to do odd jobs painting and fixing up
those facilities. This was his way of countering the mean spirited "soft racism"
of his aunts.

Bill's parents' business experience living in Japan while Bill was in
high school significantly influenced his later interest in that country.
Although he went to Dutch Calvinist Church schools including Calvin College
and allowed a family "conspiracy" to succeed in encouraging him to marry a
Dutch Calvinist from this community (not even from another state), the
influence of his family was not altogether inhibiting. Bill's interest in
international issues was greatly influenced by his parents' business
experiences in Japan during the 60's. During his junior year in high school,
when his parents left him with his older sister's family to live in Japan for six
months, he was "fascinated" by the "crates full of stuff" which kept arriving
from Japan.

My father was in the textile business and when I was in high school,

Japan was moving very dramatically into the textile business. It was

one of the major areas that they were moving into at that time. His

company became involved in a joint venture with a Japanese company

and he traveled overseas to Japan I was a junior in high school, I

think. So his travel experience in Japan was fascinating to me and we

talked on the phone, he sent letters, and he came back with just crates
full of stuff. That was just early enough I guess in that time period of

history when you traveled to a place like Japan, you came home with a
couple suitcases. But you also sent back about four trunk loads of

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everything. 80 we ate with chopsticks for years My dad always and

my mom too were always very complimentary. They were never

derogatory. My dad said he was always warmly received and so, I don't
remember much Japanese hostility in the 608, but if there was any, my
parents certainly didn't represent that. My mother would leave the
hotel and go to the park and the Japanese young men basically would

come up to her and want to speak English to her, which she did.

The fascination with learning from relatives' travel was not something
only Bill experienced. Mary Ehrhardt and Ellen Stacey both were also
fascinated by the artifacts within their grandfather's sea chests and their
stories about traveling abroad. Both sets of Mary Ehrhardt's grandparents
were teachers, although her father became a businessman. Her two
grandfathers had separately traveled widely in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and
Europe for their own edification. Ellen Stacey's Irish grandfather had
traveled to many places in East Asia. She treasures a royal blue silk robe her
grandfather brought back to her grandmother from China, which Ellen had
asked for and received at her grandmother's death.

My grandfather went to China and Japan. My Irish grandfather. He

had brought back many momentos from Japan and the Orient when he

was over there. My grandmother always wore this beautiful silk robe.

When she died, I got it. It's that teal, not teal that bright blue and so in

my grandmother's house she always had my grandfather's military

sea trunk, when he traveled. That was always in my grandmother's
house. It always contained all these little momentos of her husband and
her son. There was always that mystique about that's what interested
me into thinking maybe I could join the Peace Corps.

Ed Donovan's father, a medical doctor, and mother lived in Germany
while his father worked and studied at the University of Berlin for a year at a
time in 1933 and 1936 (Ed was three and six years old). Ed and his siblings were
cared for by family members and maids. His mother traveled all over Europe
and Russia during these years. He remembers many political discussions at the
dinner table wherein his father chided his "dyed in the wool Republican"
wife, by bringing up Harding and Grant. "It was hard to defend Harding," says

Ed with a twinkle in his eye. His father was a great admirer of Harry Truman

73
while his wife would loyally support any Republican. Ed also admired his

father and uncles for their displaying a sense of tolerance unusual for the
time. He is proud of his father for taking the first African-American man as a
guest into the oldest exclusive white club in the city and supporting him later
as the first African-American man on the city's school board.

The influence for me has always been my father I think. He was a

doctor and was maybe one of the more tolerant people about race

particularly. He brought in the first black man to the DAC, he had to
bring him in the back door, but he got him in, got him served dinner.

This would be in the 50s. Hi8 [Ed's father] comment was that "if you need

a blood transfusion, it doesn't make difference what color a guy's skin

is. You need the blood, you're going to take it." He also, that same man

that he took to the DAC, wound up on the Detroit Board of Education, the
only black man.

Denise Green's family supported her interest in language and cultural
studies and provided a powerful example of the importance of struggling
versus great odds and barriers to get a education. She heard many family
stories of her father's struggle against racism as a teacher in Prince Edward
County, Maryland during the 19508 and 608. When Denise had to fight her own
battles, for example, not to be cast as a maid, she being the only African-
American in the 8th grade production, or to get approved to take more than
one language at a time in high school, her parents steadfastly supported her.
Her father's attainment of a PhD in education in spite of the many difficulties
impressed upon her that there was "no excuse" for her not to work hard at her
own education and succeed. Although her parents did not overtly encourage
her interest in the world, when she expressed an interest they supported her.
The cultural struggle which her parents had to wage as African-Americans
trying to reach their potential in a white racist society could have set the stage
for Denise's great curiosity about and interest in world languages and cultures,

a different way of seeing the world than the white dominated society she and

her parents had to function within. She remembers feeling humiliated along

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with three other African-Americans in the majority white early elementary

class when the music teacher brought in the score of a Negro spiritual,
showing a picture of slaves bent over working in a cotton field. "We knew we
weren't like that."

The example of parents and grandparents discussions of issues at the
dinner table or on the porch on a summer evening, the influence of
neighbors, a reaction to narrow-minded aunts all must be considered as
influences upon these teachers, who have chosen to study and experience
another culture in depth. The family influences on these teachers represent a
complex range of experience, from the curiosity factor surrounding artifacts
and stories of grandfathers experiences abroad to more intense parental
influence in the example of parents who lived abroad for six months to a year
at a time during, for example, Ed Donovan's early childhood and Bill
Notebaum's teen-age years. Paul Vandemere considered his family's
commitment to the values of social justice within the purview of the Civil
Rights Movement to have been influential in his later decision to study and
experience another culture. James Lynch (1989, 1992) connects social justice
to international and multicultural education as the common element which
draws these two fields together. The family experience of Paul Vandemere, Ed
Donovan, and Bill Notebaum (from the negative example of his aunts) and
Denise Green gives credibility to Lynch's perspective. The families of each of
these teachers demonstrated a commitment to the learning of their children,
in some cases encouraging that learning in dinner-table conversations of
political and international issues. In addition to family and community
influences, five of these teachers gave some examples of the impact of K-12
schooling on their later decision to go. How may their K-12 educational

experiences have helped set the stage for this interest?

75
School Influences:

"We felt a combination of anger, being offended and shame."
(Denise Green)

There are not many positive examples among the K—12 schooling
experiences of these teachers during their "apprenticeship of observation", as
is evidenced by Denise Green's statements about her music teacher, who
brought in an example of the typical anti-Black stereotypes predominating in
textbooks and teaching materials of the 508 and 608. However, where teachers
stood out as possible examples, the example did seem to support these teachers'
later international learning. Denise fondly remembers only one teacher, an
African-American, who taught a Black history elective in high school to a
majority African-American class in a mainly white school. This teacher
functioned as an ombudsman for her students, especially when they were not
encouraged to apply for college by white counselors. She had been to Africa
and taught the students about the great kingdoms in Africa, such as Timbuktu,
before their devastation by slavery (Franklin, 1947/ 1956).

Ellen Stacey, one of those teachers who attended private schools during
all of their K-12 and undergraduate education, considered her private Catholic
school education a positive influence. "She was just like Jesus," Ellen Stacey
describes her most "robust" and challenging teacher of high school
humanities, who instilled in Ellen a deep respect for language. This dynamic,
caring teacher was "brought up Jewish but converted to Christianity." Ellen's
Catholic schooling encouraged in her a tremendous respect for education
which she found reflected later within Japanese society. "We all wore
uniforms," not like the public school children, whom she and her classmates

considered "outsiders."

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Bill Notebaum, also educated in private religious schools, but within the

Dutch Calvinist Church, considered the "publics" as "weird" because he and his
school mates thought they did not go to church and were poor. In spite of this
narrow perspective, Bill believes that the church and church school
atmosphere fostered a sense of honesty and integrity in the children. Great
emphasis was put on teaching children not to lie or mislead people.

I went to church more hours than I would like to tell you. I was really

brought up in a culture and a group that emphasized honesty and

integrity and proper moral behavior, not to be a hypocrite and not to lie

or to mislead people.
This value system is important as background to his desire to do his own
research on the U.S. and Japanese trade situations in an unbiased way as
possible. He later wrote an article "The U.S. that can say 'Yes'", a takeoff on a
popular work in Japan at the time, The Iapan that can say 'No' (Ishihara, 1989)
to emphasize the need to understand each other's position more fully and
compromise to promote mutually beneficial relationships. Speaking about his
understanding of his basic values with regard to changes in his perspectives
as a result of international study and experience, he says:

It made me increasingly sensitive to modeling and acting your

convictions and not just expressing them If you're working with

people and heading towards some end product, but relying only on the
cultural experiences that you have that are known to you, you're going
to be impeded.

The special motivating teachers for these teachers included a male 8th
grade Spanish language teacher for Denise Green, in addition to her high
school Black history teacher. Ed Donovan credited his male Greek and Latin
teachers at the Jesuit Catholic school with teaching him how to think and
challenge text.

The Greek teacher had been a former all-American football player out

in California and had joined the Jesuits. The Latin teacher had been a

champion Golden Gloves boxer in California and joined the Jesuits. They

were very interesting guys. The guy who was the Greek scholar got me
involved in looking at cultures differently. The Latin scholar got me to

77

think. In fact, I can remember him taking a swipe across the top of my
head one time, telling me to use my head before he used it as a punching
bag.

Bill Notebaum had a "Contemporary Problems" teacher "who actually felt that
meaning and understanding were important."

There was a history teacher that really challenged us to make
connections and see cause and effect and look for meaning and
understanding. We talked him into starting a whole new class called
Contemporary American Problems along those lines. Pretty innovative
now that I think about it. He broke us up into groups and gave us topics,
let us choose topics and we basically for the most part of the semester,
investigated those topics and then did presentations on it and wrote
papers on it I did mine on the Civil Rights Movement, the Black
experience in America.

This teacher's methods were progressive for the time because they included
group work and investigative research on contemporary American issues
such as the Civil Rights movement. Bill and his friends made "presentations
on racism" which led to their voluntarily making presentations to church
youth groups and ministers after school. Their goal was to raise awareness
within the Dutch church about civil rights issues. His aunts attacked him
"viciously" about these activities.

We started to ask for entree to young people's groups in all of these
different churches and societies. You have Sunday school, you have
catechism, you have hymn sings, you have young people's associations
and all this kind of stuff. And so what we would ask to do is not just to
attend but to do presentations on racism and racial views and the issue
of the African-American experiences. That kind of branched out to
where we started going to ministers and saying that racism and racial
relations was an important issue and that they ought to be addressing it
from the pulpit and not just speaking silently on it because it was too
controversial We got quite a few of the ministers to give some pretty
serious, heart-wrenching sermons and that's when people would
challenge their views and we also asked for the right to hold meetings
in church basements after church, voluntarily. You could attend or not
attend. 80 we stood up and said our piece and took our shots.

Mary Ehrhardt felt moved by the stories of her 7th grade geography
teacher, a Korean War veteran. These "great stories about the world made it
come alive" for Mary. In high school her Advanced Placement world

literature class, including an enthralling Murder in the Camedral, began "my

78
lifelong love of literature" and influenced her to major in English at Oberlin

College. However, she credits her most formative school influence being the
Deweyan inspired progressive country day elementary school she attended in
New Orleans. This experiential, "learn by doing" approach helped motivate
her to become an active learner, an influence that caused her to seek out an
experience in China very different from what most foreigners experience in
that country.

Paul Vandemere's family influence was so vibrant and exciting, he
remembers little about K-12 motivating influences in the public schools. Each
of the remaining five teachers could only name one or two teachers who had
motivated them to be learners, to seek out study and experience beyond the
ordinary. It was college and post college experience which seemed to be more
meaningful than the bulk of their K-12 schooling.

These examples of K-12 teachers who my informants feel positively
affected their development make a rather negative statement about American
public and private schooling from the 19408 through the 19608. In most cases
these teachers describe one or two outstanding teachers as exceptions to the
rule. The general context of K-12 schooling seemed to be unworthy of
discussion to these self-described, highly motivated learners. The criticism of
Admiral Rickover (1959), James B. Conant (1959), and others aimed at the lack
of intellectual rigor and excitement in the schools of the 508 become cogent in
the context of this study, as do the criticisms of the 19808 and early 19908. This
is one reason that the motivation of teachers to study another culture is
important to analyze. It is my contention that these teachers with support can
change the context of the schools in which they teach by being examples to
students and colleagues of vibrant, continuously learning adults. In most

cases, the background and support of these teachers was their homes, not their

79
schools. The few examples of positive teacher models show that schools can

have a much greater influence if more teachers are encouraged to take
learning risks like these six teachers, to help change schools into authentic

learning environments.

Undergraduate and post-undergraduate influences:

"I saw what appeared to be a giant pajama party off in the
corner of the Cairo airport." (Paul Vandemere)

An argument could be made that after Paul Vandemere had studied
international relations in college and had been brought up among
international influences with his family, friends, and neighbors that he would
have been comparatively well prepared for his first international experience.
His Arab neighbors facilitated a teaching position for him in Cairo, Egypt, his
first two years as a novice teacher. According to Paul, naiveté and ignorance
reigned: "I did not study at all." He soon learned that the giant pajama party
was actually people in traditional dress for their haj, their pilgrimage to
Mecca. He invited some of his Egyptian students over to his apartment for New
Year's Eve, "treating them to submarine sandwiches complete with salami."

His students were polite; "they didn't tell me about it." He had wanted "to do
something very American, that they had never had before," so he offered
them a variety of cheeses and meats which they all ate except for the salami.
"Egypt opened my eyes," even though learning in his family included world
geography and history, this learning did not include cultural norms and
customs.

I was in a sense not in Egypt. Literally, I was there, but not

figuratively. I was living on an island in the middle of the Nile that was

the diplomatic community, in a apartment complex university owned,

went to the university and then came back and did occasional forays

into parts of Cairo, but on a much more superficial basis than when I
was in Japan.

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Paul's experience in Cairo shows that many traditional international

relations and history courses do not teach much about culture. Bill Notebaum
realized this also when he tried to convert his learning about U.S.-Japan trade
issues into a basis for teaching a more general Japanese language and culture
course. Although history and economics are part of culture, they do not
constitute cultural learning. The idea of culture includes the way people
behave within the context of their history and tradition, thus encompassing
basically the gamut of human life in any given society. Therefore, to prepare
adequately for an in-depth international experience, one would learn about
the geography, art, religion, language, history, and cultural practices of the
country to be visited. Paul was not adequately prepared, nor did he consider
his experience to be "in depth". Paul felt that he was too isolated in what he
later calls a "Gaijing [foreign] ghetto" to have experienced Cairo in depth, the
way he feels he did experience Japan. Being among the people in Japan
helped him become more in tune with Japanese culture, that is to be aware of
such matters as how to present or receive a business card. What this means to
this study is that knowledge of specific aspects of a culture is not enough, that
there must be a more holistic, Deweyan sense of connections. For example,
how would the traditional tea ceremony connect with Japanese art,
philosophy, religion, and history? Paul learned from his experience in Cairo
that he wanted to know about a culture more deeply, which probably helped
him do this in Japan.

Denise Green's student exchange experience in Ghana during her
college years was more in depth than what Paul describes because she lived
with Ghanian students in the university dormitories. She also tried to learn
some of the local language although not formally as she later had done before

her trip to Japan. Denise tried to explain her cultural experiences to an

81
Indiana University professor of education and her African-American friends

with little success. "How does one describe snow to a man in West Africa, who
lived in a home made of scrap metal with a dirt floor and a bare bulb hanging
from the ceiling for light, buckets to a community tap for water, and used an
open fire with an exhaust hole in the ceiling for cooking?" Denise confronted
this dilemma during her years as an exchange student at the University of
Ghana in Africa with a University of Indiana education professor who told her
in one of her courses that she should have shaved off a piece of soap to show
the man. Denise Green thought to herself, but then I would be the
quintessential "Ugly American" throwing away a precious commodity like soap
in this demonstration.

During her undergraduate experience, she had tested into 3rd year
Spanish, so she dropped French to concentrate on Spanish. A clerical error
misfiling her application caused her to be sent to Africa instead of Latin
America, an event she did not regret. She used the year to learn as much as
she could from her Ghanian roommate and on side trips. In the process she
picked up enough words and expressions in the local language to get by,
greetings and key words and phrases. She learned first hand about the
tremendous pressure upon students in Ghana to succeed, causing some who did
not to commit suicide every year. She compared this pressure to a relative lack
of pressure on university students in the U.S. who could make up failed courses
and who were given second chances.

Because some [Ghanian] people were the first kids in that community to

go to college, so a lot was expected of them, while they were at the

university and once they returned to their communities, to help pull
others up. And some students felt very, very burdened by that
responsibility. And I was glad I did not have that kind of responsibility.

Every year, they told us there were kids who would commit suicide.

When I was there, one did commit suicide because he felt he couldn't

handle the exams because their exams are at the end of the year. There

is one exam for each class. If you passed the exam, you passed the class.
You failed the exam, you failed class. And you'd have to take the whole

82
class again. It's not like a semester. And you didn't have a choice of

electives like we do. There is a set curriculum. The thing about failing

is if you had to repeat that one class, that could endanger your

scholarship And that was a do-or—die situation. I really felt for those

kids. .

In contrast to Denise's and Paul's first-hand international experience,
Bill Notebaum, a history major at Calvin College, was vicariously fascinated by
the immigrant experience in American history. "Trained as a historian" he
found the emphasis on objectivity a great value, which also complemented his
basic values, especially integrity. He recognized that we all have biases, but
we must recognize our own point of view so that we can control our biases and
not be controlled by them.

I was trained. In undergraduate school I was the historian and the

training I had always taught that a historian's role was to approach the

material with the greatest objectivity as possible. When you realize
your point of view and you pose a bias, at least be fully cognizant of it

and be in control of it rather than have it control you. I just felt as a

teacher and as a thinker, that that was the only way to go.

This striving toward self awareness of biases is basic to the work of George and
Louise Spindler (1994), who have promoted the idea of cultural therapy, the
self analysis of one's own cultural core, the enduring cultural selves which we
take for granted and which we are unaware of how strongly it colors our
perceptions. Being aware of these biases helped Bill Notebaum analyze the
U.S.-Japan trade conflict by trying to understand the other (Japanese) point of
view in addition to how both the U.S. and Japan are deeply influenced by
cultural factors.

Ellen Stacey became aware of cultural bias by being the victim of
prejudice. Her experience at a Catholic college for girls reinforced what she
considers now to be a sheltered educational experience. She had not been
aware of prejudice in the world until a boyfriend's Protestant family forbid his

interest in her because as a Catholic girl they feared she would not believe in

birth control and posed a risk to their son.

83

His parents didn't want him to date me not because of money but because

of my religion. I was Catholic and I didn't believe in birth control.

They were afraid that if I got pregnant, there was a baby and he

wouldn't be able to finish college.

She did not put this experience into a context until she was in her 40's when
she realized that education is the key to everything including the problem of
prejudice. "I was learning a lot but never put it into perspective I think until
I was in my 308. Now I'm in my 408 and I don't care. Education I think is the
key to everything."

Intellectual pursuits dominated Mary Ehrhardt's and Ed Donovan's
collegiate backgrounds. Art history, first experienced at Oberlin College,
became Mary Ehrhardt's life-long avocation. The art courses and excellent art
museums on campus opened up this new world to her. To pursue this study,
she spent one summer studying art in Europe. As a graduate student, she
returned with her husband to study "specific works of art." They stayed in a
number of family homes in the Netherlands, Switzerland, England, and Italy.
These homestays appealed to her as a way to really experience a culture, that is
to develop personal relationships with individuals in the culture. It was here
that she learned that it was easy to develop international friendships "that
have lasted over the years." She still writes to friends and families that she
befriended in Europe thirty some years ago. She had learned that "I guess that
I always would be welcomed." To Mary, meaningful cultural experience was
not the art, the architecture, or the lovely scenery in themselves. It was her
connections with the people whose lives included those things as part of their
cultural tradition.

Ed Donovan majored in English and Philosophy and later earned an MA.

in history. His Russian history teacher was taught by Alexander Kerensky,

the Russian leader of the lst Russian Revolution (February-October, 1917)

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before the Bolsheviks took control under Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin. After he

had tried out the business world for a few years, he decided as the oldest son of
a medical doctor whose younger brothers became attorneys and doctors, that "I
would do something really important, like teaching." This was a "tongue in
cheek" statement, somewhat akin to Bill Notebaum's idea of being "only a high
school teacher" when people gave him the back-handed compliment that he
should be teaching college. It brings up the point of the low status of teaching
in the U.S. particularly for men in their 408 or older. Ed says this ruefully
because he is very concerned about the quality of his teaching; however,
professional character and status is still conferred on doctors and lawyers to a
far greater degree than it is upon excellent teachers. Ed's first years teaching
experiences were in his home town and 5 years at a city training school with
400 students, all but 2 with police records. One of his students committed
murder while he was out on bail for accessory to murder. Feeling burned out
after 5 years, he began teaching high school in an extremely affluent suburb
of the city where he is still teaching a humanities program.

These teachers felt that influences in their college and post college
lives had foreshadowed their decision to pursue an intensive international
experience. Paul Vandemere, Denise Green, and Mary Ehrhardt had explicit
international experiences during and just after college. The international
exposure these three had caused them to seek out further, more in-depth
international study and experience as veteran teachers. Ed Donovan and Bill
Notebaum experienced a kind of learning in college which encouraged them
to think more deeply and look for different perspectives. Ellen Stacey's
experience with prejudice helped her understand the importance of education
against prejudice. The point is that exposure to different cultures and

different ideas is often very important to them. This exposure has bearing

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upon the kind of teachers they have become and their choice to be cultural

learners. It is also important to understand how they describe themselves as

teachers before their international experience.

Teaching practice Jbefore the international experience:

"I was hopefully a good teacher." (Bill Notebaum)

Understanding what kind of teacher a person thought herself to be
prior to an experience she considers to be transformative is difficult. These
teachers struggled with the question even though they all considered
themselves changed as a result of the experience; change from what to what
was difficult for them to describe. I asked them to walk me through the sort of
classroom, methods used, relationships with students that they believed
described their teaching practice before the experience. Bill Notebaum and
Paul Vandemere considered themselves to be rather traditional teachers with
respect to a teacher-centered approach. Only Mary Ehrhardt and Denise
Green, the two elementary level teachers, described somewhat progressive
methodology as a regular feature of their classrooms before their
international experience. Bill Notebaum, Paul Vandemere, and Ed Donovan
described their approach to subject matter which related to international
issues as superficial, lacking in depth and a sense of reality before the
experience.

Ellen Stacey, an exception in this group on this issue, described herself
as a more creative and energetic teacher before her second experience
teaching and living in Japan.

I think I was more creative. I would venture out a little bit more. The

students not only were writing, but they were creating for me. They

were making commercials for intermissions on a program that I would,
the kids would write, we would help put together. I never even thought
about that. I think I was much more creative before I went to Japan.

The age too, I don't know. I remember putting on a performance, I
remember I was in charge of the Junior Honor Society. You should

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have seen the performance. It was choreographed from beginning to
end.

Denise Green became aware immediately upon her first experience in a
Japanese classroom of how different her teaching style was from what was
expected of a teacher in Japan. She found that posture was extremely
important. She described this by standing up in a very straight, rigid pose.
"We were supposed to stand straight like this and not move as we lectured to
the students." Leaning on something or, worse, sitting on a desk, was totally
unacceptable. Even when sitting while another teacher spoke, a teacher was
to sit ramrod straight, feet flat on the floor, no elbows on a desk or table.

Ed Donovan's monitor would stop him as he moved out beyond the
podium to walk up and down the rows as he talked, take his arm and gently
guide him back to the podium until the monitor just gave up after several
weeks of Donovan's forgetting and pacing among the students as he had done
for many years in the U.S. Ed Donovan and Denise Green came back more
aware of how much more relaxed and interactive their teaching styles were
than what they observed in China and Japan respectively. Denise Green had
been using small group instruction extensively before she went to Japan. Ed
Donovan found that even his insisting on integrating the males and females in
his classes at the medical college was difficult for these students. Most males
sat in the front and the females in the back of the class, not interspersed as
would be common in an American classroom.

Paul Vandemere, as a teacher in Illinois, found himself learning the
subject matter of his texts one day or week ahead of the kids on his own time.
Students made meals for each of the regions they studied. He invited speakers
on culture from the university to talk to the kids. It was extremely limited and
superficial, lacking in the authenticity and depth that gets beyond

stereotypes.

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In the nonwestem world course that I had developed, I did a section on

East Asia. But again, it was primarily staying one day or at least a week

or so ahead of the students in those first couple years. Certainly again it

was more superficial and more traditional geography and history and
the political system and that kind of thing. Although, we did some other
things. For instance, I had meals for each one of the regions, I had the
kids make, and we tried to do some other things. I had people come in
from different universities and did demonstrations on different aspects
of their culture. But again, it was limited.

Bill Notebaum described himself as a "moderately gifted traditional
instructor with a lot more knowledge base and ability to make things
interesting than many [teachers]." He described the bulk of teaching he
experienced as a student and observed as a teacher to be "torrid structural
techniques" based on authoritarian methods designed to humiliate and
intimidate students. Teachers behaved like mini-professors, demagogues who
"could never be matched." When parents and students said to Bill, "you
shouldn't be teaching high school," he considered this comment to be more an
insult than the compliment it was meant to be. To Bill this statement indicated
a lack of respect for the profession of teaching.

A picture of Mary Ehrhardt's teaching style before her experience in
China emerges in what she chose to bring to China to share with the Chinese
teachers and in examples of the China curriculum she developed for her
American students before her experience in China. Role plays and many
interactive games were a mainstay of her teaching in China, methods she did
not observe in any Chinese classroom before her work with the teachers. For
the nine years she taught the China curriculum in the 2nd grade, the vehicle
for study was a six-week role play trip to China. She described her initiation of
the China unit this way:

Just this afternoon, we have just recently flown to China It seems that

2nd graders are still pretty gullible and they do love pretending, they

really get into taking the trip and do believe that they are in China and

that their hotel rooms might look remarkably like their own homes,
their own bedrooms at home. But they come back every day willing to

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travel on someplace different. 80 this afternoon, we visited the home of
a Chinese child and learned about the family and their activities and we
are in Beijing for a few days now.

Mary Ehrhardt's role is tour guide. The students prepare for a month or
so before going by comparing the geography of the U.S. and China, and they
study the art, history, language, and culture of China as a prelude to their
"trip." They make up passports, send for visas, plan an itinerary and read
about the places they will visit. Their parents sign permission slips as is the
school procedure for all field trips "Occasionally, a parent is befuddled too,
especially our new parents. They're not quite sure whether to sign this
permission slip or not." After studying the geography of the places they
would visit, they decide what to pack, each child being "responsible for his or
her own luggage." The day of the trip:

They bring with them, whether it's a backpack or a little suitcase on
wheels, what they can manage on their own in China By that time, they
are not quite sure whether they are going or staying. Occasionally,
there's a reluctant child, so occasionally a parent will come and have
maybe even a reluctant or a teary good-bye because they're not quite
sure whether they want to go to China or not. The trip takes about an
hour. The classroom is set up like an airplane we have hexagonal
tables and we rearrange them so they stretch them out like the wings of
the airplane and I use a slide which we took of the nose of a 747 jetliner
so that they actually feel like they are walking into a plane. Then, this
is a multimedia event. We use the maps to just follow our route. We
actually have tape recorded a pilot in his takeoff and instructions to the
passengers so that they actually do take off and they do hear from the
pilot where they will be, what they should observe out of the window as
we go across the United States. We land in San Francisco, refuel, we've
talked about crossing the international dateline. So the trip proceeds
with an in-flight movie and a meal served en route. When we finally
land in Beijing, we're met by a Chinese customs official and usually that
is an exchange teacher from China who has been coached to role play
with us, checks the passports, asks the children in Chinese how old they
are, what the purpose of their visit is, and how long they will be in
China. When we've all deplaned, we then have a whole team of teachers
ready to continue through the day and visit a children's palace, which
is perhaps PE. or Art or Music and so we proceed during the day as if
we've really arrived and are starting our trip. At the end of the day, the
children go off to their respective hotels. It really is quite fun. I think
this is a pretty typical social studies practice. I've heard about a lot of
other trips, but this one is real even to the point of having seat belts and
a little seat pocket in front of you where you can keep your passport and
have magazines and things that you can read while you're flying.

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This imaginary trip for 2nd graders demonstrates the kind of teacher

Mary Ehrhardt was before her China experience, which she believes
transformed her as a person and as a teacher. How she and the other teachers
prepared for their own real international experience is important to
understand, as necessary to analyze how each of them functioned in a very
different environment from the one in which they had been raised, schooled,
and employed as teachers.

Each of these teachers discussed the changes they perceived in their
teaching practice after their international experience. Bill, Ed, and Paul
described their pedagogy as being more traditional and superficial, lacking in
imagination and ingenuity before their international experiences. Ellen
described herself as an energetic, creative teacher before her three years in
Japan. Even though Mary would be considered an extremely creative teacher
before her experience, she felt that this experience greatly improved and
enriched her work with 2nd graders. We will revisit this subject in much

greater depth in Chapter 7 of this dissertation.

Their Preparation:
"I wanted badly to communicate [in China]." (Mary Ehrhardt)

The three women teachers, two enthusiastically and one reluctantly,
studied Chinese and Japanese language and culture for up to a year before
embarking on their cultural adventure. The three men considered their
previous study about the culture in connection with their teaching enough
preparation for this experience. All three of the fully funded teacher
programs attended by the women mandated language and cultural study as a
prerequisite.

Ed Donovan and his wife Heather attended several sessions wherein

program leaders presented "the unromantic side" of living and working for a

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year in a remote area of southwestern China "80 we were prepared". He feels

that his years of teaching and learning about China was ample preparation.
Paul Vandemere's teaching about China and his experience learning about
Japan and China at the Fletcher School prepared him and his wife, Linda for
their two years of living and working in Japan. Neither Paul Vandemere nor
Bill Notebaum considered learning Chinese or Japanese, except at an extremely
elementary level, limited mainly to greetings. Bill Notebaum candidly admits
"I don't think I have the kind of brain that learns languages very well"
because he feels he has a learning disability in phonetics. "If you repeat a
word ten times, I can't repeat it ten minutes later." His major preparation was
the 5-6 years he studied economics as it related to Japanese and American
culture.

Denise Green and Ellen Stacey participated in an almost identical
program which required the teachers to study Japanese in class from 6:00-
10:00 p.m. 2 nights a week and study with a colleague from the class the other 2
evenings for one year, a daunting schedule for any full time teacher. It seems
amazing that Ellen persevered in this even though she "kept trying to drop out
of it" because the language was so demanding of her time and effort. Denise
Green seemed to really enjoy her study of Japanese, even to the point of
wanting to pursue it as the subject of another degree or study for a year at
Tokyo Christian University, so that she could subsequently teach "Japanese in
[U.S.] public schools."

The summer before Mary Ehrhardt was to go to China, at age 54, she took
her first Chinese language class taught by the Chinese language teacher at the
local high school in the district which had developed the exchange program
with China. The other teacher chosen to teach in China had taken Chinese for

3 years in college and was spending the summer on a study tour in Prague,

91
Czechoslovakia. Mary Ehrhardt's classmates were the 5 high school students

also chosen to go, some of whom had taken the Chinese course at their school.
"I was a diligent student. I studied every day I found that it took a great deal
of time and effort to acquire some language skills." The course included a
great deal of conversation, using the pin yin form of Romanization, not the
characters. She and the 5 students studied 30 lessons prepared by the Beijing
Language Institute, and became "pretty well acquainted in the process". They
were tutored by Chinese high school students in the U.S. as part of the
exchange program. The Americans really befriended these students, Mary
Ehrhardt noting that "it's pretty hard to be a teenager so far away from home.
[This] was the beginning of our exchange experience." Mary Ehrhardt's
preparation included intensive language study and relationships with
individuals from that culture, a true exchange experience even before she
took off on her own airplane trip to China.

Mary, Denise, and Ellen participated in rigorous, mandatory language
and cultural studies before they flew to East Asia. All of them clearly benefited
from this training. Mary considered this preparation to be indispensable to
the character and quality of her experience, especially the language work
which enabled her to communicate with her host family. Neither Ed nor Paul
thought their preparation, which did not include language work, was
inadequate. Bill felt that the preparation and followup of his study tour in
Japan was excellent. A more rigorous preparation including language may
likely have dissuaded Bill, Ed, and Paul from engaging in this international
experience. Nevertheless, they do miss out upon the kind of experience that

Mary and Denise describe.

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Learning Style:

"I just became fascinated. I knew that I wanted to learn more."
(Paul Vandemere)

The picture that emerges of the lives of these teachers is in general
people who were committed to improving their own teaching, who were
interested in learning, who saw the experience as a way to develop and
invigorate themselves. This all relates to a key issue in who these people are
and why they chose to learn about another very different culture: that is the
learning style of each person. Each of them have evidenced a love of learning
at some point in their lives. Some it seems continuously reflect this quality.
Their enthusiasm bubbles up just in the way they describe "jumping at the
opportunity" to study and experience life in another country. There is a
persistent strain throughout these interviews of wanting to know and
experience more, reminiscent at times of Dewey's ideal of the teacher as
learner. This ideal teacher will work to grasp a deep knowledge of subject
matter and then connect his knowledge to the understanding of a child and
take her from the starting point of her own awareness as far as she can go.

Terrific courses at the Fletcher School motivated Paul Vandemere to
further study and answer that ad for a Japanese company. Ed Donovan took
anthropology courses in the summer at the University of Minnesota "just to
pick up something to use in class." One example he used in class was an
anthropologist's observation of the way many Americans walked, taking up a
lot of space with arms swinging, reflecting a luxury of space. The
anthropologist compared this walk to that of many Chinese who walk with one
foot ahead of the other and elbows pulled in close to the body, reflecting a lack
of space in China. Another summer Ed participated in an archeological dig

organized by Northwestern University because "I was curious. What it did was

93
teach me to look at things differently." He did not take these courses for

another degree (he already had an M.A.), but because he was curious and
wanted to know more to share with his students.

In The Inguiring Mind, Cyril Houle (1960) studies adults who continue to
learn distinguishing between those who learn to improve job skills, to work
toward a goal such as another credential, and those who learn for the sheer
delight of learning. These latter are people who have never lost their child-
like curiosity and wonder. Learning is pleasure to them. All six of these
teachers display elements of the foregoing in their narratives, to differing
degrees. Mary Ehrhardt's study of art history led her to use art as her
avocation. In addition to teaching full time and raising a family, she became a
docent at an art museum that specialized in New England modern art. She had
found the interdisciplinary study in art history "very exciting" and continued
with this approach in her own teaching and docenting work. To educate
herself about China she continually looked for new sources and ideas. She
learned about the Chinese folk tradition of shadow puppets and has established
a tradition telling a Chinese folktale with the children performing as the

puppets.

We use a king size sheet with screens on either side and we do this in
the performing arts center so that it can be totally darkened. I would
love sometime to share the video with you because this year, even the
children who were more challenging to work with, their performance
and the musical sound effects which they create and the overhead
transparencies which become the scenery were really amazing, I
thought. It's very beautiful and very compelling and magical.

Before she taught the Chinese unit, she "spent a long long time reading, just to
get a handle on what one would teach 2nd graders." She found a Chinese
bilingual class in Boston, whose teacher agreed to communicate with Mary's
class as penpals when she began the China unit 9 years ago. Mary Ehrhardt

reveled at the "chance to become a student again," especially when she

94
learned brush painting and calligraphy in China from a Chinese Master. This

was one way she felt her experience in China became "richer and richer day
by day."

Denise Green displayed intellectual curiosity as a small child when she
became "just fascinated" with the speech of a "little girl down the street" who
spoke Spanish. She kept "bugging and bugging her" to speak Spanish with
her and explain what those sounds meant. When she saw that cereal boxes let
you send away for books about the world with a dime, she sent away for the
books. When they began to arrive, her surprised parents asked her how this
had happened. They only admonished her to ask them first before she sent
away for anything and allowed her to keep them, including her prize, fir;
Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Denise Green later described her desire
to learn the language and culture of another country in depth. She admired
her 8th grade teacher for making the students talk to each other using
Spanish words and phrases, helping them to be comfortable using the
language. She described how she and each of her three children "would have
three books going at once," amazing her teacher sister. She hoped that one
day she could work on a degree to study something that she just wanted to
know more about, like law or Japanese, with no professional purpose, loving
learning for its own intrinsic value, the quintessential "Inquiring Mind."

Bill Notebaum's response to his students questions "by doing my own
reading and research, subscribing to journals I felt the need to become more
informed." In this process the subject of economics really hooked him
"because it was answering more questions about what was going on in terms of
the changes I was seeing in the world." He just could not accept the prevailing
viewpoint that Japanese competition was unfair based on cheap labor in

government subsidized industries. He immersed himself in the work of W.

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Edwards Demming, an economist who was initially eschewed by American

industry, but took his message to Japan and was greatly influential there.

Only Ellen Stacey of these six teachers displays some ambivalence about
learning and does not talk about going to Japan to improve her teaching.
After attending a Catholic women's college, she obtained what she describes as
a "great job at a bank", interviewing, photographing celebrities who wanted
custom Master Charge cards with their pictures on the back. "I met all the
football teams, the basketball teams, the baseball players" but eight months
later the celebrities thinned out and she had to begin substitute teaching to
make a living. After she taught for a couple of years, she decided that she
needed an M.A.. She did not care about what her subject was, so she was placed
in reading. It took her ten years to get that degree because a troubled
marriage and divorce intervened. Her interest in the Japan program
developed because she had just had an operation and felt "depressed."

On the other hand, she describes what she got out of her Catholic
education this way: "we all came out educated with a love of education." After
her first seven months in Japan, she felt "reunited" her "with that fire of the
love of education". She admired the Japanese because they had "the same
tremendous respect for education that I grew up in" Their students wore
uniforms as she had done in the parochial school system. Even though she
dropped French after two years of it in college because "English was easier",
she showed me the language books in her book case: books on how to speak
Arabic, Spanish, French and German. She is teaching 7th and 8th graders
Japanese as well as community college students in the evening.

Conclusion
Family, community and schooling influences, the times, university

experiences, and the first years of teaching helped to create the person who

96
decided to disrupt his or her life and career to study about or work abroad.

Some of these descriptions remind me of Abraham Maslow's Toward a
Psychology of Being (1968), wherein he studies people on a continuum of basic
survival to self actualizing behavior, in part as an antidote to the
preponderance of work on abnormal psychology. The stories of these teachers
are also reflective of Mike Rose's recent work Possible lives (1995), in which
he describes his interviews with exemplary teachers to give some balance to
the overwhelmingly negative depiction of teachers and teaching practice in
the education reform literature of the last 20 years.

I have chosen to end this chapter with a discussion of the learning style
of these teachers, because exploring the circumstances in which veteran
teachers learn is a major theme in this dissertation. Teachers who are
learners are the major building blocks of meaningful school reform. Teachers
who are exposed to colleagues who display an enthusiasm for learning which
these teachers exude may catch the fever of deepened knowledge, a
heightened sense of self-efficacy, more sensitive and humane relationships
with students. These teachers give examples of how others among their
family, friends, and former teachers have motivated them to stretch the
parameters of their lives and explore what it means to study about, live, and
work in another culture by experiencing this themselves. These teachers in
turn are motivating others and exposing others to the possibilities and
transformative aspects of in-depth international experience. Their learning
style, in connection with the motivating influences of others, helped each of
them to realize more fully their potential as teachers and as human beings.
Making schools into places of continuous learning, led by continuously
learning teachers, will do more to improve education than all of the

standardized testing humans can devise.

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In much the same way that Mary Catherine Bateson describes six

phenomenal women in Composing a Life (1989), I view these teachers who
have chosen to study or experience another culture in depth as exploring and
developing themselves into continuous learners with gusto and enthusiasm.
They are an example to their students, colleagues and the community of how
human beings can grow and learn through life always in the process of
composing themselves, the way an artist composes a painting or a composer
composes a symphony. The quality and character of the international
experience itself, the subject of Chapters 4, 5, and 6, is crucial to how this
composition plays out. We will consider how this international experience
affects this human composition, this self-directed work of art in Chapters 7

and 8.

CHAPTER 4
INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE IN THE SCHOOLS:
DIFFERENCES IN STYLE, CONTRIBUTIONS, AND OBSERVATIONS

Human experiences do not occur in a vacuum. They can and do
profoundly affect our lives. How a person is affected by experience depends
upon a complex set of circumstances: the prior experience, the emotional and
personal characteristics of the person having the experience, and the content
and context of this experience. Experience can affect many individuals in a
myriad different ways. Exposure to a new experience, such as experiencing
another culture in depth, can cause people to feel that the experience has
profoundly changed them as people and has even transformed them. This is
the case with all of the veteran teachers who participated in this study. I
accept the premise that who the person is and what she has experienced
before the experience will play a role in how she is affected by the
experience. However, the interplay of the international experience with the
background and personal characteristics of each teacher occurs in different
ways and has different consequences. It is important that we understand the
content and context of this experience for each teacher before we grapple
with the consequences. I contend that international experience can
encourage learning, cultural awareness and respect for other lifestyles and
viewpoints among many teachers. Just as a creative teacher can construct a
child's experience in the classroom to promote the development of his
knowledge and understanding, so also can the content and context of an

experience promote the same in teachers.

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This chapter is organized into three dimensions of their experience: 1)

a description of their work during their international experience, focusing on
their own pedagogy within another culture and how their pedagogy differed
from that of their host school's teachers; 2) their professional work-related
contributions in the schools; and 3) their observations about the schools and
what they learned. We will focus on the four teachers who taught in the
public sector: Ellen, Denise, Mary, and Ed. The possibilities for in-depth
teaching experiences abroad are increasingly available to teachers and have
great potential for providing a comparative basis for changes in pedagogy.
How they lived in the culture, the connections and friendships they made with
people in the culture and their specific observations about the culture is the

subject of Chapters 5 and 6.

Their Work: Differences in Teaching Practice

"What upset the Chinese most is that I wouldn't stand
behind the podium" (Ed Donovan)

Five of these six teachers taught for significant periods of time in the
host country (4 months to 3-1/ 2 years). Ed Donovan taught at a medical college
in Kunming, China for one year. Paul Vandemere tutored business executives
in forensics and public speaking for two years with a private company in
Japan. Mary Ehrhardt lived with a family in Beijing and taught English to
elementary and middle school children in China for four months. Denise
Green and Ellen Stacey both taught English in different schools for five
months in Japan. Ellen Stacey returned to Japan to teach English for three
years. They all taught English, although Paul Vandemere also taught forensics
and public speaking. Unlike the other teachers in this study, he worked for a
private company. His "students" included CEO's of Fortune 500 companies. He

used his skills as a debate and forensics coach to coach these CEO's and

100
company executives to perform well in English, i.e., to give presentations and

speeches. Ed Donovan taught English at a medical college, while the
remaining three teachers in this study taught English in public schools at the
K-12 level. The sixth teacher, Bill Notebaum, visited schools and businesses but
did not teach in Japan.

Paul Vandemere's experience of tutoring business executives is not
likely to be emulated. It was the cultural connections which he experienced
that most energized his teaching, not experience in a Japanese classroom.
Even though Bill Notebaum's month in Japan was a final catalyst for his own
professional growth and development, it was not an experience which in and
of itself could be called "in depth", although the followup required by the
Japanese organization financing this trip could be considered in depth. We
will discuss this issue in Chapters 7 and 8. I concentrate this chapter
discussion on the four other teachers.

Denise, Ed, Ellen, and Mary used methods of teaching which surprised
and sometimes upset their hosts. They all eschewed the rote learning and
lecture behind the podium styles which they viewed as the norm in their
respective countries. They all found ways to resist teaching in the traditional
manner, even when being physically steered by a monitor back to the prOper
place behind a podium, as Ed Donovan was. Ed and Denise described their
teaching context in the U.S. as considerably more relaxed than what they had
observed respectively in China and Japan. Denise gave examples of American
teachers sitting on desks, standing, or leaning against a wall as being
unacceptable behavior in Japan. Ed described his classroom in the U.S. as a
place where students participated more freely in discussions; where the
seating arrangements sometimes differed from the traditional rows. He was

not the kind of teacher by his own description who could tolerate standing

101

behind a podium and lecturing to his students. For example, when Ed's Chinese

class monitor diplomatically tried to steer Ed back toward the podium, he found

himself again walking among the students.

Every time I would come down off the podium to come down the aisle,

'the class monitor would take my arm and say, "But Mr. Ed, you should be

behind the podium. This is where the teachers are." I'd forget the
minute I got going again. So he had a very difficult time with me for a
week and a half. After that, evidently he talked to one of the leaders
who said "forget it."

The most traumatic event for his adult students was Ed's insistence upon

a seating chart which put women with men in the front of the class.

Japan.

It was interesting that most of the women when they first came to my
class never sat in the front seat. It was one of the things that I became
aware of within the first week. I made a seating chart. It did make them
uncomfortable. What I did was put girls in the first two rows in half the
room, the first two sets of seats; then sprinkled throughout the room.
That was very uncomfortable. They were used to sitting girls on one
side of the room, particularly the back side, and men in the front. I
upset that pattern. They didn't say anything for two or three months.
Finally my monitor said, "You did very much upset us." I said, "Why,
because I came off the podium and walked down the aisle?" He said, "Oh,
that was pretty bad, but when you mixed the women and the men
together in the room, everybody was very worried." I said, "What do you
mean?" He said, "You don't do that in China." It was something that was
kind of counter-culture for them.

Denise Green, like Ed Donovan, had trouble standing behind a podium in

They wanted the teacher to stand up in front of the room and pretty
much stay there. It was hard for me to just stand in one place. You
know, I'd start wandering around and the kids would actually start
laughing. They weren't used to it and they would start giggling.

She attributed the strict atmosphere in the classroom to the pressure on

children to prepare for entrance examinations. Denise had also found the way

students in Japan were expected to recite answers to be much more formal

than her American classes were.

I do find the English classes to be more formal. When you ask a
question, you have to go through all that, pushing in your chair, saying
the answer and then sitting back down. What kind of discussion is that?
It isn't.

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Ellen Stacey felt that she was initially expected to function as a tape

recorder in the Japanese classroom, however, she soon began to improvise.

Well, when I first went there, they only wanted me to be a recorder, a
tape recorder. Repeat after Ms. Stacey. "The Titanic went down" [and
the students would repeat] "The Titanic went down." And so I would try
and diversify the questions so I would be the translator for the text
because I knew that was important. But when it came time for
questions, I would go back into the textbook, use some of the vocabulary.
If the textbook didn't say it, the teacher wouldn't teach it. So they
taught "brothers and sisters" and then I would say, "Well, how old are
you? How old is your brother? How old is your sister?" And it was like,
oh that's a very good idea. But it wasn't in the book that way, so we
never thought of it. That part was good.

Ellen also brought some innovations in style into some of the teaching of
English, as did Ed, Mary, and Denise.

Mary Ehrhardt used teaching methods based upon her enthusiasm for
experiential learning, which intrigued the Chinese students and teachers. She
had brought from the U.S. "a hockey goalie bag full of books and tapes and
activities for my teaching". She had given her Chinese 9th grade English class
an assignment to put a wordless children's picture book into sequence and
write the story. These students voiced their perceptions about her teaching
practice.

I taught these many classes and actually it probably was the highlight,
the kinds of interchange that I had with the students. I had no
expectations that they would improve particularly with my weekly
visits. But after about four weeks, the 9th graders, one particular 9th
grade class, and it just happened that I had given them a writing
assignment that came out of putting in place or sequencing a picture
book, a children's book, a wordless picture book. They had to put the
book in order and then write the story. Just that experience, working
with a partner in a small group, several students said, "Oh, we get it.
You want us to do. You're different. You're not like our Chinese
teachers. You want us to talk. You want us to write. You want us to ask
questions." It was an amazing breakthrough in their level of verbal, of
speaking and in their willingness to try writing, to do more than just a
grammar exercise from their book.

The pedagogies that each of these teachers modeled to the Chinese and
Japanese students and their teacher colleagues seemed very different from the

norm in China and Japan. These U.S. teachers apparently enjoyed exposing

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their hosts to methodologies that were at least a little different. None of the

U.S. teachers evidenced feelings that their own methods might have been
lacking except Ellen Stacey, who admired and learned from the
interdisciplinary work between math and physical education teachers, and the
map learning exercises she observed in Japan. Denise Green was concerned
about fitting into the structure of what was expected of her in Japan more
than modeling a change in teaching practice. They all evidenced a sense of
security that their work was making a positive contribution in the schools
where they taught. This is the next issue in this discussion of their experience

in the schools.

Their Contributions in the Schools

"They [the Chinese teachers] had not, for example, ever heard
of Piaget or Dewey or Vygotsky." (Mary Ehrhardt)

In addition to modeling a different style of teaching in China and Japan,
Ed, Mary, Denise and Ellen also enthusiastically described what they felt were
their main contributions in the schools of their host countries. All four of
these teachers were proud of their work and seemed to feel like they had made
a difference in the schools and classrooms where they taught. Their delight in
talking about this was irrespective of the response of students and teachers.
Here Ellen Stacey described her experience as fulfilling, even though she
rather negatively portrayed other aspects of her experience. These American
teachers at the least left these countries feeling like they had accomplished a
great deal, even though they sometimes viewed the need, as in the case of
China, to be almost overwhelming. Mary Ehrhardt captured this feeling of
need in her work with Chinese teachers in weekly seminars.

In addition to planning for and teaching 4th-9th grade students, Mary

Ehrhardt and her colleague, Jackie, also organized weekly seminars for the

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Chinese elementary and middle school teachers of English. The seminars were

based on the issues of greatest interest to the Chinese teachers. They started
with the physical, cultural and economic geography of the United States.

They wanted to know where different places were. In exchange of
views of stages of the human beings' life, we compared child rearing
practices and marriage customs and our salaries and working conditions
and health benefits, insurance and taxes, and voting. They were very
interested in health education and teaching about human growth and
development. There's nothing in their curriculum for students as they
grow and physically mature. We talked to the teachers, we talked about
pedagogy and things as detailed as the kind of thinking that goes into a
room arrangement of a classroom, i.e., educational philosophers,
educational psychology, and that led to different methodology.

Mary explained the reasons why she arranged her classroom in certain ways,
for example, she "gave them a rationale for why she would use desks in a
circle to have a face to face discussion among students and I showed them how
my tables were arranged so they could be used as activity centers for children
to move about the room and have materials accessible to them."

She found the younger teachers most receptive to newer ideas about
teaching practice.

The very youngest teachers, teachers in their 20's, really did have an

idea of child psychology and they were eager to perhaps try to do skits

or carry on some role plays or have a debate if they just had a little
practice in knowing how to do that. Those are the kinds of things that
we tried to show them; how to use other kinds of methods.

The Chinese teachers took the opportunity during the weekly seminars
to discuss issues about which they felt ill prepared, for example, human
sexuality, a subject which had been prohibited by the government authorities
in earlier years. This discussion may not have been allowed among teaching
colleagues just a few years ago.

What they were primarily interested in was the American courses in

teaching human growth development and sexuality, relationships

because that is really foreign. There is no China official developed
curricula in human sexuality. They were very interested in knowing
how teachers actually interfaced with students about those issues

without offending and without being embarrassed themselves, without
embarrassing their students. They really see the need and I think at

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this point it's really a level of curiosity because so much of that aspect
of life is regulated by the government. They are beginning to think
about just how you talk about relationships and issues that come up and
their bodies changing.

Mary's colleague, Jackie, had taught the human sexuality curriculum at the
high school, so she modeled a lesson for the teachers. Mary and Jackie later
followed this up with books which they sent after they returned to the United
States.

Starting with the idea of a question box in the classroom and asking
them to submit any question that they had about anything in this area;
then she took two or three questions and modeled how an American
teacher would respond. What we've done just recently is we've sent
them two books that we actually asked our American students what they
remember from sex ed classes or health and development classes, or
their family discussions that were most helpful. We got two books on
human development. One is "Where Did I Come From?" and another is
the sequel to that. It may not be called "All About Me" but it is about
puberty and adolescent development. Actually, both are done in a
cartoon fashion. Both also have very accurate and specific diagrams
and information. We've sent them to our colleagues in the department
to see and actually we sent them as gifts to them and their children and
to use it at their discretion personally to try them out with their own
children.

Many of the weekly seminars explored methods of teaching based upon
the work of Dewey, Piaget, and Vygotsky among others. The teachers were so
receptive and interested in discussing substantive issues on education that
some even proposed a "revolution".

In fact, we got them so riled up about our conversation about

educational philosophy and how it really impacted the way we arranged

our classrooms, that they said, "We need to revolt. We need to have a

revolution."

Mary, however, is cognizant of the hard reality of the examination system in
China, which she believes greatly diminishes the prospects for change. The
motivation to teach to the test, a phenomenon which is happening in many
American schools, is very powerful in China when teacher's wages are

dependent upon their students' performance on national examinations.

The greatest hindrance to putting any of this into practice is that they
teach for national exams and the responsibility of the success of their

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students lies on their shoulders. If their students do not pass, they may
be docked in pay or it may impact where they are on the waiting list for
getting a better apartment. So these teachers worked tirelessly to
prepare their students for the exams. The exams are basically grammar.
They teach this sentence after sentence, in this rote manner and
they're bored, the students are bored. They have practice books, lesson
books piled like this on their desks grading these every day. Then they
have students who need extra help coming in their hour and a half
lunch period or after school for special help. They just feel tremendous
pressure to make their students successful. Perhaps the pressure is
even greater in the school because 98% of the students who do last
through the school, go to higher education of some kind.

In addition to this work in the weekly seminars, Mary and her
colleague, Jackie, spent a day taping stories and lessons in an American
accent. They used the well equipped language laboratory in this key school.

We recorded a story so that our students could go to the language lab and
listen to English with an American accent. Their curriculum, they're
very lucky to have a tape a recorder, a VCR and an overhead projector
in every classroom. They do use audio visuals for instruction. But it is a
Chinese developed curriculum by teachers who speak with a British
accent. At the moment, they are very eager to learn American English.
We taped stories and did lessons which were listening lessons and then
comprehension from listening to just show the teachers how lessons
would sound in English with an American accent.

Ellen Stacey, like Mary, really enjoyed the input she had with the
Japanese teachers who welcomed her help.

They also had me check the tests and write the test that they would give.
They [the Japanese English teachers] would call me up and say, "We
have this question with this sentence. Could this sentence really work
or are there other ways that you could answer this question?"
Sometimes they would sit beside me and say, "I'm teaching this and I'm
thinking about this and do you have any ideas?" I would have input.
Those were the happier days for me. Because I would really be able to
work together a lesson, especially when it came to reviews and things
like that, before the big test and stuff, that was really nice.

However, in some schools, there was little preparation or collegial sharing of
ideas between Ellen and the English teachers.

Then I would have the teacher that I would walk into a whole school and
no one would even speak to me until it was five minutes before my class.
They were trying to teach me their lesson on the way up to the
classroom. I had the one teacher, whenever I was to teach in his class, I
was assigned for his class, he didn't come to school Because I had to
teach 5 classes, they would say go on up into that room and someone
would be there to help you.

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Ellen's contributions in Japanese schools included sharing more

flexible methods with Japanese teachers, such as using word games like
"Pictionary" and by mentoring some of the other less-experienced foreign
exchange teachers.

The other AETs would come to me and say, "We're having problems.
What do we do in this situation?" So then I would say, "Try this idea,
maybe that will work." So that part gave me a lot of power and
confidence too.

In her 6th grade English class Mary Ehrhardt, like Ellen, also used
innovative techniques, such as examples of children's literature such as Capa
for Sale by Slobodkina to help the Chinese children role play in English. She
brought it to China in both a small book and big book format and transformed
it into a play in the 6th grade, using part of it to help the Chinese children
understand past tense in English.

The main character is a peddler. The child who became the peddler was
really the most proficient in that class in English. He had a few English
books and he would bring me his books so that I could see what he had
He would save his questions about the peddler until I came and then
we'd talk about that role. Each child had a sentence to say and after we
practiced and presented to the class, we actually videotaped this. Each
child had a sentence and the part of the lesson that allowed us to work
on was past tense, because since Chinese does not have tenses, they
found it very difficult to say words that ended in "ed." 80 it gave us
really an opportunity to learn that the sounds of "ed" can be 3 different
sounds.

Role playing this story ended up turning the traditional teacher behind the
podium scenario into something quite different, even perhaps a little
revolutionary.

Then, in addition to the peddlers, there are a series of monkeys, a set of
monkeys. So the peddler sits down, he has his whole stack of caps on his
head and he is discouraged because he doesn't sell any caps. But he
eventually walks out into the country and sits down under a tree and
falls asleep. While he is sleeping, these monkeys come out of the tree
and they each take a hat and climb back up into the tree. When he
awakens, he has no hats. So then the part that the peddler has to play,
he has to convince the monkeys to give him back his hats. He says,
"Give me back my hats." But all the monkeys do is imitate him. "Give me
back my hats." He goes on to get so angry that he stamps his feet and
they stamp their feet. He gets so very angry that he takes his hat off,

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his own hat, and flings it on the ground and he says, "Give me back my
hats!" And they all fling the hats down on the ground.

The 6th grader's role in this performance was quite different from anything
they had ever experienced before in school.

So the part, the interchange that was so hilarious for this class is that I
painted the tree and pasted it to the teacher's desk. Now the teacher's
desk is a podium on an elevated cement platform and normally the
teacher lectures from the podium and the children feed back what the
teacher says. But the tree was attached to the teacher's podium and the
monkeys climbed up on top. They performed from on top of the
teacher's desk. This was unique in all of Chinese education, that
children would be allowed to climb on top of the teacher's desk. In fact,
this class sends me a whole class letter about once a month because they
thought this was just so different and so significant in their beginning
to speak English, doing a play.

Students and teachers alike in China made it clear that they valued what
Mary offered. Even though her methods were different and challenged the
status quo in the school where she taught, the time and effort she put into this
work, as well as the response of students, helped to encourage some teachers in
China to make changes from their traditional teacher lecture, student
recitation methods. A 7th grade class Mary worked with, for example, gave up
their 10 minute break and fifteen minute eye exercises to engage her in a
discussion on topics of their choice about the United States.
One topic was the NBA basketball because that was what they see on TV.
They can get the NBA. Another time they wanted to know about
teenagers of America; how they dress and what music they like. Then
they liked to know something about families. So each week we picked a
different topic. They asked me questions all in English. We had a
discussion about America some certainly did not understand my
responses. There was some interpreting on the part of the Chinese
teacher. I think the fact that they really wanted it, they wanted the
dialogue and were willing week after week to do it, they got something
out of it.
She asked her husband and son in her weekly phone call to give her the NBA

standings and to teach her about the NBA organization so she could share it

with her 7th grade Chinese students.

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An improbable event, such as recognition of her birthday, became an

opportunity for sharing cultural knowledge. When celebrating her birthday,
her class asked about her age, which initiated a controversy and discussion in
the classroom on different perspectives (i.e., Chinese and American) on aging.

They knew when my birthday was and they made cards and wished me a

happy birthday, and then the follow—up question was, "How old are

you?" There was kind of a moment, an awkward moment because some
students thought that was an inappropriate question. It's not in China,
the older you are, the more revered you are. I said, "But in America, you
don't ask you probably wouldn't ask a person my age their age
because in America the culture tells that to be young is better than to be
older." 80 we had a discussion about birthdays and about age.
Mary demonstrated here that not only was she able to plan the sharing of
cultural knowledge, but that she could flexibly use this situation to promote
cultural understanding about different approaches to the subject of age. In
this case Mary models an ability to engage in what Schon describes as
"reflection in action" (1987). A8 applied to the classroom, this means that she
can spontaneously adapt the surprises that often occur in classrooms to
enhance learning, in this case cultural learning.

Cultural discussions were also a major aspect of Denise Green's
professional work in Japan. Her ability with Japanese seemed to break the ice
with students, as well as allowing her to engage in a more in-depth cultural
sharing at times because they were more spontaneous with their questions in
their own language.

For example, Denise showed her ability to defuse, with humor and a little
language, a potentially difficult situation. The late arrival in class of the son
of one of her Japanese friends allowed Denise to lighten the classroom
atmosphere with just a few words in Japanese.

He was late to his class which was supposed to be a no-no. As he walked

in, he bowed to the teacher. And I was in the middle of saying

something. The phrase we were working on was, "What do you want to

be when you grow up?" They were supposed to answer this question. So
he came in late and he sat down. Then instead of sitting there quietly

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and trying to figure out what was going on, he whispered something to
someone, then to someone else to make them giggle. I said [to myself],
OK, I've got to get on this one. So I looked at him and said, "What do you
want to be when you grow up?" And in Japanese style when you answer
a question, you stand up because you're sharing. If you don't know the
answer, you can hang your head silently and wait until you're told you
can sit down or you can confer with people around you and give an
answer that you think is OK. Well, he stood up and he thought about and
said, "OHHHH?" which is like you know "What?" He was trying to be silly
and the kids giggled. So I repeated it. So then someone told him in
Japanese what it meant. He didn't think that I knew what they'd said.
Then he said, "Yakuza." It meant gangster. So he waited for the giggles
and so I waited for them to stop.

Her response to the boy in Japanese surprised and delighted the students.

80 I said, "Yakuza san. You may sit down." I said it all in Japanese. He
was stunned. So I told him to sit down again. Then later on when we
were doing something else in the class, I looked at him and I called on
him. So when he answered in English correctly and sat down, I told him
in Japanese, "You did very well, Mr. Yakuza." He blushed and the class
cracked up. It was funny. Even the teacher laughed. I worked with his
mother at the public school and she was one of the people I was closest
to at that other school and the first time I went to her house and I saw
her, I realized the connection. She said, "You met my son, Akiya, he was
late for class." I thought, "Oh no that was the one." We were OK. She
knew. Someone told her. He didn't tell her.

Some of the most interesting experiences for Denise occurred, as with
Mary Ehrhardt, when the students were allowed to ask questions about Mary's
life in the U.S. Her facility with Japanese language helped her establish
connections with the students, who were much less comfortable speaking
English about some topics.-

The ones [classes] I liked best, and these usually occurred the first day I
was in the class, that I would initiate a self-introduction in either
Japanese or English, depending on the teacher's request and then the
students were free to ask me questions. That was the most fun because
they could ask anything and I could handle it however I wanted. Then
when we got to the more formal part of the instruction, it was more cold
After the first couple of questions, you could almost make a list of the
stuff they would ask. First of all, if they were asking in English, you
knew about how much they knew. If they were free to ask in Japanese,
they would usually ask more questions.

Denise felt that there were elements of her exchange responsibilities which

emphasized the cultural part of the exchange as well as the proficiency in

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English language. In this case she preferred to use Japanese, 80 the students

could ask more questions which their level of English precluded.

Some teachers looked at it as more of a cultural than language
exchange. You could almost tell which ones, because the ones who
looked at it as a language exchange demanded that the kids only speak
English. "Do you have children? How old is your son?" But if you could
ask in Japanese or English and you could ask anything, they would ask
anything. "Do you have a car? Do you have a Japanese or American
car? How big is your house?" They would ask more normal type
questions for a kid who's talking to someone who lives in another
country and "Do you have ..." and he might mean a comic book
character. They wouldn't ask that in English. Part of it was that they
hadn't had that much English so there was only so much that if they had
to ask in English, that they could even ask If they could ask in
Japanese, a lot of times the conversations were clear.

When she was more concerned about sharing cultural perceptions, she
often used pictures of her family and her classroom. She brought up the issue
of her ethnicity, African-American, and showed many different hues of skin
color in the photographs of her own family as well as in her American
classroom. The Japanese teachers were reticent to discuss this issue, probably
fearing embarrassment to Denise about the race issue.

I would bring it up, but they wouldn't. Even in their classes I would
bring it up and if I did, because the culture clubs would meet after
school once a week, sometimes I would be invited to the English culture
club. They would give me the Pen Pal club or the English speaking club
to do some things. Sometimes I would show a photo album or show some
slides. It wouldn't be very long, maybe 20 minutes. Just to say this is
what my house looks like, this is what my neighborhood looks like, this
is what my school looks like, what my classroom looks. These are
members of my family, That was a real quick thing. I would talk about
it very freely then. They would see in my classroom children of Asian
descent. I would say this one, her family speaks Spanish at home. They
would be able to see the different races in my class. But also, my family.
I would bring out the fact that we were African-American and would
talk about the different skin colors.

Both Mary and Denise show that cultural knowledge is learned and
shared through much more than simple exposure to a different style of
teaching or a person of another culture. Meaningful interchanges often
occur during unplanned moments, when opportunities suddenly occur for

frank discussions.

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Ed Donovan, by contrast with Denise, focused more on his teaching of
English in the classroom than on his role in a cultural exchange. He felt that
the use of Socratic method with his adult students was very effective and
provided a respite from the traditional lecture from podium style of most
Chinese teachers. When Ed uses the term "Socratic", he means that he
promotes a dialogue in class whereby one student will respond to another in
contrast to an interchange, wherein the instructor dominates by asking a
question to which a selected student responds.

I used a Socratic method mostly before I left. It fit in very well with

their style of learning. Question, answer, repeat. I did very basic

things with them. It made me very aware of the language that I used.
He was pleased to know that some of the Chinese teachers he had taught earlier
were using his teaching materials and techniques.

I had a letter from a gal that took a course from me this past summer and

she said, "I've used tongue twisters, and I've used sayings of famous

people." They had put on a play because we had suggested that that
might be one of the things that they could do. She learned them in
school and I would give them copies of all this stuff. Then they could
use it in their own classes and the whole idea of starting a story with
one person and then having every person continue it. It's all these
different kinds of techniques that we kind of use without thinking too
much about. It is something that's brand new to them because their idea
of teaching is standing up in front of a room and lecture. I noticed the
last time I was there that a young man who had 66 people in his class, in
his English class, was using a Socratic approach. He would walk up and
down the aisles and he would tap kids on the shoulder or tell this one to
say something to that one, tell that one to respond. These are kinds of

techniques that we've used and that we've taught since 1991

particularly.

These teachers felt they had made some significant contributions as
teachers in their professional lives abroad to their Chinese and Japanese
students. They felt their contributions helped their teaching colleagues in
other countries see a different way of teaching based upon more student
teacher interaction and less upon lectures from a podium. They seemed not to
question that the methodologies they promulgated were better for students and

teachers. It was an assumption based upon their own deeply held beliefs about

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what is good teaching practice, almost as if the exposure to something

different was a good thing in itself. Mary Ehrhardt, for example, strongly
believes in experiential learning for herself and her students, as is evidenced
by the elaborate role play trip to China which she uses in her 2nd grade U.S.
classroom. Ed Donovan is also committed to a pedagogy which emphasizes
interactions among students in a classroom. Both Mary and Ed exhibit the
hope that the pedagogy they have introduced in China will be in some way
adapted to the context of Chinese classrooms.

Another dimension of these professional contributions of these
teachers in the schools was the frank way Denise Green shared American
culture with students and teachers from her own African-American
perspective. The kaleidoscope of skin color that was reflected in the faces of
her family and American students made a statement about diversity in the
United States more effective than most written texts or even video
representations.

The range of the contributions of these teachers include their work
with teachers planning lessons and holding seminars, their modeling of
lesson plans and role plays designed to provide more interactions with and
among students, and their frank discussions with teachers and students about
cultural differences and pedagogy. Their contributions encouraged changes
in pedagogy and connections with their students and colleagues abroad. The
formal seminars with Chinese teachers planned by Mary and Jackie allowed
them to address issues of great concern to these teachers. However, their
informal exchanges on buses during joint excursions, in which the middle-
aged teachers expressed a sense of personal malaise created by the upheavals
in Chinese society, may have been even more meaningful to all involved. This

is where much learning occurs in the connections in the face-to-face

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spontaneous interchanges among people of different cultures, spawning a

kind of cultural knowing which might not otherwise occur.

To summarize, the U.S. teachers exposed Japanese and Chinese students
and teachers to different pedagogical approaches and different ideas about
culture. In this effort, the American teachers were also being exposed
themselves to many different ideas and perspectives which they had not
previously experienced. A kind of cultural alchemy could have occurred
which would have changed elements among and within all of the participants.
These teachers observed many things in their host country's schools. To
understand how this awareness may have affected them, we must first learn

from their observations.

The Content and Context of Experience

With our discussion of the contributions of these teachers in the schools
and before we focus upon what these teachers have learned from their
teaching experience abroad, we must consider the content and context of this
experience. The school environment in which their learning occured
influenced how and what they learned. Under what conditions did these
teachers work? What were their schedules and responsibilities? Within their
narratives a concern emerged about the length of time each teacher was
assigned to a specific school. This issue is very important because it has
bearing on the kind of connections and relationships that can develop among
colleagues and students, relationships which take time to develop.

Denise Green and Ellen Stacey found that being assigned to schools for
short periods of time was counter productive for both of them. Ellen's
situation was much more difficult because she was assigned to one school a day
during the majority of her three-year experience. She remarked in disgust, "I

was show and tell." Denise enjoyed working with students but found that it was

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hard to develop relationships with students and teachers when she was in one

school every two weeks.

In terms of relationships with the students, it was hard being at the
school for such a short time. Some students would come right into the
teacher's lounge and they would feel very comfortable coming up
standing and you always knew they wanted to talk to you because they'd
stand there and giggle and look at you from a distance or maybe at a
desk close to yours or stop and talk to another teachers. The other
teacher would grin and say, "They want to practice their English, is that
OK " Because they wouldn't want to come up on their own. Some of
them would come up on their own. Sometimes they just wanted to chit
chat. Sometimes to practice their English and sometimes to ask you
questions. Sometimes I'd see them on the streets in my travels and I
always know if I had been at a school where I taught, not because of
their uniforms, but because the insignias would be so small, I wouldn't
be able to tell. But because the group would stop and giggle and point,
sometimes they'd yell, "Hi sensai!" I would know then, and sometimes
they would actually come up and speak to me. Then I'd know that I'd
been to their school and they just wanted to chit chat for a little while. I
think, however, that if I had been at fewer schools for longer periods of
time that it would have been different. Some of them tried very hard
and I would come to recognize their faces when I would run into them.

Denise was faced with the same obstacle in her connections with teachers.
Speaking of developing a friendship with a teacher, she explains, "But once
you leave that person's school, your schedules conflict and it's hard to get
together again." She would have preferred being in one school at least a
month. "I would have preferred that, I really would have preferred that. But
then like I said, I was in a position that I couldn't say anything about it. That
was decided."

Denise thought about the Japanese teachers who had come to Indiana as
part of the state exchange program and were assigned to a different school
each day. Denise had commiserated with two of them after her experience in
Japan. "I don't know how you're doing this, but I pity you." In the schools
where she was assigned one grade level and taught every day for two weeks.

I would see the same kids every day because I would be the 8th grade

teacher or 9th grade teacher or 7th grade teacher. I would develop a

close relationship with that teacher and felt like maybe I'd done
something with the students.

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However, this situation did not occur all of the time because she was often

scheduled into every English class in 7th, 8th, and 9th grades in a school
which precluded her from being in the same classroom twice. Denise and
Ellen were the only two teachers faced with relatively short periods in one
school, while the continuity remained constant for Ed and Mary. Both Denise
and Ellen disliked this aspect of the context of their work. I believe that such
an arrangement often precludes the development of the kind of in-depth
relationships which Mary and Ed enjoyed. In ways, their experience was
superficial, just as the visits of Japanese teachers to schools one day at a time
can only be superficial in comparison to a period of time in a school which is

long enough to develop friendships.

A Case Study: Ellen Stacey

Among these four teachers, Ellen Stacey goes into the most detail about
the content and context of her experience in Japan. Because she lived and
worked there twice and for a much longer time period, her case is very
complex. This is not only because of the length of time she lived and taught in
Japan; this is also because of the quality of her experience there. A more
thorough analysis of Ellen's experience can help us understand how a
teacher's learning can be affected by the content and context of her
experience. This is the lens through which I view Ellen's experience. This
vignette on Ellen's experience includes the following issues: her teaching
schedule and responsibilities; negative and positive impressions of students,
the curriculum, and the work of teachers in Japan.

During Ellen Stacey's first teaching experience in Japan, after six weeks
of Japanese language and cultural studies with her five American colleagues,

she was assigned to a different school each month from August through

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December. Each morning, after she attended the morning meetings with all

the teachers, she would be assigned to an English teacher.
I'd go into the classroom with the team teacher, usually we would plan
together, and then my job would be part of a lesson plan. 80 I was the
English version of what the book had said or an English translation for
a story, or I would have to listen and interview the kids and have them
talk to me.
During the second teaching experience in Japan for three years, her teaching
situation was very different than it had been during her first experience in
Japan. Until the third year, she was assigned to a different school every day.
The first year, however, she only had to work a few hours each day. "They
treated me like a princess." During her second year when the foreign
exchange teachers were asked to edit and proofread the English speech
contest, all four of her students won the contest. When the students wrote
their speeches in Japanese, their teachers would translate them to English,
which the students would memorize for the contest. "My job was to take the
Japanese thought process, edit it into a speech for that child, so that the child
could memorize the speech with vocabulary that he knew, challenging him
maybe with only two words instead of a whole list."
By the third year, Ellen was working 12-16 hour days which included
social obligations centered around her work.
They expected me to be a Japanese teacher. They expected me to be up at
7:00 and in the school by 7:30. They expected me to be home around
10:00 and do some entertaining. It was too hard for me, too hard. I was
teaching 5 classes a day and their teachers were only teaching 15-20 a
week.
She eventually was hospitalized for nervous and physical exhaustion three
times during the third year, "just from overwork." She called her illnesses
"stress related" emanating from extreme tiredness. Describing her third year,

she said

I think what it did for me is tired me. It tired me fast. Especially when I
ended up in the hospital three times. That part was terrible. Because in

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America when you're sick, you stay home. In Japan I was sick, and
every morning they would call me at 6:30 and see if I was OK and if I was
ready to go back to school. I wasn't so [sick that] I had to go to the
doctor's every morning. The doctor was not next door. I had to take an
hour train to get to the doctor.
In spite of her feelings of stress and exhaustion, Ellen considers that the work
she did with the Japanese students, teachers and the exchange teachers from
other countries (AETs) to have been valuable for her own sense of confidence
as well as for those with whom she worked. "Every year my job was to teach
them how to teach as a team."

The third year she led the exchange teachers to persuade the Japanese
authorities to allow herself and three exchange teachers from other countries
to stay in one school for 6 weeks.

The first year I was there, I was in 25 schools in 25 days. A school a day.

How effective could I be, a school a day? l was show and tell. I can't do

this; it's too hard on me, it's too stressful. I was learning to ride on the

wrong side of the street, number one. My car was over in ditches every
time I turned around. I was lost every single day. I have no sense of
direction. I tried to say, "You can't do this. If you want me to be
effective, you have to keep me in a school longer."
The logistics of getting the exchange teachers to work as a team was a
daunting task and depended upon the cohesiveness of that group.

The first time there was just John, the second time there were four of us.

I tried to get the four of us to work as a Japanese team because if I would

go and say it's too hard for me to do this, they [the Japanese authorities]

would say, "It's too difficult for us. You do it anyway."

The third year they worked more cohesively toward the goal of teaching
for a longer period in each school. Ellen had been assigned to supervise the
group, so she worked with a colleague from the year before, Robert, to
determine the feelings of the others and then they planned their strategy
with the Japanese authorities.

The third year there, when I got the guys to work together as a team. We

would plan our strategy in the lobby of the City Hall and say we're going

to have a meeting and this is what we want. And this is how we are

going to change it. When we walked in as a group, you could see the
faces of the people in the City Hall. It was like, "what's happening

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here?" Something. They could see the power that we had now created.
They told me my job was to be in charge of them. That was their first
mistake. I think I knew I couldn't move any boulders at all when I was
standing alone, so I knew I had to use their technology. I called every
one of the teachers that were there, the foreign teachers and I said,
"Are you happy in going to one school a week?" Now instead of one day,
it's a week. We're at one school and then we're transferred to another
school. Every one of us had to go through 20 schools in a semester. It's
still not any good. I said, "Are you happy with that situation?" They all
said, "No!" They wanted to stay longer [in each school]. So I said, "All
right. Meet me at 4:30."

The four of them presented a united front to the Japanese authorities and
achieved a change in policy; each would be assigned to one school every six
weeks instead of one school a week. She described their strategy:

We said [to Robert] this is the problem, you are a man, you state the

problem. We will all back you up and we all agreed on what our

dialogue was going to be. He came up, he meaning Robert, because he
had the most seniority; he was the man. Robert said, "We are not happy
with this situation." Iaurie said the same thing, "Yes, I agree with

Robert. I feel the same way. It's too difficult." Joel said the same thing

and then they looked at me. And I said, "Yes, we've decided that this is

too hard." The next semester, we were at a school for 6 weeks. One
school. They divided five schools among four of us.

While timing was one important element in shaping her experience, it
was not the only factor. Ellen's observations about schooling in Japan reflects
an ambivalence in her feelings. She is extremely complimentary about what
she sees as a family atmosphere of concern and caring between students and
teachers which she had not experienced in her public school teaching in
Wisconsin. She also admired the way art and music especially were such a
priority in the Japanese schools. She admired how government and business
worked together to make sure the schools were well equipped with high
technology, such as computers. Conversely, she seemed appalled at the way
marginal students such as Burakumin behaved in school and were treated by

the authorities. She was amazed at the extent of physical violence in the

schools, an observation corroborated by David Berliner (1993), who quotes

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from Japanese newspaper accounts of teacher and student violence that might

shock many Americans.

It is important to understand the context of Ellen's teaching experience
in Japan, which included schools which encompassed "problem" students
during both of her experiences in Japan. Ellen describes students whom she
calls "misfits", who wreak havoc in the Japanese school system. Thomas
Rohlen in Japan's High Schools (1983) also documents conditions in some
Japanese schools, where most students were not on the university track.
Burakumin children are generally not found in schools where a majority of
the students pass university examinations or in schools where many American
educators would be encouraged to observe.

But see these were the schools where these kids were not earmarked for

the better schools. These were the kids that were probably going to be

trained for custodial work or maybe train personnel, or maybe factory
workers. That's what these kids were trained for. They weren't going to
go on to college. They weren't earmarked for that.

During her first experience, she was placed in inner city schools. Her
first impressions were of graffiti on the walls. She felt that there were "just as
many problems and rebels" as exist in the inner city U.S. schools with which
she was familiar. Describing one of the more rough schools she was assigned
to during this first experience, she said:

I saw a teacher holding on to a windowsill for his dear life and the

student slammed the window on the teacher's hands and broke them

The teacher came to school the next day with both his hands in casts I

saw teachers literally beat up children.

Ellen believes that "any misfit can live in America and get lost in it", while she
considers this "impossible" in Japan.

Those kids that did all that destruction in that school that I went to the

first time and saw them burn down the building and tear out half the

walls, they're already earmarked. And because they don't fit into the

Japanese way of life, if they ride motorcycles and are killed, they are

not even counted as statistics. If they don't learn to read a newspaper
because it takes 11 years of study to read a newspaper, and if these kids

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don't learn to read a newspaper then they‘re not Japanese, so they're
not part of stats.

The last semester of her third year in Japan, Ellen taught for six weeks
in a very "rough school". She describes one Burakumin 7th grader and her
understanding of what it means to be a Burakumin.

I met him in 7th grade; he was a nice kid. He had no friends though
[A Burakumin] is basically someone who's unclean. The history of it
goes back to where they wore leather, what do you call it when you skin
animals, so therefore the Japanese don't wear leather and they don't
wear suede. Because this is a trait of the Burakumin. Their hands were
dirtied by the blood, so they were ostracized from the rest of the people.
They had the lowliest of jobs. This kid's ancestry, maybe it goes back
about 2-3,000 years, who knows how far back. But he's born to this
family, now he's into the school. The first year everyone gets to know
that he is a Burakumin. So they ostracize him, so he becomes a rebel in
his own cause. By his second year, 8th grade, he has found two buddies
that he can cohort with and they're going to be a little gang. By his
third year they slept in the school; busted every window inside the
school out; they trashed all the rooms; they throw beer bottles all over
the place; they smoked on campus right on the property. I was there
teaching and they tried to intimidate me as a teacher. I was walking out
and they walked right up to me and bumped me and tried to intimidate
me in that way. They would come up to me with cigarettes on the
playground during the school day and blow smoke in my face. They
would come up with their beer bottles.

The principal and teachers, according to Ellen, did not seem able to deal
effectively with this problem.

The way the teachers dealt with it? They would not allow them in the
regular classroom. They had a special classroom for these had kids. Now
it's up to 12 kids. The principal has called in the police on the incident
with the busted glass. The community ostracized the principal because
the principal did not need to involve the police. He should have handled
it with the community before going to the police. So now the principal
has lost face. The principal invites this speaker from Tokyo, who is a
champion olympic star, to speak at the school. The bad kid, the
Burakumin child, finds out that this is the schedule of what's going on,
the agenda for the presentation, sees that the principal is going to be
the last speaker, gets his little buddies up behind the stage, and there
was a change in the agenda. But the had kids didn't get the change. So
now the speaker is the last speaker and they are in the back of the stage
making all kinds of noises, disrupting the whole assembly and
everything and they don't do anything about it. That was the way, it
didn't exist.

The fear Ellen felt about these students surpassed anything she had

experienced in her inner city Milwaukee school.

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It affected me because it put a tense fear in me. I never felt that kind of
a fear because I had never been intimidated by a student. They were
still children but they hated anybody in authority. I was sitting in the
teacher's room and there are windows in all the teacher's room, and one
of the kids came up and said to the teacher that was sitting to my right,
"Come here, come here." He was calling and beckoning him outside the
room. And the teacher wouldn't move, and the teacher would say, "Come
over here, come over here." The kid went and picked up, I'm not
kidding you, a huge stick - it was a tree, it was a log - and was going to
heave it through the windows. I don't know from the corner of his eye,
he saw me there and he put it down. So he [the teacher] was telling him
to go over to where the gym clothes, the smaller lockers were. So the
kid comes over that way. I'm hearing all this rumble. The next thing I
hear is, 'OWI' Then I see this kid is being carried out by 3 teachers. He's
all limp and they're dragging him across the field. The next day he
comes to school with a cast on his arm. They busted his arm.

In spite of her fear of and concern for these rebellious students, she was
impressed that they found beautiful creative ways with their uniforms to
express their rebellion.

The kids have to wear uniforms. These kids would put purple velvet on
their trims of their uniforms, they would put patches on their uniforms.
The ribbons for girls, because they've got girls into the group, the
ribbons for girls can only be navy blue or dark brown. These girls
were putting red on and they would wear red lipstick, anything to break
the rule. The one kid, he was really a nice kid, they were sniffing glue
and stuff and their brains were all messed up by that time, he put a
tuxedo stripe down the side and then he embroidered his name. Really
beautiful, creative things, but they were not part of the group.

Ellen was also very critical of the Japanese procedure for dealing with
problem children, that extremes of action and inaction were inordinantly long
and time consuming for teachers.

If they had a problem child, they would sit there and they would talk
about this problem child. The way it would go is the child was the
problem, the first teacher who had the problem would talk to the head
of the 7th grade house. Then they would present it to the whole group.
In the bigger school that I was at, it would have 12, 13, or 14 teachers
involved in this discussion of this one child. They would come up with
some alternatives. This is what we could try, this is what we could do.
After they came up with this decision, then the department - the 7th
grade house chairman, the grade leader - would go to the Assistant
Principal and say we are having a problem with this child, and these
are some alternatives that we would have. Then the Assistant Principal
would sit in and give his information or input. Then after that was
settled with the information or input with the Assistant Principal, then
the Principal would be asked to come in. By then they've already solved

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all the steps they were going to take to change this child's behavior. By
then, this has gone on for a week.

To put Ellen's criticisms into context, it is important to understand that

she was treated as a Japanese teacher by her third year there. She gained a

different perspective about the responsibilities of teachers in Japan. To Ellen,

Japanese teachers have many different responsibilities, when compared to

American teachers. For example, the meeting schedules seemed daunting to

her.

A teacher in Japan cannot really have friends outside of the teaching
field because I would go by a car and I would pass at like 5:30 in the
morning to get to my school that might have been an hour away from
my apartment. There would be students out there practicing with drums
and their musical instruments by the lake. There would be students
already in the school in competition, preparing for sports activities, at
5:30. A teacher did not leave a building at 3:00 or 4:00 even though the
day is done at 4:00. Even though all activities are finished. Teachers
would be there sometimes 9:00, 10:00. Then if they had a group meeting,
forget it. This group meeting, if they could not agree on some activity
or behavior about a child, everybody in this teaming (it was a 7th grade
house, an 8th grade house, a 9th grade house) all sat together in the
teacher's room and they all had to decide on what they were going to do.
Their March activity, their end of the school year activity - they had to
plan some activity every month.

The ultimate example of a Japanese teacher's commitment to work in spite of

health problems led to tragedy, the death of a 26-year-old woman teacher.

As a matter of fact, there was a woman there that sat across the table
from me, our desks were right together, and I spoke to her when I first
went there and she had a cold. I said, "You know, you should take some
time off with that cold." "I just had a baby and I think I'm just a little
run down." Well, that means more of a reason to stay home. She died of
pneumonia. She was only 26 years old.

Nevertheless, Ellen found a good deal to admire about the content and

context of Japanese schools: the relationship between the schools, the town

administration and local business; the emphasis on the arts and music from the

earliest grades; the encouragement of students to take responsibility for their

own learning without ready answers from the teacher; and the close

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mentoring relationship she witnessed between many students and their

teachers, a factor she found missing in her experience in the United States.

The partnership between the schools and the community also
encouraged teacher artists, for example, to pursue their art and excel. Next in
line with the Mayor for political power is the Superintendent of Schools.

So usually they're a good partnership, the Superintendent of the school
and the Mayor. The Mayor knows that he cannot be re-elected if he does
not do something for the schools. So in these schools, you have huge
artworks by the artists who live in the community. The teacher who is a
teacher in the school, is pushed to excel and do artwork so it can be
displayed in other parts of Japan's schools. So these teachers are
walking around with my artwork, sculptures, art, whatever is displayed
here or there and they have a great honor for the arts. Musicians, what
they do with those people is phenomenal. When computers became a
thing, which they are, the Mayor said, "Every school will have a
computer center." Air-conditioning is an extremely expensive thing
because all of these things are imported. Electricity is a commodity and
it's something you need so they can tax it very high. Living in this city,
I had no expenses except utilities. That's the only bill I had to pay. They
paid for my gas, they paid for my housing. I had to pay my utilities. It
cost me $400 a month for utilities. Now that was just me. The computer
room was air conditioned. It was so high tech Every school must have
spent at least over a million dollars to have an air-conditioned computer
room.

The emphasis in Japanese schools on music was just phenomenal to Ellen.

Music - music was just - every student knows how to read music. When
you start in school, you are taught do-re-mi—fa—so—la-ti-do. You are
taught, you don't have an instrument in front of you. You will have a
keyboard that is pasted on your desk. Do-re, that is how they teach you.
High do, low do. You don't have an instrument in front of you. You are
practicing on this desk, pretending it's a piano. First grade and that
goes all the way through elementary. If you have a preference for
musical instruments, they are available. Then they have a club, it starts
in the early morning or after school. These kids also had competition
throughout all of Japan. Every junior high student, 7th grade, every
class, has to perform a song. One of the students in the class has to play
the piano, the other group has to sing, and one of the students is the
conductor. All the 7th graders in every school compete against all of
the other 7th grades.

Her teaching colleague from Oxford University in England, an accomplished
organist, was in awe of the ability he witnessed among the Japanese children.

Robert said to me, 'These kids are running rings around me in their
ability.’ They practice 5 days a week, sometimes 6, sometimes 7

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depending upon the competition. They practice every morning before
school and every afternoon after school. It's just phenomenal.

Ellen felt that Japanese schools often emphasized an interdisciplinary
experiential learning, allowing students to take on leadership roles that would
be extremely rare in the United States. She perceived the math and gym
departments to be "almost one and the same" because of the way they worked
closely together. The way Japanese teachers worked together to teach
responsibility and skills in art and sports events was another opportunity for
her to learn and admire their methods.

The math department "origami" teaches the geometric figures from
preschool on up. When you are in junior high, your job is to set up a
sports activity. That sports activity is held in September. Your whole
school has to be part of this sports activity. It is your job to measure out
how far it is for a high jump, measure how far you need or what the
diagram has to be for a baseball diamond. And then after they put all
these measurements, they have to go back and then say to the teacher,
"We're having problems with this. How would we do this?" He would
never tell them the answer, we would say, "Well look at this dimension
and you'll see your error." Then they had to go out and draw it. Then
after that, the day before the sports meets, all the kids in the whole
school were out in the field. If you go to Japan, none of the schools had
grass on their fields. It's all sand. Everyone had to go out there and
pick up any rock or pebble that they thought their classmate might
stumble or trip on. Everything is ready. The teachers do not present
the awards. The kids keep all records. At the end of every match, the
kid has the name of the winner and one of the calligraphers, the
student, writes the name on it and presents the awards to them. The kid
doesn't present, the kid writes it, gives it to the teacher; the teacher
turns around and hands it to the principal; the principal gathers
everyone together and says so—and-so won this award. "Congratulations.
This class won this award, congratulations."

She was so impressed with the way Japanese teachers taught map skills that
she tried their method (unsuccessfully) when she returned to Milwaukee. (I
explore her effort in Milwaukee in Chapter 7 in the post-intemational
experience analysis.)
Every school, every grade in Japan has map skills. Their job, and it
takes them maybe 3 months for all the teachers to figure out a map skill,
they write out the whole map. They tell the students, "We will meet you
at the train station." They all get at the train station, they don't care how

they get there. They get at the train station. Once they're at the train
station, they sit with their teacher, they have a very good time. The

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teacher tells them, "This is your map, this is the schedule, this is what
you have to do." Mind you, before you even left the school the day
before, you had a packet of what you were expected to do for this map
skill. They were to go to certain places, once they were in certain
places. Let's say they had to go to the library first, one group was at the
library and they had to watch the time. They had one hour at the
library. They had to get from the train station to the library and do
these activities at the library. From there, then they were to meet back
at this other place and they had a check point for where their
homeroom teacher was. That was reading a map; that was following
skills.

It was the relationship that Ellen witnessed between students and
teachers in Japan that really moved her to want to make changes in her own
teaching, especially after her first seven-month experience there.

When I came back the first time, I had admired the way the teacher in
Japan communicated with those kids. I loved it when they would knock
on the door and they'd say, "Excuse me" [in Japanese]. Then they'd go
over and say to the teacher, "I brought all these books for you" A
teacher's job was to go to the home with the kid and look at the house
and say, "This room is not conducive for learning. You don't have a
dictionary over here. That poster is distracting. Put the poster over
here near the bed." Rearrange furniture for a home. I mean they
really got involved in the child's life.

In spite of all of her graphic examples of teacher/ student violence and abuse
of teachers, one of her most lasting impressions was of the respect for
education she experienced in Japan.

I mean when you walked into a Japanese classroom, there was such
eagerness to learn, such a respect for those who could get the most
education. Even with the bad kids, the communication with the
teachers, they would walk into a teacher's room and they would talk to
them like a big brother or something. There was a bond between the
teacher and the student and that bond was because the teachers were
there all the time for those kids. The teacher was their coach in a club
of some sort. Their teacher was there to help them, they didn't give A, B,
C, D on their report card. They would say, "This child is having
difficulty in associating with this student and these are the methods that
we took to get this student to merge as part of a Japanese child." That's
the kind of critique that these teachers had and they would go away on
weekends, a week at a time sometimes if you're in 9th grade, and spend
that whole week as the mother or father to these children. It was almost
like a family.

Ellen's admiration of the student-teacher bond in Japan when compared with

her criticism of the extreme investment of a Japanese teacher's time points up

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a dilemma that she does not discuss. Does the extensive time commitment of the

teacher to each student contribute to this family-like bond?

The teachers I interviewed expressed a variety of impressions and
observations about the schools in their host country, but Ellen is the only one
to describe such a wide range of feelings: from borderline disgust about the
treatment of Burakumin children and their actions to this last impression of a
warm family-like relationship among students and teachers in the schools.
Although she greatly admired the relationship the teachers developed with
their students, that relationship did not come without cost, especially with
regard to time commitments. The range of ambivalent reactions which Ellen
discusses about the exhausting schedules of Japanese teachers expresses the
dilemma she faced. While admiring the results of all that extra time and effort,
she found that being a Japanese teacher working such long hours was
intolerably exhausting and intense.

The tension within Ellen about these interchanges was part of the
reason she felt extremely tired leading to her hospital stays for stress and
nervous exhaustion. She found that being expected to perform on the time
schedule of a Japanese teacher was very difficult for her. Her perspective on
the demands of teaching in Japan range from its being impossibly time
consuming, almost precluding the possibility of a social life for teachers
beyond school, to its social role of caring and responsibility for students. She
noted that teachers would sometimes be expected to go into homes and literally
rearrange the furniture in a child's room to be more conducive to study. The
ambivalence she felt about what she observed in Japanese schools is reflected
in her discussion of the treatment of unruly children juxtaposed with her
adulatory description of the emphasis on fine arts in the schools, particularly

music. Ellen had a long-term, in-depth experience in Japan and her

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impressions reflect the complexity of that experience in an ambivalence

which she was still feeling when I last interviewed her in March 1996.

Observations: What They Learned About the Schools

"1 must respect my teacher" (a student in China)

The teaching experiences of these teachers allowed them to learn and
make some observations about the schools in their host countries. Their
learning differed because of the different context and content of their
teaching experience abroad. Ellen's long experience in Japan offered her an
unusually rich array of positive and negative reactions. Mary Ehrhardt felt
the frustration of the older Chinese teachers who had been thrown into
teaching regardless of their interests or desires. They had gone through the
cataclysm for education called The Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) when all
the schools were closed and so-called intellectuals were sent to the countryside
to shovel manure, among other things. Ed Donovan learned why his Chinese
students were so motivated in comparison to many American students. Ellen
Stacey was amazed at the violence she witnessed in the schools and the
treatment of troubled, rebellious Burakumin and Ainu children. Denise Green
witnessed the sense of belonging and identity with a school community, which
she identified with the use of school uniforms and insignias.

Ed Donovan and Mary Ehrhardt expressed very different observations
about their teaching experience in China, different perspectives from each
other and from the teachers in Japan. Each of them were assigned to only one
school, (in Ed's case, one classroom) for the duration of their stay in China. Ed
had more to say about his experience on the English corner in Kunming and
connections he made there than about his formal teaching experiences. He

was fascinated with why "everybody is 80 dead set on getting educated in

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English" where he was teaching in China. He analyzed this question and came

up with three reasons.

The first reason was that they saw it as a means of leaving China to go to
a foreign country to study. The second reason was if they had English
language ability, they could go to international conferences. The third
reason, which was probably the most predominant reason, was that they
could then read and understand better English journals in their field.
The result of this was that: "All of the people that I taught had at least 8
years of English under their belt. In fact, I would say that all of them
had at least 10 years under their belt. Some of them had been taught
English by missionaries before the war, some of the older ones."

Their proficiency was mainly in reading and writing, not speaking the
English language.

They didn't hear it and they spoke it oddly. And I don't mean that a

British accent makes it odd. It's just that odd construction of phrases,

very standard types of English. You don't know the idioms, or if you

know what the idiom is, you don't know how to use it.

Ed observed that education beyond high school only affected a very elite
few, perhaps 2/10 of 1% of the population of China, causing those students to
be extremely motivated, perhaps even more so than Paul Vandemere's Fortune
500 CEOs. This elite aspect of education in China puts the university teacher
into an elevated role, as Ed describes it, a God-like role. "I think that in
Chinese education, that the teacher is God and they're puppets. And God
infuses them with everything." He also noticed that Chinese students seemed
adept at memorization, probably because of necessity.

The other thing that I noticed in China was that their school population

memorizes. They can repeat back volumes of poetry. They can repeat

back chemical formulas. They can repeat back lessons that they had in
physics ten years ago. Practically verbatim. An American student
doesn't do that. The American student says, "Where do I find the
information?" In China, the student can't say that because the library
system practically precludes that. So they are not involved in the
process because it's just not available to them.

in, like Ellen Stacey, thought about the issue of respect for teachers and

education in general. He noted that, "There is at least a more outward respect

in China. There is an adherence to certain kinds of manners that must be

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exhibited to a teacher. Those manners seem to reflect a system of respect." His

students greeted him with a short bow at first. When they told him that they
must respect their teacher, he asked them why.

I'm not sure that this surface respect was always indicative of an

internal respect. They would say things like, "I must respect my

teacher." I would say, "Why must you?" "My parents say I must respect
my teacher. I must respect you because you are a teacher. My parents
say I have to respect you because you are a teacher."
Ed attributes this respect mainly to the numbers of young people who have the
chance to go to the university: 2/10 of 1%.

By contrast, one of Mary Ehrhardt's greater concerns was observations
of the fatigue and depression she witnessed among the middle-aged teachers in
China. These K—12 teachers were faced with tremendous demands and personal
reprisals if their students did not perform well on the university examination
track. This is the major difference between the professors who taught at the
university with Ed and ordinary teachers in China. The tiny elite who worked
so hard to pass the examinations might well consider university professors
akin to gods. The strain this puts on K-12 teachers almost reduces them to a
condition of servitude by U.S. standards. Many of these teachers felt trapped
in their jobs and had not wanted to become teachers in the first place, having
been forced into these jobs by the government. They had not been introduced
to the great philosophers of education, such as John Dewey, but were taught to
mimic their teachers, having received little training in their field. Mary
described the background to this situation.

I'll just say that maybe 2/ 3 of the English faculty were people in their

408 and these are people whose educations were disrupted in their early

teenage years by the Cultural Revolution. They were sent to the

countryside to be re-educated by the peasants and they were away from
their education for 5 or 6 years. When they were allowed to return to

Beijing, they were assigned a career. By that time the higher education

system was restructured using the Russian model so that there were

mostly science institutes and manufacturing or engineering institutes

and teachers, people wanting to become teachers, were schooled in a
particular subject area, but Mao Tse Tung and the planners of that

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period had no need for the social sciences. These teachers had no idea

of what educational philosophy was or how it impacted on classroom

practice or educational psychology They only had been taught to

mimic the teachers, as a matter of fact they had had one or two years of
training in their subject and then were assigned schools. Twenty years
later, many of them maybe didn't want to be teachers in the first place.

They are caught, they have no alternative other than remaining in

their positions.

She found that many of these teachers seemed bored and fatigued. They were
the least receptive to the new ideas brought by the Americans which seemed to
inspire the younger teachers.

We saw such fatigue on the part of these middle-aged teachers and

wondered why they napped during their lunch hours. Actually it was

depression rather than fatigue. Because of perhaps boredom in the way
that they were expected to teach and the fact that they didn't have an
alternative, they didn't have a choice of anything else to do. However,
one of the teachers who was really exhibiting physical ailments,

physical problems related to teaching, we discovered this year, took a

sick leave but has really found another career and has taken advantage

of the real estate boom and has begun working with his brother in
commercial real estate.

Mary hoped that somehow the exchange program might make a
difference in this key school, even among these demoralized teachers. She felt
that if young teachers in other disciplines than English, who might be more
receptive to cultural aspects of the exchange program rather than strictly for
their own English proficiency, were chosen to participate in the exchange,
the impact might be greater. Even students could be chosen as much for their
outgoing attitudes as for their academic achievements, thus increasing their
own impact as cultural "ambassadors".

The observations of these teachers reflect that they were all keenly
aware of the differences between their perceptions of education in the U.S.
and education in Japan and China. They learned about what it means to be
caught in a system in which the teachers feel they have no control, as in
Mary's account of the middle-aged English teachers in China. Some of their

assumptions about the schools were debunked, especially Ellen's when she was

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confronted by violence and what she saw as discrimination in Japanese

schools. They learned about how some schools operated in their host
countries. Ellen especially observed and admired the teaching of music and
map skills, emphasizing student responsibility. It is apparent that the U.S.
teachers were often in a learning mode while they were modeling and
teaching American English.

Their learning about conditions in the schools, different approaches to
curriculum and description, and the work of teachers was influenced by their
different contexts. Ed's perspective about respect for teachers is affected by
his own role teaching in the university. Mary understands a very different
reality for the middle-aged English teachers who are burdened with
tremendous responsibility and little authority to improve their situation,
except to leave their teaching jobs. The context of Mary's experience causes
her to see education in China from a different point of view.

Denise Green's perspective is affected by the context of her experience
as a U.S. teacher who taught in more Japanese classrooms to expose Japanese
teachers and students to a middle school teacher on a short-term basis. Unlike
Ellen Stacey, she seems to have accepted and enjoyed this role. Ellen's
experience in Japan was as complex as her reaction to it, reflecting extremely
negative and positive impressions and a great deal in between. The range of
Ellen's experience makes it necessary to separate her from the other teachers
in order to make sense of an experience she has not yet come to grips with
herself. The demands of such an intense experience could overwhelm many
people. Ellen has a great deal to teach us about how an extremely long-term,

in-depth experience can affect the pedagogy of a veteran teacher.

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Conclusion

The five teachers who taught abroad have shown us how they grappled
with different styles and cultural norms which played out in the classroom.
They all felt they had made positive contributions in the arenas in which they
taught. Two of them also expressed concern that the shortness of their time in
each classroom made it difficult for them to develop long-term, in-depth
relationships with students and teachers. Mary Ehrhardt did not express this
thought, perhaps because living with a family and riding a bicycle 10 miles
each way to and from school every day probably gave her a feeling of
immersion in the culture which even Ellen Stacey, who lived in Japan for 3-
1/ 2 years, did not seem to experience.

These American teachers brought a different style of teaching to China
and Japan. None of them described a traditional lecture from behind the
podium approach as their own style. It is easy to imagine the frustration felt
by the Chinese monitor when Ed Donovan refused to stay behind the podium as
was expected, and the confusion of students who put their teachers on a literal
and figurative pedestal, when he challenged the Chinese norms on gender
issues by integrating the sexes via seating chart.

The three teachers who worked in K—12 schools all expressed concern
about the burdens that were placed on teachers in their host countries, for
example, the extreme pressures related to national university examinations.
They also commented upon the high level of motivation of their students
abroad, and sometimes thought about the reasons for this motivation.

They all felt they had made positive contributions to the schools where
they taught by their sharing of materials and by their modeling of different
styles of teaching. In many cases, they worked very hard to accommodate

their host schools. Mary Ehrhardt's telephone correspondence course on the

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NBA from her husband and son probably delighted her Chinese 7th graders.

Ellen Stacey's work helping middle school children win the English speech
contest must have positively affected the faculty and students at the winning
schools. Denise Green's frank discussion about racial diversity and her
sharing of personal family pictures may have had a great impact upon her
Japanese students and the teachers in breaking down stereotypes they may
have harbored about race. Finally, three of the five expressed concern about
the length of time they had experienced in each school or classroom which
affected their feelings of rapport and connections with students and teachers
abroad. What was important to all of them was the establishment of
meaningful connections with the people of the culture.

This interest in connection leads us to look at the international
experience of these teachers through another lens, which is their living
experiences in the culture, a topic I consider in Chapter 5. The friendships
they made and keep, their supports, and their general observations on what
they learned about the culture will help us understand the nature of their

experience at least as much as their experiences in the schools.

CHAPTER 5
"ONLY CONNECT" (E. M. FORSTER)

The content and conditions of their international experience made a
significant difference in the learning of the four teachers who taught within
the public sector of their host country. In Chapter 4 we analyzed the content
of their experience within the school settings because it is very important
when we consider the extent to which their international experience affected
their pedagogy. They learned about differences in curriculum and pedagogy,
some of which they admired and some with which they disagreed. Equally
important to understand is their international experience beyond the
classroom. Including this helps us more fully understand the context of their
cultural learning. As I have discussed in Chapters 1 and 2, this study does not
consider a teacher's pedagogy apart from how she lives her life. Within the
Deweyan perspectives of connections in life, to compartmentalize and to
isolate a study of the impact of international experience to consider only the
classroom or school experience would thwart our understanding of the most
meaningful aspects of this experience, its potential to encourage personal
growth and transformation in life. How each teacher constructs his life
abroad within sometimes difficult circumstances helps us gain a more in-
depth understanding of the learning opportunity entailed in this experience.
This is why I have chosen to focus this chapter on the life of these teachers
beyond the formal school setting. In this chapter, many of those teachers talk
about the experiences that meant the most to them: their friendships with
individuals in their host countries. What they observed and commented upon

13S

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about the culture in general, not just their school experience, will also help us

understand the essence of their cultural experience, the nature of their
cultural learning, and how they handled being strangers in a strange land
which is the subject of Chapter 6.

There are two basic issues which I explore in this chapter: their non—
school international experience and their cultural connections within this
environment. How they handled their living conditions, their ability to
develop connections, and friendships with people in the culture affected the
quality and learning potential of their experience.

The physical and psychological aspects of the context of their lives
abroad will help provide a framework for teacher learning in an
international environment. Similar to the six women in Mary Catherine
Bateson's Composing a Life (1989), each teacher interacts within the
constraints of his circumstances to construct his own experience and
learning. Evidence of teacher learning abounds in these teachers'
observations about their host countries. Sometimes the most rewarding
learning occurs as the result of struggling with difficulties both on a physical
as well as a psychological level. Examples of physical and mental difficulties
in the narratives of these teachers can give us some understanding of how
teachers learn from international experience.

In four out of six cases, the teachers were exposed to less than ideal
conditions from a middle class U.S. perspective. How these four teachers
handled the living situation is a window on how they interacted in the society
about real down to earth problems, like an extremely small living space or no
hot water or heat when the temperature was 40 degrees. The friends they
made and their commitments to the work of keeping up these friendships over

long distances give us a perspective on the meaning of their in-depth

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experience in another culture. What they chose to comment upon during

these interviews about what they learned is another way of viewing this
experience of living in a very different culture. How these people handle
being "the odd man or woman out," for example, being stared at, as if you were
an alien from outer space or accepting cultural practices such as slurping
soup, will give us some understanding of the nature and impact of this
international experience. This cultural learning will make a difference in
each teacher's professional life in a U.S. classroom subsequent to the
international experience. This last point will be explored when we consider

the post experience lives of these teachers in Chapters 7 and 8.

Living Abroad

"We bought our toilet paper and milk first from a little man
on the corner" (Mary Ehrhardt)

Living conditions for these teachers ran the gamut from more than
adequate (Paul Vandemere) to being rather primitive by middle class U.S.
standards. The range of reactions among these teachers to their living
conditions includes the enthusiastic acceptance of difficulties as part of the
challenge of this experience, an emotional negative reaction, and passive
acceptance of the living conditions. We can gain a perspective on how each
teacher interacts with her environment to construct her experience and
learns in the process, the kind of experiential learning Mary Ehrhardt
promotes.

Mary thought herself to be privileged, living with a Chinese family in a
four-room apartment, opulent by Chinese teacher's standards (two rooms).
However, when the heat was turned off by government decree on March 15,
the weather was still very cold in Beijing. Dressing in many layers was

necessary as were quick sponge baths in the frigid air. The hot water for

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sponge baths had to be heated in a tea kettle in the evening. Ed and Heather

Donovan found their hot water and electricity to be sporadic at best in the
foreign faculty quarters they were assigned to; however, the year-round
temperature in Kunming is comfortable (in the 70 degree range), it being on a
2000 foot high plateau in southern China. Ed spoke little about his own living
situation, but he did speak at length about the austere living conditions of
some of his Chinese friends. Ellen Stacey cried when she was shown her
prospective room, which caused the Japanese authorities to move her to better
conditions, while some of her U.S colleagues suffered in tiny cockroach-
infested apartments without complaining. Denise Green considered the
display of negative emotion to be inappropriate, no matter what the
circumstances of her living conditions. Her college experience in Ghana had
exposed her to worse living conditions than existed for the exchange teachers
in Japan. Bill Notebaum made little comment about the hotels he lived in
during his month of traveling in Japan.

Mary Ehrhardt's living situation was the most physically uncomfortable
yet emotionally rewarding of these six teachers. I see Mary's construction of
her experience in China as an example of how a teacher might make the most
of a physically and mentally challenging international experience. Mary
lived with the family of a teacher in Beijing. She had never traveled in a
developing country before, so some of the conditions were a surprise to her.
She was so elated about her chance to live with a Chinese family, however, that
she considered dealing with the situation a challenge and grand adventure.
Although toward the end of four months, some things did begin to grate on
her, such as the uncomfortable press of bodies on the buses or the sound of
people clearing their throat, just before spitting, a chronic habit caused by

the extreme amount of dust and pollution particles in the air.

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I guess it was very challenging. I guess that's the personal part. It was
physically challenging and it had, the whole experience had, to be
faced with the spirit of adventure because there were hardships. We
needed to feel that that was part of the adventure.

Riding her bicycle ten miles each way to and from her school six days a
week presented further physical challenges.

Riding a bicycle twice a day probably 10 miles each way in some days
where the pollution was very bad and the winds were - I've never
experienced winds like Beijing in the spring, because there's no
vegetation, no grass in that city the dust blew. By the time you have
done this for 2 or 3 weeks, you have a hacking cough and are gray with
dust by the time you get home. The first thing that my hostess taught
me was that we always take our shoes off, never brought them in the
house, and then always washed hands. "Xi shou" she would always say.

Traffic flowed seemingly without regulations "even though you rubbed elbows
and ran over feet and had fender bender kind of experiences every day." Her
bike transit experiences included "grease marks on my pants from wheel
marks of other bicycles" and "the only experience of rudeness that I had."
The only catastrophe that I met with was a head-on collision with either
an army officer or a policeman. We literally collided head on. He
knocked me off of my bike. He fell on top of me. He was very angry at
me for being in his way although he was driving the wrong way. He
was going against traffic.
Conditions within the "sardine can" buses depressed her at times to the point
where she occasionally wished she had not traveled to China.
I rode the city buses on occasion, which was more like sardine cans.
Even standing under someone's armpit or chest to chest, there still was
the measure of respect and considering I thought for a fact that this
was the way that some people had to get about. I guess one of the times I
felt was the most discouraging and I thought "well I really wish I wasn't
here" was getting off the bus after having been 40 minutes squashed
into others; then to have to step over and try to avoid all the spittle on
the sidewalk and just the noise of clearing one's throat and spitting, that
cultural custom really bothered me.
Mary tried to put her life there, including the foregoing physical
challenges, into a more familiar context. It was her way of making sense of
such a physically difficult and demanding life. On the other hand, the

simplicity of some aspects of the life she experienced in China greatly

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appealed to her. Thinking herself to be in a time warp of the 1950's in the U.S,

she remarked about the space saving simple efficiency of life in China: one
bowl and one pair of chopsticks per person; one comforter, no sheets to wash
every week; one small refrigerator.

It did not seem like 1995, living in China. What I finally figured out that
gave me a point of reference, it felt very much like living in the United
States in about 1950. Some of the evidences of that were that it was as if
my memories of when TV was just new in my home and how everyone
gathered around the TV in the evening. Well, my host family did that in
China. They watched the evening news during dinner and then relaxed
in front of the TV together in the evening. That was one thing. What
they enjoyed watching on TV were American classic movies dubbed in
Chinese, "Gone with the Wind," "Singing in the Rain," Elizabeth Taylor
was very popular. I felt that their level of sophistication was about
what my family's level of sophistication was in about 1950. Sunday was
a day of rest until May 1. China still had a six day working week. On
Sunday, it was literally a day to nap, visit family, go on a shopping
outing, kind of my memories of what Sundays used to be like in my
childhood. 80 I came to sort of think that they were just at the dawn of
materialism and all that that brings. That kind of helped me have some
kind of reference point for living in China. I think that was my first
impression.

She described how she did her own hand laundry once a week: "in a basin with
cold water." Interacting with her family within spatial and physical
restraints provided additional challenges. She was not aware that being
supplied with sheets was a luxury in China until her family felt "comfortable"
enough with her to tell her this.
After a month or so or providing sheets for me on my bed, my family
really became comfortable with telling me that they did not use sheets;
that they have a little comforter, so perhaps just a bottom sheet and
then a comforter (they do cover, they just pull up a comforter over
them) and would that be all right with me? The sheets, they had to wash
in the washing machine.
The Chinese authorities had made an effort to make the American exchange
students and teachers more comfortable. The toilets had been changed to
western style in the host homes just to accommodate the exchange teachers

from the U.S.

In previous generations of the exchange, the first host families were
given western style toilets so that their American visitors would not be

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inconvenienced by squatting or in some cases using public bathrooms.
The next set of American exchange teachers and students, host families
had a little propane heater so that they could have a shower installed.

When Mary became aware that the four rooms of her host family was
"considered quite luxurious" in contrast to the living arrangements of most of
her Chinese teaching colleagues in the English department, she was very
concerned, especially about the Chinese teachers who had lived in the U.S.

lived in just one or two room apartments and they had taught for 20
years Since your clan wei or your work unit is in charge of housing,
this is what was offered to them. These were their accommodations.
They were discouraged about it. They knew that, in fact they had been
to America, many of these people, and they knew the lack of privacy
and just the implications of living in cramped quarters. There was
malaise about these conditions.

Given her knowledge about how her colleagues had to live, Mary felt very
lucky to have a shower. The procedure she describes to operate the shower
further challenged Mary.

In my apartment, the little tiny bathroom which had a sink, a toilet, and
then a shower nozzle overhead, the little tiny bathroom was tiled. There
was a drain in the floor and the sink drained through a hose into this
drain in the floor. But when you wanted to shower, you went from the
little bathroom into the kitchen which was on the other side of the wall
and on that wall was a propane heater and there were three valves to
readjust, to the flow of water went from the kitchen but was then
redirected towards the bathroom. After turning the heater on, also
ventilating the kitchen with an overhead fan and redirecting the flow
of water, then you went into the little bathroom and opened the pipes,
turned the faucet on and drained the cold water out. Now the cold water
drained into a bucket. You didn't waste that water. It went into a
bucket, but eventually when the water that you drew for the tap was
warm, then you could turn on the little overhead nozzle and get a little
more than a trickle but not what we would be accustomed to; not the
spray of water that we are accustomed to, but a warm shower. In my
family, they really showered maybe every other day. I guess I probably
showered too every other day.

When the heat from hot water radiators was turned off on March 15, her
family "heated water in a tea kettle rather than the shower in the evening.
They heated the water, put the kettle in the bathroom and then we would just
take a little sponge bath". This is why "all the Chinese people in Beijing wear

layers and layers, clothing with long underwear and then just layering out

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and we did the same. Even in that period after March 15 till perhaps April 15,

it was really cold."

She found these conditions to be almost a surreal counterpart to the
high tech entertainment technology her apartment contained. She began to
construct an understanding of life in China as including extreme contrasts
from incredibly complex to very simple. It was another way she made sense of
her experience.

In my apartment, there were two TVs with VCRs, there was an elaborate
stereo system, there was a wall of glassed cabinets which had a
extensive video and audio collection. On my second night, the first full
night in China, my host and hostess asked me if I didn't want to watch
'The Fugitive', didn't want to watch an America movie. The daughter,
the family, and I sat in one room watching American video while the
Chinese husband and wife sat in the other room watching Chinese TV.
Not only could I watch the video, but I could because they have a
satellite dish on their roof, I could get English channels from Hong
Kong and listen to the news. That juxtaposed with the life in the street
we bought our toilet paper and milk just from a little man on the
corner. The construction workers who were working on nearby
buildings, slept on the sidewalk on a bedroll which they just picked up
and rolled up in the morning as we were going by. They just were
amazing to me, those kinds of contrasts. I guess the impact, I really
learned to enjoy the simpler living and to see that their needs were
very well met with many fewer things and that they had time that I
often didn't have because my lifestyle was much faster. I came to
appreciate all of that.

Another surreal experience involving contrasts was Mary's first facial,
something she had certainly not expected. Her hostess insisted that she have a
facial and gave her one.

Oh, Marty, I had a facial. I had never in my whole life had a facial or
ever thought about this. My first weekend, this was something my
hostess said I must do, is have a facial. She does this fairly frequently,
but because of the dryness of the climate, 1 first of all for a half an hour
had to stay over a steamer and steam my face. Then she had this cream
that I had to put my fingers in, so she put a black mask over my whole
face that had to sit on a certain amount of time. Then I had to wipe it off
and wash and it was followed by oils that you put on your skin. On
Saturday mornings, I was not accustomed to this kind of leisure. I was
uncomfortable. It took way too long and it was too pampering. And they
do this.

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The highs, the lows, the surprises, the contrasts made her experience worth

enduring the hardships.

The food would really turn you off, served in gigantic pots and just

eating in China is an adventure. You eat every part of the animal, that

could really be distasteful to some people. Just the sanitary facilities,
the school, 2 or 3 years old, but still used squat toilets. And the quality of

Chinese toilet paper was like crepe paper. So you would accept the fact

that you would be living with some hardships, but every moment of the

experience was worth it.
Mary made the most of her difficult experiences, almost always emphasizing
positive aspects. She focused on the graciousness of the hospitality she
experienced. "As gracious as the hospitality was, I never, never feared for my
personal safety because there was always this being on a bike, giving
enough space; in an elevator, giving enough space."

This chapter, on the international experience of teachers, begins with
stories of Mary Ehrhardt's experiences that were most important to her. How
she actively constructs her life in China provides an example of how a teacher
can learn by immersing her life in an experience and simultaneously reflect
on that experience in her efforts to make sense of it. In ways, Mary's example
is the most compelling example of teacher learning in this study. She
stretches her mind to put her experiences into a familiar framework, such as a
time warp of the 19508 or how the contrasts of technology and primitive
conditions abound within the confines of one small household. She humanly
expresses feelings of depression and frustration at times with being subjected
to difficult conditions. However, she dwells on the positive opportunities to
learn and make connections with others within her own "grand adventure" of
experiential learning.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to keep Mary's very intense four month's

experience within that context, because in this study as we compare and

contrast across cases, it is not necessarily generalizable to, for example, the

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very intense 3-1/2 year experience of Ellen Stacey in Japan. Mary's U.S.
family obligations precluded her spending much more time than four months
in China. Had this not been the case and her time frame there was one year or
more, her report might have been different. The context of living with a
family although warm, friendly, and supportive for four months might have
been different if the time had been significantly extended. Nevertheless,
Mary's experience can teach us a great deal about how a teacher can learn
from a context in international living such as she actively sought out.

Ellen Stacey, during her first experience in Japan during the fall of
1988, in a stark contrast to Mary, was distraught upon being shown a tiny
apartment in Japan right next to the train station, an extremely noisy location.
The first six weeks she had stayed with her U.S. colleagues in a hotel on the 4th
floor (4th floors were available to foreigners because according to Ellen, the
number 4 stands for back luck for many Japanese people).

The fifth week of our stay in Japan, everybody was taken by the school

district that they were going to be living and shown the place that

they were going to live in. They took me to one place and it was smaller
than this little condo. I said I can't live in this, I had a home, I couldn't
live in this little, tiny thing. I started crying. So I went back to my
room and plus, my room that they wanted me to stay in was right at the
train station. Right at the train station. Every day all the trains were
going right by my hotel, my apartment. I couldn't live like that. So

they didn't get back with me for a week and I thought well maybe I'm

not going to stay anywhere. They came to my room and they said,

"We've found a place for you to stay." They walked me from the hotel to

Mr. Itaro's house, his building. They said, "Here's a place for you to

stay." It was about this big, maybe even a little bigger. It had four

rooms plus a bathroom and a kitchen, which was quite large. And it was
on the 4th floor. It was fine with me.

She did not understand why one of her friends would not speak to her
until the woman colleague with whom she had studied for a year before going
to Japan refused to talk to her.

Sheila, my study partner, we had studied for a whole year never came to

me, NEVER she never said a word until she came back from Japan.
She was living in a roach-infested place, and she didn't complain. She

145

said she never could sleep without the lights on to keep the roaches at
bay. She didn't have a place like I had.

Ellen candidly expressed that in that moment she did not understand how most
Japanese lived, especially the lack of space. She also was aware as was Denise
Green that her facial expression was a very important indicator to her hosts.

I didn't complain. I just cried. That was it because I didn't know how to

express myself that I couldn't live in such a small place, and a noisy

place at that. But I think, what had happened is that the Superintendent
got involved in this location of where I was going to be and he wanted to
know my expression. Because Japanese are trained to look at faces.

They can tell whether you are happy, sad, sick, or whatever. That was

one of the guy's jobs was to watch my expressions. About how upset I

was - I can remember going back to the hotel and just crying. They

said, "What's wrong?" I said that I can't live like that. Little did I realize
that that was the way Japanese people live, but I wasn't ready for it.

The Japanese government was very generous to Ellen during this first
experience in Japan because they were aware that she had taken a six month
leave of absence from her school district and was not funded by the state or
the district to participate in this exchange.

Money was definitely not a problem. I came home with more money

than I left because they kept giving me money for transportation, they

gave me money for food. [They were] extremely generous and the
transportation money is given to all teachers, but they never let me use
transportation. Principals were picking me up from schools, picking
me up from my place and taking me to my schools. I never took a train.

During Ellen's subsequent three-year experience, she signed a contract
with the prefecture which paid her contract in yen based upon her salary of
about $40,000 a year. By her third year, the yen/ dollar exchange rate had
changed to the point that her pay was nearing $100,000 a year. She had no
complaints about her accommodations during those three years, but she did
express that one reason she was expected to work so many hours the third year
may have had to do with her pay rate. They asked her what her life was like in
Milwaukee and how may classes she taught a week.

I said, "Twenty five hours a week." little did I realize that I was

digging my own grave the dollar changed. My salary was no longer
$40,000. It was up to $70,000 with the exchange rate. They gave me a car

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plus gasoline allowance, $100 a week. Plus they gave me a free house to

live in. I had two 4 LDKs. A 4 LDK was probably the most deluxe
apartment you could get. I had two of them put together. The deal for
the third year was even better. Because two years you can live abroad
without paying taxes. The third year they said that they would pay me.
Now this is where I really made my money; they would pay my taxes. I
had a choice, pay U.S. or Japan tax. They said they would pay the
Japanese tax. So now they raised my income to compensate for the
Japanese tax. It was that year that the dollar leveled to the yen. I was
making 35 cents on every dollar. I was making probably close to
$100,000 that last year. Because of that, because of the dollar I was
making, they expected me to work that kind of work.
Both Mary and Ellen talked a great deal about their living conditions,
Mary from the perspective of the challenge they presented to her. Ellen talks
about her accommodations in terms of what her needs were, for example, to
live in a quiet atmosphere with ample space. Mary was most concerned about
adapting well into the context of a Chinese person's life. She was concerned
about not inconveniencing her family which is reflected in the way she only
took as many showers as they; she went without sheets when she realized this
is how they lived. She did not expect the family to adapt to her needs, she
expected to adapt to theirs even if it meant to politely accept a "pampering"
facial which her hostess insisted upon giving her. Mary quickly becomes
aware that her own living conditions are "luxurious" in comparison to those of
most teachers. This deeply concerns her. Although Ellen notes that "little did
I realize that that was the way Japanese people live," this fact does not seem to
concern her. In comparison to Mary, Ellen expects special treatment. I
believe that understanding this distinction between approaches to living
conditions will help us understand their observations, the way they learn and
how they each adapt to their status as a foreigner living abroad. Eventually,
this has great bearing on the kinds of attitudes that they bring back to their
classrooms in the U.S.

In contrast to Mary Ehrhardt and Ellen Stacey, Denise Green said very

little about her living conditions. It was apparently not a great priority to her.

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However, she did speak at length about what she thought was her role in

Japan, how she felt she had to act in order to get along there. Expressing
negative emotions was something she felt she should not do. Although she
considered it "a bit tiring" to never display irritable or impatient behavior,
she explains: "But then I had a mindset to be there a certain amount of time. If
the mindset was for two years, I would have done it for two years." She
reconfirmed these sentiments to her eldest daughter who went to Japan a few
years later. Denise warned her that she must not show negative emotions on
her face because this would be terribly disconcerting to her hosts.

I remember when my oldest one went to Japan, I told her, "You will not

be left alone for one moment." This is a girl that likes some privacy.

You need to get used to that fact, you will not be left alone. I said, "Don't

look sad. Don't look depressed because they are going to be very, very

worried about you. Don't roll your eyes, because they'll think you're
most displeased about something and will try to figure out what it is and
try to fix it because they don't know you roll your eyes anyway."
Denise found that at times her life was difficult in Japan because she was
allowed very little time alone. She thought that her Japanese hosts considered
it their responsibility to entertain her or generally to keep her busy.

When the only time you can ever be alone is in the bathroom or when

you're asleep, and when their culture believes it is rude to leave a guest

alone, (because we give them some privacy). But they think it's rude to
leave a guest alone except when you're sleeping or in the bathroom.

Then you have to adjust and it can be a lot to adjust to all of a sudden.

You know you can't go in your room and close your door and cry in the

bed. You feel like you want to; you can't.

There is a stark contrast between how Ellen Stacey and Denise Green
viewed the way one expresses or doesn't express dissatisfaction in another
culture. Denise, like Mary Ehrhardt, thinks more in terms of her own
adapting to Japanese culture than Ellen does. To Denise, who went to Japan the
year before Ellen on a similar exchange program, physical space was a non-

issue. Denise preferred to talk about the many festivals she experienced and

sometimes participated in, the sense of community and shared culture that she

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witnessed and her friendships there. Ed Donovan also treated space and

physical comfort as a non-issue. He felt he had been well prepared by the
program leaders, so he was not surprised by physical conditions which were
difficult. Mary Ehrhardt considered her hardships part of the price she was
more than willing to pay to live life as a Chinese person, even though at times
it did get her down. She did not, however, dwell on those negatives. She
seemed so anxious to learn, to experience what real life was like in China even
just for four months that the cold, the dust, the wind, the "sardine" experience
in busses, even the bicycle crash was worth it to her. These four different
reactions to difficult living conditions demonstrate the interplay of individual
characteristics and the context of an experience.

The way each of them adapted to and constructed their experience are
examples which show that the more flexible and "other oriented" each teacher
was, the more he was able to benefit from this experience, the more he was
able to learn and develop relationships with people in that culture. How they
prepared for the experience also probably affected their reactions. Each of
them expressed feelings about the connections they made with Japanese and
Chinese individuals as being of major importance to them. Sometimes the
support they had from other Americans or westerners helped them deal with
feelings of loneliness or frustrations and confusion erupting out of cultural

misunderstandings. These are the subjects we will discuss in the next sections.

SupportI Connections, and Friendships

"Bread on Butter" (Ellen Stacey)
All six of these teachers prized their friendships they made with
Japanese and Chinese individuals above all else. It was the thing that made the
experience most worthwhile for them. The relationships that developed have

continued on a long-term basis. For example, in 1995 Ed Donovan made a

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special trip to Hainan Island just to visit his former colleagues and students,

whom he had befriended during one of his earlier visits. Both Ed and Mary
Ehrhardt are keeping up quite a correspondence with these friends (thirty or
more). Denise Green has visited with her Japanese acquaintances when they
arrived in the U.S. as part of the exchange. Ellen Stacey received a phone call
from Japan while I was interviewing her. I heard her speaking Japanese and
laughing. It was one of her best Japanese friends calling about some things
Ellen had sent to her. The importance of these friendships and connections
was stressed by each teacher. In fact, for example, Paul Vandemere considered
his Japanese support system the most crucial aspect to a positive and
meaningful experience in a foreign country.

Paul felt that the Japanese company he worked for provided a
wonderful support system for him and his wife. He believes this support
system that is in place is a major aspect of a person's feelings about that
experience.

I think any time you spend time in a foreign country, not everyone has

a great experience there. A lot of it depends on the support system that

you become part of and the company that I was part of had a great

support system.
The friendships he and his wife made, in addition to their desire to live in an
area of Tokyo where there were few foreigners, helped them learn and see a
different side of Japan than those who participate in short study tours.

They went out of their way to make sure that the part time foreign

instructors were included in the family. We met some wonderful

Japanese people and made some great friendships. We lived in an area

of Tokyo that had very few foreigners. We did that by design. We

immersed ourselves as much as we could. My wife, more so than me
because I was teaching English during the day time, but certainly in the
evening and on weekends, etc., there was a wonderful opportunity to
really to get know people from different cultures, on much more than
just a superficial basis than a tourist gets or even from a summer study
program. There are different levels that you all get and certainly those

who have been there longer have a much deeper understanding than I
do. I just scratched the surface in two years, but it was a gracious

 

“is

ill);

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country, it was a gracious group of people that we dealt with. They
opened their doors, their homes. We had a wonderful time.

Bill Notebaum was pleased that "I was able to cross over to a personal
friendship with two of the [Japanese] group leaders" during his month-long
experience in Japan. One was an older man "close to retirement" and the other
"a younger man just finishing up his university work and in the beginnings
of his career. They traveled with us everywhere." These men eventually
visited Bill and his family in Cleveland and at his summer cottage in a lovely
area of Ohio, "which was a real special experience for them."

Support

Some of these teachers considered it important to have a colleague,
spouse, or friend as a support to them during their experience living abroad.
Mary Ehrhardt felt great support from the Chinese family with whom she
lived and from her colleague, Jackie, who lived with another family on the 9th
floor in her building (Mary lived on the 15th floor). Mary who was 54 and
Jackie who was 28 "commuted together" on their bicycle ride to school each
day. The program planners were concerned that the people they sent to China
would have at least one other colleague with whom they could share this very
intense experience, as a support. Ed Donovan and Paul Vandemere felt that
being accompanied by their wives had helped them to cope with and enjoy
their experiences in a different culture. Although Denise Green was
accompanied by five colleagues, she was isolated from her African-American
culture. She appreciated the monthly get together with her American
colleagues to share stories and feelings. It is interesting that Ellen, who felt
the most isolated, depressed and lonely by the end of her third year in Japan,
was also the one without much of a support group and virtually no support

from her own American culture.

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The emotional support that Denise Green experienced in her group of

Americans was very important to her.

The meetings with the other teachers, our little monthly informal get
together, helped because we could just sit down and let it all out, laugh at
things, then go on back and not worry about it. We just decided to do
this as a group, informally. I even forgot why, what the occasion was
for the get together. Everybody didn't come every time because
sometimes you couldn't. Things would be planned for you and you
wouldn't be able to. It's just like being with the host family. You really
are on display.

Similarly, Mary Ehrhardt found that her 28-year-old colleague, Jackie,
was a great support to her, because it would have been difficult to prepare the
seminars, presentations, and plan trips alone. Just dealing with their
responsibilities for five U.S. high school students was a challenge.

Because it was an educational exchange where we were responsible for
American high school students, and indeed it was only five American
high school students, but there were many issues related to the students
in our charge. There was personal counseling and even counseling
around college decisions and then there were just administrative details.
Where we were also responsible for being teachers ourselves, with the
planning and carrying out of our classroom responsibilities, it was a
very big job for one person to wear all of those hats. In some cases, we
probably didn't specifically say I'll do this and you do that, we probably
just worked in a complimentary way.

Jackie's facility in language was very helpful in many situations.

I think Jackie had terrific language facility. That was always helpful in
negotiating whether it was travel arrangements or shopping
expeditions or eating in restaurants. I certainly could not have been
nearly as effective as she.

Mary and Jackie collaborated together on every decision, even though the
Chinese authorities deferred to Mary because of her age.

We did have to make decisions in the country about travel and about
putting on a banquet and we had to negotiate issues with the school
administrators. It was interesting because of our age difference. She is
28 and I was 54. I was always deferred to by the principal and the
assistant principal, I was always seated next to the principal because I
was the older woman. They came to me first for decisions. I certainly,
and it was very wise counsel, we certainly talked over every decision
that was made. So there I think important support is having someone to
listen and to consult with when decisions need to be made.

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In contrast to Mary and Denise, Ellen Stacey seemed to be at odds with

her own support group from the beginning of her first visit to Japan. She had
originally been assigned to live and work in the countryside in the mountains,
until the prefecture school superintendent "took a liking to me."

My commission was supposed to be way up in the mountains because my
Japanese was the weakest and they felt that if I was up in the country,
as a matter of fact all 3 of the city teachers were supposed to be out in
the country, because if we were out in the country, our Japanese would
improve immensely. Those who were from the state capitol were
supposed to stay in the big city because their Japanese was pretty good
and if they met a lot of Americans or foreigners, there would be no
problem. When the Superintendent took a liking to me, he changed my
whole program. He took me from up in the mountains where I was
supposed to be and put me in the middle of the city where he would be
close too. At least twice a week he would call the hotels that we were all
staying in and invite us to parties. We were supposed to be studying
Japanese and he was inviting us to these parties. He would always sit
next to me. Well, the first two times it was fun. I'm a party person and I
figured this is my first time in Japan.

Yet this attention by the Superintendent had the affect of alienating her from
the other five Americans on the exchange and isolated her even before she
was the only one who had had her accommodations upgraded.

Then that caused a lot of problems, trust me. Nobody else would talk to
me because he was always sitting next to me. He was 60 years old; I was
only 30 and he's only half the size of me. I'm 5'9". He was about 5 feet
tall. They got so upset. They wouldn't talk to me, the other five
Americans. They wouldn't talk to me and they would go right by my
room and they would go into study groups. They would never knock on
my door and ask me to join in their study groups. I would have to go and
knock on the door. If we're all going to the bus station, we're all going
to the same destination, they would knock on the doors but they
wouldn't knock on mine. So I had to walk. The only other guy in the
group, there were six of us, this one guy. If it wasn't for him, I would
have gone insane.

Language Study to Promote Relationships
In addition to supportive colleagues, hosts, or family members, another
kind of support for some teachers in this study was internal rather than
external. It was their work to master enough of the language to be able to
communicate with people who did not speak or were uncomfortable speaking

English in their host country. The connections this work facilitated were very

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meaningful to two of the teachers in this study, Mary and Denise. Mary

Ehrhardt's hard work studying Chinese really paid off in the relationships she
had with her Chinese family. She felt very fortunate to be able to share
feelings about her own family with them in Chinese, because they did not
speak English. They talked about their older children, her host's daughter
being 24 years old, the same age as Mary's son. It was time for the young
woman "to have a serious boyfriend and consider getting married." What was
"most meaningful to me is that Zhou Li, my hostess and I could talk about our
daughters, our concerns and hopes. We could, as mothers, sort of giggle about
their boyfriends and whether we approved or disapproved." The daughter of
Mary's host family also helped her prepare the speeches she had to give in
Chinese every so often to as many as 70 people. She described the kind of
speech she would make.
The setting would be our first sort of official welcome by the principal,
the East City District educational representatives, the city of Beijing
educational representatives. So I would usually say that we appreciated
their initial hospitality, that we had been there a certain amount of
time, that we were finding our host families and home settings very
acceptable and that we were beginning to be acquainted with our
students and enjoying our students, enjoying their classes and we were
enjoying our teaching assignments. We're very grateful to them for
providing this opportunity.
The process she would go through before giving the speech involved several
steps. Now, "I would write it in English and as much in pin yin as I could.
Then the daughter in my host family would really help me fill in the
vocabulary and the grammar and put it in the order so that then my job was to
learn it so that I could say it." After her speech, "There was always great
applause and always beaming faces that we were attempting to communicate
in Chinese." Laughing, she described how she had mistakenly used the word

ping guo, meaning apple, for peng you, which means friend. "I introduced

our friends as apples." She felt that the Chinese knew she was trying very

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hard to communicate. "I was certainly nervous and they appreciated my

efforts." They all laughed together at this mistake. Learning Chinese at a very
basic rudimentary level helped Mary make connections with Chinese people
that were important to her social and professional life in China.

I found that the language study was really worthwhile when I arrived
in Beijing because I lived with a non-English speaking family and I had
enough proficiency by then that we could at least talk about the basics
of daily living. I think it pleased them that we had that level of
communication. It also gave me a bit more confidence that I could find
my way around a city, I could shop, and I could converse with
colleagues, teachers, other teachers at school and students. So I knew
when I made the commitment the reason for it. It really was essential
for living four months there, that I had at least some level of language.

Denise Green also talked about how helpful her ability to use some
Japanese was to enable her to have better discussions with the children about
what her life was really like in the U.S. She also talked warmly of a teacher
with whom she had become friends. Denise called her "the New York City
lady". She was the mother of the tardy student Denise had called "Yakuza san,"
to the delight of the class. Her friend was quite concerned that Denise was
single and had no male "significant other," so she arranged a party at her
home for Denise to meet four eligible bachelors. During this evening, most of
the conversation was a mix of Japanese and English. Her friend's husband and
son picked Denise up and when they arrived,

I was presented with a dozen long-stemmed roses which cost twice as
much in Japan as they are here. She had told her husband to pick out
three friends of the appropriate age that had money in the bank, she
told me "I had to make sure they had money," who were not married that
could take me out. She said, "If I had known you were leaving so soon,"

I don't know why people thought I was staying until after Christmas,
but I guess she thought I was - "we would have done this earlier." When
she did this, I had one week before I was leaving the country. So when I
realized what was happening, I thought, "Oh my goodness, what am I
going to do about this?" One was an artist and he had a bank account
she told me. And these were some of her husband's drinking buddies.
One was a rice merchant. I can't remember what the other one did. One
was an English teacher there who thought he should come along in case
there were any translation problems. Then of course at the meal, her
15-year-old son was served some beer. He went in the other room. I
said, "You give beer to him?" She said, "But only at home." New York

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City would be a great city for her. I think she would like New York City.

She just has that kind of personality. But she was doing this because she

thought I should have a man in my life. She said they were all of good

Sggaaer. They all have jobs and they all have bank accounts. I said,
Eventually one of the four bachelors, a rice merchant who sang to her there
earlier in the evening, asked if she would join him for dinner. Denise politely
declined because every evening was taken up with the "last week activities,"
such as the farewell banquet. She was quite relieved at the timing of this get
together because it spared her more excuses. In this case, the connections
facilitated by her knowledge of Japanese and her friendship with this
Japanese teacher could have posed a problem for her.

I'm kind of glad she didn't arrange that any earlier because it would

have put me socially in a difficult position for it to be known that I was

going out with men. It would have been very difficult. It would have

started a lot of gossip and it would just be very difficult for me.
Nevertheless, according to Denise, she might not have experienced such an
interesting evening, where the connections, albeit somewhat superficial,
seemed to mean a great deal to Denise.

Small Happenings

There are different kinds of connections among people, some of which
are very close and intense. Others are more acquaintances than close
friendships. Some can be very brief chance meetings of strangers on a bus or
train excursion. These teachers talked about all of these kinds of connections
as being times when they learned from people in their host countries. Denise
Green found that small happenings like laughing at herself as she awkwardly
tried a potter's wheel to make a tea cup helped her to connect with people in
Japan. The tea cup actually became a coffee cup, which she treasures to the
point of not using it for fear of breaking it.

When they took me to this place where this famous pottery is made, I

had an official escort. So I got kind of a special tour of which I was glad
about later on. One person was taking pictures of this whole process.

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They were really trying very hard to make a potter out of me, but it
wasn't working so well. Finally, the master potter stepped in and shaped
it and put a little handle on it and everything and let me put my name
on it in Japanese on the bottom. I was always teased when those
pictures were passed around about Green sensai's coffee cup because I
didn't have much to do with this finished project, the master potter did.
But they were laughing at me and joking. And this is it. They were
having the best time.

She felt very fortunate that she had been able to have this experience as an
individual and not as part of a group tour, so that she was able to try her hand
at making the cup with the help of the master potter.

When I was there, there was no group. There was just the four of us. So
I really felt privileged that I got a very special tour. But they just got
the biggest kick out of me trying to make this cup. I guess something
was said that my Japanese was enough to get around but not enough I
guess to get all the inside jokes and the jokes probably went around
among the men while I was making it. But they had a ball watching me.
Maybe it was because they saw me in a vulnerable situation. But it was
fun. This cup has just so many memories. They were very giving and
they were just like normal people. They were just sitting there making
fun of a female teacher who couldn't get it together to make a tea cup
and having a ball.

Denise was laughing at herself with them because "I couldn't help it. I wasn't
coordinating the steadiness. I'd never done it before."

Even though Denise taught for only two weeks at a time in a school, she
developed several friendships which were important to her.

The relationships that were going to be formed had to be formed pretty
quickly because they knew I would be going on to another school. So
this was a teacher who I talked to a lot when I was in her building But
even after I left her school, I was invited to her home for a meal more
than once. She was someone I was comfortable with.

She found that Japanese women who felt close enough would open up to her on
what she considered a universal subject for women.

It was just interesting, we had the Japanese woman, when she got
closer, talk about men. It sounded like people talking about men here or
anywhere else. Because you know in public you're supposed to save
face, your's and other people's face. But in private they would talk
about, when you got close, they would talk about men. Of course, they
knew that I would be leaving. I wasn't going to be around there to be
repeating some of the things. Then I remember this one woman telling
me she was jealous because I was divorced. I said, "Why, you have a good
husband?" She said, "Yes, but you can make your own decisions. I have

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to ask his permission for it, everything. He goes out and drinks with his
friends. He doesn't like it if I want to go out and drink with my friends."
Doesn't that sound like something you have heard? There's nothing
particularly Japanese sounding about that. It's like something you'd
hear anywhere.
Most of her friendships were with women English teachers, although not in
the case of the woman who tried to fix her up.
I would say, most of the women that I became friends with in the schools
were English teachers and I'd say I taught with every English teacher
in all the schools I was in because that's how the Board of Education had
worked it out. There was one person I became close to, the one who said
I was lucky to be divorced, who was not an English teacher, but she
would come over to me and talk to me. She was very outgoing.
Denise, like Mary Ehrhardt, seemed to relish going out among the
people to experience the festivals. She often traveled alone and felt that she
was treated very well by the Japanese people she met on these trips. She often

perused the English version of the lapan Times to find out when and where
the many festivals in Japan were being held. This is one way she constructed
her experience to learn and connect with some of the Japanese people. She
enjoyed and admired the level and quality of community participation in these
festivals, with many groups showing their affiliations by wearing the same
"happi coats," not meaning "happy," she explained but meaning "festival coat."
Sometimes she would "jump on the train" during her free weekends and attend
one of these festivals, especially if they were occurring in her favorite city,
Kyoto.
It was such a wonderful city, just full of history and I never did see
everything and do everything there was to see and do in Kyoto. But if
you want to go someplace for a weekend, there was always something
happening. Sometimes just walking around getting intentionally lost in
an area you've never been before, I would run into these little parades,
these little - I shouldn't say little - parades or ceremonies at a temple or
at a shrine, being carried out for some reason. Sometimes I could find
out the reason, sometimes I wouldn't be able to. There were fascinating
to watch.

She described a favorite festival of hers in Kyoto, the Matsuri, in which

adults participated with elaborate floats, the ritual surrounding this festival

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having been developed over many generations. The community works to

assemble floats with all the participants playing certain roles.

There's community participation because those floats have to be
assembled and at least two weeks before the Matsuri you can see where
strange scaffolding in places in Kyoto along certain streets because
that's where the floats are being assembled. The floats may be a couple
stories high. They're made with the old style wooden wheels and to turn
corners, they put something under the wheels and you hear the men
yelling, calling to each other, but they're not yelling anything, they'd
be saying commands that had been used for generations.

Denise was not content to just watch as a passive bystander.

I just happened to be in Kyoto one Saturday or Sunday afternoon and I
was walking along one of the main streets and I saw one of the floats, it
was a big long one that had to be pulled up the street, and people were
actually pulling this float to get it in position for the parade. People on
the streets were just walking up and putting their hands on the ropes
and helping to pull it. So I walked up and I helped pull it too. That's a
chance for community participation. They didn't care. Anybody that
was around could just come and help pull. People smiled.

One festival in which she officially participated involved learning how to do a
ritual dance for the region and finding the traditional wooden geh ta sandals
needed for the festival in size 8, a difficult feat.

The first one I was in lasted about two hours. The exchange teachers
were invited to be part of the Board of Education's group and we were
getting yekh ta to wear that looked just like theirs and they taught us the
dance and we did it and we did it and we did it. Two hours is a long time
to be in a parade doing this dance when you're wearing these sandals
that were usually made for smaller feet, the wooden geh ta. When I say
smaller feet, I had trouble finding shoes in a size 8 there. People were
very helpful, if you forgot a step or got out of step, they were helping
you out.

Two weeks later, Denise learned the steps to a different dance in the streets of
Sapporo, Hokkaido, the northernmost of the four main islands of Japan.

They were having their Obon festival in the streets of Sapporo, which is
the capital of Hokkaido. Their dance was similar, but a little bit
different. It was on a smaller scale. I was standing there and started
talking to someone next to me and instead of parading through the
streets at this point, they were creating like a big circle on this one
boulevard. I joined in and they were showing me how to do their
version. I said this is how I learned it in Otsu. They showed me how and
once again people from one organization wore the same happi coat or
the same yekh ta. I was by myself.

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Denise felt that the Japanese made it easy for her to feel welcome and

join in with in their social functions, such as festivals. It is as if they wanted
to reach out to her as a foreigner to graciously include her in their
celebration. Perhaps because she was such a willing participant and ventured
out alone, she was able to enjoy and greatly treasure these experiences.

They make you feel welcome to do that. Strangers will ask you if you

look interested, if you are watching or instead they will motion to you,

come on and join. 80 you feel very comfortable doing it and people
actually show you how to do the dance. If you are messing up, then they
tap you on the shoulder and show you how to do it the right way or
something like that. I guess what I'm saying is that the happi coat
reminds me that there are so many of those opportunities that I saw in
the short time I was in Japan that I feel you know does a lot to preserve
their culture and bind the people together.
Denise, like Mary, made these opportunities for learning and cultural
connections happen, whether she spontaneously used the opportunity as in
the case of her funny cup or she placed herself in a situation, such as the
festivals, where she was likely to make connections with people.

Mary Ehrhardt felt she was able to interact and make connections with
Chinese people on an adventure she, her colleague and. five students
experienced taking the hard seat train from Beijing southeast to Suzhou,
Hangzhou, Shanghai and Huangshan. Hard seat is the Chinese equivalent of
2nd or 3rd class travel. Hard seat trains entail many stops and are often very
slow. They are much less expensive than soft seat trains. This was a difficult
feat because "foreigners are not supposed to travel hard seat." By traveling
hard seat, the seven Americans were able to take this long trip for a total
$500.00 for all of them.

On one leg of the trip, we were told we could not get on the hard seat

train because we were Americans and we had to actually upgrade and go

soft seat which were plush, which had waitresses who came around and

you could order directly through the waitress, something to eat.

She described the rest of the trip on hard seats as a marvelous experience.

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As far as our hard seat experience, I wouldn't give up for the world. We
traveled over night 17, 18 hours hard seat and hard sleeper actually. A
hard sleeper, we were in open compartments which had three levels of
bunks up, so six people in one compartment. We had a mat, we really
were like on shelves. We were shelved. We had a mat, a blanket, a
pillow, and then we shared a very small table. We sat during the day on
the lower bunk. We had a thermos of hot water. There was a lavatory at
either end of the car and in some cases the train car was air conditioned
But we stopped many times and at each, if we wished we could get off
and buy our little container of ramen noodles and add hot water. That
was the quality of the meal, however, and this is the way the Chinese
travel.

As many Americans have experienced in China when they go off the tourist
track and interact with ordinary Chinese people, she was surprised to find
herself, Jackie, and the students a major attraction on the train.

The trains were very precisely on schedule, but we became the
entertainment. Families traveling came and sat in the aisle in a little
jump seat and watched the Americans and wanted to try to talk to us and
wanted their babies to come and see us. We really interacted and
interfaced with Chinese travelers.

Ed Donovan had a similar experience traveling hard seat in China,
although for a much shorter trip than Mary. It was, nevertheless, also an
experience which he treasures. During his latest trip back to Kunming to see
old friends (1995), he found himself on a hard seat train.

It was a ball! It was a ball! The guy that was supposed to get me my
ticket, didn't. I mean I never made contact with him. It was an express
train, it said, but it wasn't the express train. It was local. It took me 5-
1/ 4 hours to go 90 miles. Isn't that something? There were a few people
who could speak English, but mostly it was a couple of gamblers here
and a couple of gambling games there, and kids peeing on the floor
there, just the kind of stuff you see in the street. They had a lot of
conversations going on. I had a pair of lovers right next to me. They
couldn't keep their hands off of each other except when they pulled
into a station. Then they would buy all of the food in sight and sit there
and scarf it down. Once the food was finished, they were right back at
each other. It was incredible! Some old lady gave them hell for making
out on the train. [He knew this because] they were acting sheepish and
looked at me.

As Denise describes her connections with Japanese friends and
strangers, and Mary and Ed describe their slight connections on hard seat

trains, the juxtaposition of Ellen Stacey's accounts provides a stark contrast.

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Ellen does not say much about the friendships she developed on her first
experience in Japan for seven months which was structured much the same as
the program for Denise. Ellen described her first trip as a whirlwind that
caught her up and was over too quickly, leaving her with a burning desire to
return to Japan. She felt she had been "cheated" on the first trip out of
learning as much Japanese and seeing as much of the country as she wished.
When I was over in Japan the first time, I felt almost cheated because I
really didn't feel it was like being in a whirlwind. What was I doing
here? Before I knew it, it was finished. I thought, "I didn't learn
anything." I did learn a lot, but I didn't learn anything. You know what
I'm saying?
In addition to her language work with tutors in each school, Ellen found that
her side trips with administrators to places of interest were opportunities for
her to work on her language skills.
When I told you they always had tutors or people that would be my
mentor in every school, I would bring my books and they would help me
on the days that they didn't have five classes to teach or when they only
had one class during that day. They would help me that way and also
what I would do is I'd be in the car, on the way to work with the
Assistant Principal or the Principal, and they would practice their
Japanese with me. I would be looking in my dictionary trying to figure
out what they were saying. That was when I came back from Japan the
first time, my listening skills were very high. My speaking skills were
worth nothing. I guess I felt cheated in that area because I didn't get to
really do what I wanted to do with the language.
She appreciated the side trips to Kyoto and Hiroshima, but wishes that she
could have seen more of Japan. Unlike Denise, whose school district financed
most of her trip and paid her salary while she was in Japan, Ellen's inner city
district did not have the funds to give her anything but an unpaid leave of
absence, which put her on a much more limited budget than Denise. "I didn't
get to see a lot of Japan either. I saw Kyoto, Otsu, and Hiroshima. That was all I

had seen of Japan. But I was on a limited budget."

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Friendship

One source of friendship and support Ellen developed during this first
experience was with a regular Japanese teacher who went out of her way to
help Ellen. Only the substitute teachers, who had many fewer responsibilities,
like school clubs, generally had the time to develop a relationship with her.

I remember the one teacher, she was wonderful This was a regular
teacher and she was in charge of me her real name was Hana. She
said, "My western name is Margaret." I liked her a lot. She helped me
bridge a lot of gaps in the Japanese society. She was single, but she was
also international where she traveled a lot. She tried to make sure
wherever I went that there would be men around because I was single.
She made sure that I went into Kyoto at least once a month, even though
I wasn't at her school any more. She tried her darnedest to practice her
English skills, though she was a physical Ed teacher. She made sure that
I saw every kind of class that was offered to Japanese students in her
school. She was a real sweetheart.

Ellen found ways to break the ice with her Japanese colleagues in the
schools. Another friend set her up to use a few Japanese words in his phone
conversations with her. Her Japanese colleagues thought the whole
conversation was in Japanese, which helped to break the ice in each of the
schools where she was assigned to teach.

That guy was wonderful too. A travel agent who spoke beautiful
English, he was so funny. He used to call me up at school and he would
say, "Whatever I say to you, just say hai, hai." So then he would ask me a
question and I would say, "Yes." He'd say, "No, I told you to say hai, hai."
So I'd say, "Hai, hai." And then he'd say at the very end of the
conversation, "Now I want you to say, 'Wo kari mashta'." It means "I
understand." " W0 kari mashta, hai, hai." So when I would hang up the
phone, all the Japanese would come around because they thought I had
spent 15 minutes talking in Japanese with this gentleman and I was
understanding everything this gentleman was saying. I didn't
understand half the stuff that they were trying to tell me. What he was
trying to do was make it so comfortable for me in that school and it
broke so much ice in every school I would go to.

Ellen also took advantage of opportunities to connect with others when
they happened by chance. She was asked by a woman who helped her on the
road to be an English conversation teacher in the mountains on Saturday

mornings.

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When I drove my car over a cliff, the woman who came to my rescue,
this was a crazy story, the woman who came to my rescue was studying
English and she had been studying it since she was in 8th grade. She
was my age. We became very good friends. She asked me to be the
English conversation teacher every other Saturday. It was wonderful.
So every other Saturday I'd go up to the mountains and I'd be their
English conversation teacher. That was wonderful and still today, we
communicate.

Long-term friendships, Ellen believed, between foreigner and Japanese are
extremely difficult because of the Japanese perspective about friendships.
Relationships between friends seemed to be almost as important and obligatory
as family relationships in Japan.

I had so many friends, but Japanese people have a feeling that if they
make friends with you, they can't stay friends with you. The reason
they don't stay friends is because you move away, your interests

change, and you won't be a permanent friend. So they don't make long-
lasting friendships with foreigners. For a good friendship, they have to
give you part of themselves. I guess that's the bottom line. They gave so
much of themselves and got nothing in return [from foreigners].

She began to understand this aspect of Japanese friendships during her three
years of living there because she noticed the friends which were invited to
Japanese weddings.

I understand what they're saying because if someone gets married in
Japan, they invite friends from their elementary grades, even if they're
in university level and they have their professors, their teachers, their
instructors, all their lives people who have been mentors for them go to
their wedding. A wedding is a really family-friend thing, long term.

This was the kind of friend Sumi was. (Sumi was the friend that had
called Ellen during our interview.) Sumi was a substitute in one of the last
schools that Ellen was assigned to during her first year there before she went
home for her sister's funeral.

When I went there, Sumi and I just like (snap finger), bread on butter.
We just got along perfectly. They started to abuse her. She said, "What
do you mean you want me to stay till 5:00? I'm a sub. I'm only going to
stay to 3:00, that's all I'm staying." She became very outspoken. So at
the end of that school year, their school year ends in March, and I got to
see her in March. And I thought well, here I meet this great person and
now I'll never see her again. Because she said she wasn't going back to
school to teach because she didn't like the way they were treating her.

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She started calling me up. She said, "Come on over for dinner." That
was the first house I had been invited to for dinner.
In her 3-1/ 2 years in Japan, this was the first and only invitation Ellen had

had into the home of a Japanese family.

They would say, "There's a party and please come to the party." But they
never invited me to their home. As a matter of fact, for 2-1/ 2 years,
Sumi's home had been the only home I had ever been invited to.

By contrast, Ed Donovan made many friends, some 35 of whom he had
been communicating with for nine years. "I've written all of them. They've
been responding. They all want to come here of course." During the summer
of 1995, before Ed began his teaching assignment at a teacher's college, he
visited many of these friends.

I went to Hainan Island. This is about the first of July, last of June. I
met friends that I hadn't seen for nine years, that I had been writing
and they had been writing me. That was quite exciting. From the time I
was first in China, that was ten years ago. I saw a former university
professor who had been an exchange scholar here at the university. He
was also a professor at Kunming Normal University, but he quit that job
and went to Hiko University where he was the English Language
Department head. I saw a gal who was a former colleague in the English
Department at the Medical College, who was also a student, who is now a
travel agent in Hiko city. Another who had been a former student of
mine who was in the Physiology Department at the Medical College, who
is now selling construction stuff. She sells things like water proofing
for cement, that type of thing.

He finally returned to the Medical College outside of Kunming to visit with
many friends there. "I saw many, many people that I knew before, many of
them who live off of campus. I mean they don't have anything to do with the
school at all and were just delighted to see me and had dinner for me." He also
made some new friends with whom he communicates now in addition to the
others from prior visits, some of whom live in the same cities and share his
letters with each other.

My stamps for foreign letters are - I spend a lot for them every month.

Some of them are stamp collectors so I usually put a packet of domestic

stamps in with them so that they've got a copy of them. So it's kind of
interesting.

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How he felt about this visit with old friends, Ed expressed with gusto: "It was a

ball! It was a ball!"

During his year in Kunming, the English corner on Sunday morning is
where Ed made some of his first meaningful connections with Chinese people.
Just the challenge and adventure of breaking out of his "cocoon" constructed
by the authorities at the medical college and venturing a few kilometers by
bus into the city center, created a sense of excitement for Ed. "One of the
things that was really surprising to me was going to English corner on Sunday
mornings." A teacher from the teacher's college in Kunming, whom Ed still
writes to occasionally, had started the comer as a way of creating an
opportunity for English language students in the city to converse in English
with each other. Ed had only been China for one month when he heard about
the English corner. He made his queries about the corner part of his English
lesson.

I decided I'd go and find it. I didn't know anything about the town, it
was my first month there. I hadn't even been downtown except by
being transported down and in the back seat of the car, you don't pay
attention to where you are going. So I asked one of my students how do
you get there. In order to use their English, I'd say, "How do you go
downtown?" They would say, "Oh you catch #5 bus, it takes you down to
the center of town." Then I started asking about what was in the center
of town. "Oh the park was at the center of town." "What happens in the
park?" "Well, they've got a merry-go-round and some of this other
stuf ." And I said, "Do people walk in the park on Sundays?" "Yes,
people walk in the park on Sundays." You have to repeat. And when
they'd talk to me, I would repeat that they said so that they were sure I
heard what they said. I think that's pretty common technique when
teaching a language.

When he mentioned to a colleague about wanting to go down to the English
corner, she was concerned about his going there alone.

I asked one of the other foreign language teachers about it and she said,
"Oh yes, I go down there sometimes." I said, "Well I'm going to go down
Sunday." She said, "Oh, someone should go with you." And I said, "OK if
somebody wants to come, that's fine." Sunday morning nobody was at
the apartment door, so I walked out, went down and got #5 bus, went
down to the center of town, found my way into the park and just kind of
strolled around and camp upon English comer. People flocked around

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me, literally. So for three hours we held forth and finally everybody
had to go to lunch. They all invited me back for each Sunday thereafter,
and as often as I could come.

The people in the park asked him about the city he was from and his family.

People would say," What city are you from?" I would say, "I'm from the
city of Detroit." They would say, "Oh that is the automobile capital of the
world." And I would say, "Yes, that is." They want to know about your
family. They want to know about things that they're familiar with, that
they can respond to you with. I would say, "My father is deceased."
"What's deceased?" "That means he is dead." They understood that.
Then I would say, "18 your father still alive?" "Oh, yes my father is
well." I would say, "My mother is still alive, she is 78' or something."
"Oh, isn't that a wonderful age. Aren't you fortunate to have your
mother." And then you ask them. It went around, like brothers and
sisters.

He went every Sunday and on the third Sunday

The authorities were waiting for me in my apartment. They were
absolutely appalled that I would go downtown by myself. I was
surprised that they were astounded at this. They said, "Oh, but we have
pickpockets in town." And I said, "Nobody's picked my pocket yet." "Oh,
but you are not safe." What they were trying to do was curtail my
activity in the middle of town. They said, "Oh you must have somebody
go with you." I said, "I've been going for three or four weeks now.
Nothing's happened. I don't expect anything to happen." "Oh, but you
must take somebody with you." "If you want to send somebody, fine."

His "doctor" students were supposed to escort him into town, but they did not
show up.

So the next Sunday, I went down. There were several of my doctor
students who were supposed to go with me. Well, they weren't there
when I got on the bus so I went anyway. They showed up about an hour
later huffing and puffing saying they had really been scolded by the
authorities for not going downtown with me. I said, "Well, the bus was
there, so I just took the bus." They stayed with me and they walked back
up town with me and they showed me a couple good places to eat. We sat
and had lunch. I bought lunch for them. That went on for about three
or four weeks. Then finally, they decided I could get along OK on my
own.

Ed was made aware on the fourth Sunday of what some of the town's people
thought of the people connected with the medical college. He, his wife and Dr.
Wong, one of his English students, were confronted by a very angry Chinese

woman.

167

Heather was off buying pencils or something by somebody, pencil
holders, mainly pencil holders. This huge crowd gathered around her,
to watch her bargain for these pencil holders. I'm standing off to the
side, kind of leaning up against the building. I've got jeans on and
tennis shoes, a hat and just a sports shirt on. This lady, you know how
the Chinese orate when they get into a classroom and they get a report;
their voice off the back wall of the building. She started this and very
soon I had a very large crowd around me and I said to Dr. Wong, "What's
the big deal?" "She wants to know who you are." I said, "Tell her I'm a
teacher up at the college." He said, "Well I did, and she doesn't believe
me." I said, "Ask her to ask the question through you." So he repeated
what she asked and I said, "lao 8111' at Long Yr' da xue." [Professor at
Long Yi University] She went like this, she paused a minute and said,
"Well, he's dressed like the rest of us." She said this in Chinese and
Wong was translating. "I guess he can't be all bad. He doesn't look like
one of those stuffed shirts." So from there on in, in town I could do no
wrong. People would wave and say, "Hello, Mr. Ed." What happened was
that I had established a contact between the college and the town,
something that had never been done.

Ed used his sparse vocabulary in Chinese to break the ice with this woman. In
doing this, Ed feels he had broken down a barrier between the town's people
and the university people. One of the people he met at the park was a clerk in
the store who was trying to learn English. He would accompany them back
from the park.

He was just struggling to learn English. He had a gimp. He was a heavy
smoker. He used to walk back with us from the park on Sundays. We
invited him back to the apartment a couple of times. He came up and sat
and talked with us for a bit. One evening he showed up. Usually we had
students in. We invited him in. He was very embarrassed because he
recognized that these were all scholars from the college. I said, "Come
in, you are a friend of mine." And so he came in and sat in a corner. He
didn't say very much. He was watching the conversation going on.
About 10:00 he left with everybody else I said,"Gee, thanks for coming.
I really enjoyed having you here and having your company." He just
looked at me.

When the year was about to end, this man arrived at their apartment along
with quite a few others who were there to say "good-bye."

At the end of the year, people from all over town were coming into the
apartments to say good-bye to us. This guy showed up on one of our last
days and before my students and some of the college leaders and
whoever else was there, he stood up and said, "All my life, I was taught
to hate Americans. I have found out that it is not right to hate all
Americans. Mr. Ed has taken me as a friend. He is a very educated man.
I don't have an education. But he does not see that as a barrier to

168

friendship. Now, no longer do I." You could hear a pin drop in the
place. He left after that. It was very touching.

Other Chinese colleagues and friends demonstrated with gifts that
suggested the value they placed on their contact with Ed. One of his Chinese
friends, a woman doctor whose husband was a colleague at the college,
arranged to get a very rare batik for Ed and his wife.

There are only three of them in the world. One is at the factory, I have
the second and the third one is in Sweden. It was a gift to the Swedish
ambassador. It's indicative of the Miao nation, or in Vietnam they're
called Hmong. I think I like it just because it's unique. It does have
some of the very traditional things on it, things such as tied up bundles
of rice stalks, ancient weapons like spears, and the headdress of the
Miao.

This woman had saved the life of the director of the factory which owned one
of these batiks. According to Ed "he repaid her by giving me this very nice
batik." Ed also treasured a scroll that was painted by a well known artist in the
province. He described the scroll as

a finger painting, ink, you know how they carry ink on the long
thumbnail and then they can make their characters and their drawings
that way. This happens to be of a lotus plant. It is dedicated to Heather
and myself, in 1987.

Ed, with little facility in Chinese language, made a tremendous effort to
communicate with this artist and his family. He was willing to endure five
hours of pointing at things and trying to learn the words because he put such
a great importance on connecting with individuals in China when he had the
opportunity.

Yeah, we get along, it's amazing. I can't speak Chinese, he can't speak
English except for a few words. (He of English and me of Chinese.) We
get along fine, we don't need anybody around. We can communicate.
It's very interesting. It's hard, but we've been left alone for like a day
at a time and when you're done, you're completely exhausted because
you've gone through this pantomime routine and the grunting and
pointing, but we enjoyed it. Heather had gone with my friend who was
a friend of his. She and her husband had taken Heather some place else
in Kunming I think to buy a dress or to get a dressmaker to make a dress
for her. I say we were left a day, it was probably five hours or
something. So the artist and his wife and I were in his apartment and
he was doing some painting. His wife cooked a meal for us and we would

169

point to things and make the word for it in English and Chinese and
we'd say, "Hen hao." But I picked up a lot of words. We went around
pointing at things and he'd give me the Chinese name and I'd give him
the English name. I've got to say that he learned more English than I
learned Chinese I think. But it was a delightful afternoon, it really was.

Nevertheless, Ed felt drained and exhausted after this experience.

It was very tiring. I got out of there and we finished dinner and we got
left alone. Heather and I were talking and I started going to sleep. She
said, "What's the matter with you?" I said, "I'm exhausted!" The culture
antenna is up the whole time, it's tough. Yeah, he hung out a lot of stuff
for us and art magazines, a lot of art magazines. Really some beautiful,
beautiful things this guy has done. But you know, he's retired now and
the last time I wrote, he was not in good health. That was when I got an
answer back, it was December.

In spite of the language barrier, Ed has kept in touch with this artist through
a friend for nine years.

I've kept in contact with him. But he doesn't speak English or read it, so
I have to write to somebody that knows him who can translate for him.
I've got a good friend of mine who lives in Kunming who was a scholar
here in '85 at U of M. So when I write him, I always enclose a note for
the artist. That's kind of neat.

Ed has done much more than just maintain contact with another of his
colleagues at the medical college, a divorced woman. He expressed great
concern about the difficulties this woman faced.

She has a nine-year-old daughter and she's backed into a job that she'll
never escape as an English teacher at the college. She'll never get a
promotion, her pay will probably stay with the cost of living. Then
she's got an elderly mother that she cares for and she lives in a place
that's awful. It's so awful that she wouldn't even invite me. She would
always meet outside on the street some place.

Divorce still being an anathema to many people, it would negatively affect her
work situation as well as her personal life. Raising a child under these
circumstances would present more serious problems.

She's 36 I think now, 35 maybe. Her chances of re—marriage are pretty
slim, even though the ratio of men to women is way out of whack.
They've got about 5% more men in China than they do women because
of the practice of abortion and child abandonment and things like that.
This gal will be productive all of her life, but she will never rise in the
hierarchy of this school at all. She was married to a guy in the school.
He's no longer there. He went back to his home town wherever that is,
nine hours away. He doesn't even make contact with her anymore. Just

170

to kind of make sure that she has some kind of cushion to work with,

I've been helping her along periodically and I want that kid of hers to

have a decent education. She knows it. The kid is only nine, it's a little

girl.
Ed has decided to help this woman and her daughter out financially once in a
while to be sure that this little girl will have a chance for a better education.

I just make sure that she gets a little cushion once in a while to be sure

that the kid can get enrolled in a decent school. I send her some money

periodically. $100 at a pop, which isn't an awful lot of money. It's 800

yuan, 830 yuan. But for her it goes a long ways because it's back in the

interior of China. They pay fees now to send them to school. The fee
level depends on the school. So if this kid wants to go to the key school
in Kunming, she's going to have to pay a higher fee than in the
neighborhood school.
Ed, like Denise and Mary, worked hard to construct his experience in such a
way that he was able to make and maintain many friendships with individuals
in China. It was these relationships which were most meaningful to him.

A few days before my last interview with Mary Ehrhardt, she had called
her host family in Beijing and had a forty minute conversation with them just
to catch up.

Just on Saturday, Marty, I called my host family in Beijing. Bob and I

sent a fax, actually he made the first phone calls and found that fax is an

international word. My family could understand that a fax was coming.

We set up a time, so that Saturday morning it was close to my hostess's

birthday, and I called and I invited my wonderful friend who taught

with me to come because her Chinese is so much better than mine. We

had probably a 40 minute conversation and caught up. This is a very

warm friendship. It's really - I know that we will meet again.
Conclusion

The connections and friendships that these six teachers made in their
host countries, at superficial as well as deeper levels, were highlights of their
experiences in Japan and China. The experiences discussed in depth for the
four teachers highlighted in this chapter are illustrative of the convictions of
all six of my informants. Paul and Bill concentrated much more on the effect
of their experience on their work in the U.S. Their narratives will be

concentrated in Chapter 7 and 8 of this study. Those who were able to establish

171
connections in classrooms as well describe a rich and meaningful experience.

Some of these teachers exerted a tremendous effort to establish relationships
which have lasted. Mary Ehrhardt's work learning Chinese paid off in closer
relationships with her family. Ed Donovan's correspondence followed up with
visits to his friends nine years after his initial experience shows his deep
commitment to these human connections. Ellen's ambivalence about her
Japanese experience seemed to fall away when she talked with and about her
own very close Japanese friend. The stories they tell about challenges --
traveling on hard seat trains or attempting to create pottery or dancing in a
festival - are told with a spirit of delight and wonder. The importance of these
connections are crucial to an understanding of the impact of this experience
upon their personal and professional lives.

The living conditions of the five teachers who spent significant periods
of time abroad and how they reacted to them represent a kind of comfort level
. that each of them seemed to need. It is helpful to understand how they
adjusted to sometimes difficult physical conditions as a "stage setting"
perspective before the "main performance" that is, making contact with
others. What seems to be the most meaningful aspect of their international
experience is their connections with individuals in the culture, their
friendships. When Mary Ehrhardt talked about the conditions of living in the
cold, the difficulties of showering and riding to school, it was not with a sense
of complaint, but her eyes sparkled with the spirit of adventure. She
expressed her concerns about the families, the women teachers and the
struggles she sees in the future for young people, especially young women
with a sense of compassion and empathy. She does not blame the middle-aged
teachers for displaying their feelings of hopelessness. She is concerned about

them as individuals who have and are experiencing difficulties, the depth of

172
which many citizens of the U.S. would have trouble understanding. Ed

Donovan also evidenced worry and concern about the future for some of his
Chinese friends. He even has made a financial investment to help the child of
a friend at least to make some difference perhaps in one child's life. This is
because the connections and friendships they have made have been the most
meaningful aspects of their international experience.

This chapter demonstrates that teacher learning occurs at the
intersection of the disposition of each teacher with the international
experience. This experience includes many variables such as living
conditions, support, small encounters and friendships which affect the
educative nature of the experience. Who each teacher is greatly affects the
learning potential of the international environment. Their reactions to being
an "outsider" in another country, the subject of Chapter 6, provides another
context for what they report they have learned abroad, their observations

about the culture in which they have lived and worked.

CHAPTER 6
CHANGED PERSPECTIVES: LEARNING IN AN
INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT

The experience of adjusting to a new environment and the experience
of connecting with others in that environment is the context in which these
teachers have learned. We have explored the background to their experience
and their learning style in Chapter 3. We have looked deeply into the content
and context of the experience and teaching abroad in Chapter 4. We have
analyzed the way they constructed their experiences within the circumstances
of their lives abroad and how they connected with people in the host culture
in Chapter 5. This chapter explores what they learned in the form of
observations about the cultures in which they lived and worked.

The teachers also discussed a deeper, more personal kind of learning, that is,
how they adjusted to being outsiders in a foreign culture.

Their descriptions of their experience in another culture will help us
subsequently understand their feelings of being changed or transformed as
teachers and as human beings in Chapters 7 and 8. We will then more directly
address the question which has driven this study since its inception: to what
extent does in-depth international study and experience affect the pedagogy of
a veteran teacher? This chapter explores first their sense of what they have

learned abroad.

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The Observations They Made: What They Learned

"You felt just like you had stepped into the painting"
(Mary Ehrhardt)

The general and specific observations of each of these teachers
provides a window into what they thought was important to know and
understand about a culture and their surprises, sometimes their assumptions
being debunked. Mary Ehrhardt was amazed to see an old woman sitting on the
curb making a broom by hand right next to a Mercedes. She was jarred by the
construction workers sleeping in bedrolls on the sidewalk next to her building
which was equipped with a satellite dish. Ed Donovan expected some poverty,
but was surprised to participate in a wedding party wherein the bride, groom
and celebrating family and friends wore no shoes. While Denise Green
described in great detail the festivals which she attended and in which she
participated, reflecting an admiration of the community spirit she witnessed,
Ellen Stacey described her frustrations with Japanese ways and a fear of
gangsters, the Yakuza. Paul Vandemere chose to talk about learning cultural
customs, such as why Japanese people paint in the eye in a Daruma doll or
what the tea ceremony signifies to Japanese people.

Paul Vandemere considered his own two-year living experience in
Japan to have been a much more in-depth and meaningful experience than
his post-college, two-years teaching in Cairo, Egypt. Although none of the
other teachers in this study lived and worked separately from their host
cultures in what Paul calls "Gaijing ghettos", there are many foreigners who
live this way in another country or who travel to see sights without
experiencing a culture more authentically. Paul's observation about the way
his experience in Japan differed from his earlier experience and his

illustration of the superficial approach to foreign experience is a window on

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to how he feels about his own experience by comparison, and how being able

to deal with outsider status necessitates that a teacher first be aware of that
status by taking the risk that these teachers took to live and work among the
people of their host countries in spite of being outsiders.

According to Paul, it would be better for people to study a culture in the
States than become a part of the "gaijing ghetto" and generalize from that
experience as an authority, especially as a teacher. From this perspective the
international experiences of a teacher could result in doing more harm than
good.

Obviously not everyone would be able to necessarily spend that time
overseas. Not every educator may have that opportunity. I think it's a
whole lot easier to get that in-depth knowledge by doing it firsthand.
Clearly it's a whole better to get, to do the in-depth study, the internet or
electronically, or in libraries and talking to others on campuses - to
avail yourself of those opportunities, than to do the gaijin g ghetto
approach that I mentioned. That always just amazed us. like I said, it's
not being critical. As long as they're not passing themselves off as
experts or forming judgments, making sweeping generalizations based
upon their limited exposure, and very inaccurate exposure probably.
Especially if they're coming back to teach in America. If they are
coming back to teach American kids about those countries based upon
that kind of experience, that is not just unfortunate. It's probably
damaging to our goal to have students have an accurate understanding
of the world.

Paul describes the experience of "a pleasant lady from New York City"
with whom he and his wife became friendly as a counter point to his own
perspectives on international experience.

At the end of her year, she said, "Oh, I probably ought to finish up my
roll of film. This is my first roll and I need to get a few more shots." She
would leave the classroom and go to an English tea parlor she had found
near where she lived, where she could order her English tea, sit down
and read her American newspaper, go back home with her bilingual
television and get the American shows, and have an American
experience. There are gaijing ghettos, gaijing is Japanese for foreigner
and in every, probably in many countries around the world where
there is a strong American presence or any foreign presence - in this
case American presence - and it's possible for someone to spend
virtually all their time within that ghetto area and really never tap into
the culture. It's as if they're not there.

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He described an American couple with whom he and his wife were paired on a

trip to China. This couple had "been there and done that," a perspective on
international experience which Paul indicated was "not for me."

They had been to the Great Wall, been there, done that. Did the Bund in
Shanghai at 6:00 a.m. doing the Tai ji, been there, done that. They did
Nepal and they did others, etc. They spend two years at the American
compound in Saudi Arabia with the oil companies. They were living
with other Americans, had American food, had American television, will
go back to America for vacations. It's as if they were not in that culture.
You will find that in a lot of places where there is a large enough
concentration of foreigners. It's a shame. I can tell you exactly where
those places are in Cairo and Tokyo. You could probably tell me where
they are in Beijing, in China. We know that there are foreigners who -
I guess I shouldn't be critical of them, it's not for me. Maybe that's all
they're comfortable in experiencing. Maybe that's the extent of how
much they really want to get into the culture. For them, that's OK.

Paul tolerates this, as long as these people do not claim to be authorities after
this experience.
It's certainly not for me and as long as they don't pass themselves off as
being knowledgeable about China or Japan. You and I know after our
time overseas, we've met tourists who've done the ubiquitous two or
three weeks in Shanghai, in Beijing, in Xian, in Suzhou, etc., and now
they know China. That's just like saying a Japanese or Chinese person
that comes to America and does New York, Washington, DC, Vegas, and
Los Angeles and they've done America. All of a sudden they form
opinions on the basis of that. That's equally ludicrous.
Bill Notebaum's one-month study tour for a different person could have
been the kind of experience which Paul warns against. Instead, the trip was a
powerful learning opportunity, as Bill became aware of how little he actually
had learned about Japanese culture because he had concentrated so
exclusively upon economics and trade relationships. Bill described his
observations of Japanese business practices involving team work and
cooperation. He was trying to understand changes he was reading about and
observing in the U.S. similar to the changes that were happening in Japan,

partly because of the work of W. Edwards Demming there.

He began to question western conceptions about Japanese organizations.

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When I traveled in Japan observing Japanese secondary education and
then watching Japanese businesses or organizations in operation where
they conducted meetings and so forth, rightly or wrongly, I came to the
conclusion that western understanding of Japanese sense of team and
cohesiveness is very misleading.

He was surprised to find that instead of viewing examples of extreme

efficiency in Japanese organizations, he found a great deal of time being spent

on ritualized functions.
Their sense of team and cohesiveness is fairly hierarchical and
authoritarian in nature and a lot of the process time that they put into
this team is not really a building of consensus nor an achieving of
understanding of consensus. It's more a constant reinforcement of the
existing cohesion that's already there. It is cultural and unique to each
organization. So they spend an inordinate amount of time or what I
would consider to be an organizational ritual in which the obvious is
said over and over and over again

One example of this was the team that was responsible for their group, two of

whom he befriended.
They'd say, "We were meeting last night." I'd say, "What do you mean
you were meeting last night? You got back into the hotel at 10:00, when
did you have a meeting?" "Oh no, at 11:30 we were in so and so's room
and we worked on the agenda for today until 2:30 in the morning."

Bill had learned that there were many misconceptions among Americans about
the economic system in Japan, misconceptions which Bill wanted to challenge.
Ed Donovan, like Bill Notebaum, was interested in debunking some
stereotypes which his Chinese students had about Americans: for example, that
there was little sense of values like honesty and integrity in the U.S. Ed sends
one of his Chinese colleagues who teaches teachers English in China materials

such as Reader's Digest. which display a sense of values.

I always send him these value things to show him that American
teachers also must have values. Chinese are very skeptical about
America as a nation having a value system that's worthwhile. So if I
can teach the teachers, if I can get something like that, he will translate
or have his students translate. They know that the value system is here
for things like honesty and different kinds of proprieties.

He would respond to people like travel agents who would say: "'Oh, in America

everybody would steal that.‘ I'd say, 'Not exactly. You have to understand that

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I still have this wallet. Even though I left it someplace [in the U.S.] and forgot
about it actually for a couple of days.'" When Ed returned to the store near his
hometown in the U.S., "somebody had picked it up and set it aside and said
'When this guy comes in, give it back to him."'

While Ed and Bill were working to dispel misleading stereotypical ideas
on both sides of the Pacific Ocean, Ellen Stacey's observations related to her
difficulties coping in a society very different from her own. Ellen's learning
may be viewed through the lens of her struggle to adapt to different mores,
procedures, and her fears. Ellen, in describing her experiences, described a
word she heard fairly often in Japan, "muzu kashi" meaning "difficult." She
described it this way:

That is their way of saying it is too difficult for you to understand what's

happening. Because you wouldn't understand it, you're a foreigner.

You don't understand Japanese minds. If I asked for things and it was

something I asked on my own, muzu kashi disho, "too difficult."

She did not understand this until the third year of her experience. This word
was used under very frustrating circumstances for Ellen.

I had not been invited to any one's home other than Sumi's. If I invited

people to my home, dinner could not be until after 9:30. I'll give you a

perfect example of what happened to me my third year. I invited ten

people to my home for dinner. When I got this apartment, it came with

a microwave, it's called a dinshi rangi, it's an oven-microwave. You can

cook and you can bake in it and it's a microwave also. I put my 25 pound

turkey that cost me almost $200 into this machine and it died. It broke. I

got these people coming and it's now 3:00. They're coming at 9:00. That

gives me six hours. I called up my boss and I said, "I need a dinshi
rangi. The one that's in the building is busted and it's not going to
work. I need one today. Can I go out and will you buy it for me?"
She pointed to a microwave on her kitchen counter saying, "There's a dinshi
ran gi." She felt she had had no option but to rush out that day and spend
$800.00 on a new microwave which does not work here in the U.S.

Ellen had this problem in her own words "because I didn't follow

procedure." A similar experience helped make her more aware of why she was

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frustrated by this kind of experience in Japan. Having destroyed the tire on

her car, she called for help.

I was driving my car and the whole tire - I went over a road division or
whatever they call it - and I busted the whole tire, damaged the rim and
everything. I can't speak any Japanese at this time. I'm just like
freaked out, I'm so upset. All I have is the telephone number for my
boss at Haksho. So I called him up and I say, "I'm having problems." He
goes, "Where are you?" I said, "I have no idea. I'm in the middle of a
street, I have a flat tire, there's a pachinko parlor in there." He said,
"Find someone, flag them down, and ask them to come speak to me on the
phone." 80 I go down the street and I see this man and I say, "Tes kota,
tes kota." So he comes over, he's helping me. I give him the phone.
Now my boss knows where I am. In the mean time, I'm feeling really
guilty because I know it was my own negligence that busted this tire,
right? So I go to the gas station and tell them to fix it. I need the tire
fixed. So he fixes the tire and it's costing me about $300 to fix this tire
because I need a rim and a tire. By this time, my boss is here. So I said
to my boss, "I have to go to the bank to get $300. Please come with me."
So he walks me to the bank, teaches me how to use the ATM machine. I
get $300, I go back and pay this guy $300. I walk away, I got a tire fixed,
no problem.

Ellen was surprised then when her boss handed her an envelope full of cash.

As soon as the tire is in my possession, I paid the bill, I turned to him
and he hands me an envelope. In this envelope is $2,000. I said, "What's
this for?" [He said] "this is $2,000 for your airplane ticket." I said,
"Well why didn't you give it to me before I went to the bank?" You know
what I'm saying? He's going to give me this money, I'm going to pay for
this tire. So two weeks later, I get $300. I said, "Why are you giving me
$300?" "To pay for the tire." I said, "What do you mean pay for the tire?
I already paid for the tire." They said, "But that's Toyota's car. Next time
you have a problem with your car, call me. I have to do all the
negotiating and it's a company that this Yaksho sends us to fix the tire."
I was too American, too westernized. I had to take care of the matter
right away.

Ellen acknowledged that her own "American" proclivities bumped up against
the Japanese way of handling problems. The Japanese had wanted to take care
of her in their own way, but she admitted: "I didn't allow them." Probably the
most poignant example of Ellen's "American" impatience with the Japanese
bureaucratic way of doing things was the experience she had trying to gain
permission to leave Japan a few days earlier, after her teaching

responsibilities were over, to be with her dying sister.

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While Ellen considered some cultural differences extremely frustrating,

Denise focused on fitting in to the culture gracefully and was far less
judgmental than Ellen in her observations about these differences. Bill
Notebaum was most interested in understanding about Japan in his area of
inquiry and debunking stereotypes and misinformation about Japan. Ellen did
not discuss these kinds of difficult experiences on her first seven-month
experience in Japan. Had Denise or Bill lived there for longer than their
respective seven-months and one-month experiences, the emphasis in their
observations might have been very different.

Within the context of the tension and frustration of Ellen's experience
in Japan is one of the main observations she made about Japanese culture. Her
concerns centered upon the Yakuza, Japanese gangsters.

The Yakuza are the Mafia. I would go to a gas station every day, or once

every couple days to get a tank full of gas because I had a car. One day,

they wouldn't wait on me, no one came out. I waited and waited and

waited and no one came out. I looked over in the corner and there was a

black Yakuza automobile. I looked inside and there were the Yakuza

inside.
She learned from a foreign friend who worked for Toyota about how the
company oriented their foreign employees about the Yakuza. "They gave him
a charge card, a telephone card and you put this telephone card if you're
harassed by the Yakuza, you put it into the phone. It will automatically tell
Toyota where you were located and they would come. Toyota personnel would
come to your rescue." Within this discussion about the Yakuza in Japan, Ellen
described her feelings of fear when she happened upon a struggle between a
man and a woman in the post office.

I was in a post office, waiting to get some stamps, and there was this man

arguing with - he wasn't saying anything, his girl friend was trying to

find out, because the post office and the bank are one and the same, she
was looking for money in her accounts. She didn't have any money. He

became very belligerent and started beating her up in this post office. I

had walked from the school to the post office so I didn't have a car. He
looked at me and he became real nasty in his gestures and everything

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toward me and he grabbed his girl friend by the hair and he pulled her

out of the post office. When he went out into his car, he took his car and

just smashed into the car that was behind him and then took off.
The people in the post office were afraid the damaged car was hers. "I said,
'No, I walked.‘ They didn't call the police. And that was the end of the
situation." Ellen also described an American friend who had been attacked

by some young hoodlums. He had 18 stitches in his head from a chair

that was and he is American He was in the hospital for almost 2

weeks. He had a concussion. The school system didn't know how to

handle it because they would have lost face with the exchange program.

They would have lost face among themselves because no one was there

to protect these foreigners that were representing another country. He

said it was difficult. It was a very difficult time for him.

These examples of Ellen's are a stark contrast from her positive
observations about Japanese schools and the description of her "bread on
butter" relationship with Sumi. They also provide a great contrast with the
observations of Bill, Paul, and Denise. Ellen's general observations about
Japan are overwhelmingly negative, except that she compared the sheltered
atmosphere she felt in many Japanese schools to be similar to the atmosphere
she experienced in Jesuit Catholic Schools. "I felt very comfortable in the
Japanese school system." It appears that the only arena where Ellen seemed to
feel secure and experience some pleasure during her three-year experience
in Japan was in the schools and with her one Japanese friend.

Part of her concern for safety was fueled by her assumptions about
Japanese society as being basically non-violent and relatively crime free.

In Japan, I had this false confidence, false sense of safety. Because

everything you read in the newspaper said it's the safest country in the

world. So when I saw the anger of these young kids, and I saw the -
what do you call it when you abuse the kids - it was like where did this
come from? This isn't really supposed to be here.

When her nieces visited Ellen in Japan, she observed that they too had

accepted these assumptions and were surprised by the reality of their

experiences, just as she had been.

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They again had the same false sense of security as I did. We went to the
airport and I went to say good-bye to them and while we were waiting in
line to get into the airport, there was this man literally kung—fuing this
other man in front of our car. My nieces went, "Wow, is this TV? Are
there cameras?" It was so removed from what we were led to believe.

In our interviews, Ellen, a U.S. teacher in what is considered a dangerous area
of the inner city in Milwaukee, seemed obsessed by violence and crime in
Japan. Ellen's expression of her learning in these observations demonstrates
the power of assumptions and fears to affect observations and thus learning.
Paul Vandemere, who lived in Japan two years, does not mention Yakuza,
Japanese gangsters. Ellen demonstrates how learning, which is based upon
assumptions or fears, can lack balance and evolve into the Deweyan
conception of miseducative experience.

Also, in contrast to Ellen's perspective, Denise emphasized the sense of
belonging to a community. She felt that American kids "are missing out on
this" because of the fun, the community spirit, and the way "it keeps history
alive." She describes how the children take part in Japanese festivals.

Koni is built around a castle that was built around 300 years. Then
elementary school children, if they're in their elementary school's
marching band, will march in a parade playing their instruments in
their school uniforms. Also, they will make their own models of the
castle that the city's built around. They will carry them in a traditional
style where the model is on a long pole and kids each side of each pole
will carry them on their shoulder. Each group will wear the same happi
coat. It's just a wonderful festival. I remember the year that I was
there, it rained but the parade went right on including the paper
reproductions of the castles that were going by. I took a lot of pictures
which really came out quite well Then at castle festival, they had
children dressed up from Samarai, those eras in Japanese history. The
members of the nobility and the lower classes to get the period of
Japanese history. Some of them were walking, some of them were on
horseback but in full costume of that era. That was appropriate. I'm
sure for the children, it was quite exciting to be picked to be one of
those costume people or to have your castle replica be one that was in
the parade or to be playing an instrument in a marching band. I mean
the whole town, the whole city turned out for it. It was a day when they
didn't have school for that festival.

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Denise enjoyed the way that children in Japan wore uniforms, comparing this
to the group identification and expectations entailed in wearing happi coats
during festivals.

The attire that goes along with it. You play a certain role and you dress

for that role. When you go to school, you wear a uniform in the public

schools, secondary level. Of course you're expected to behave in a

certain way, the hairstyles are regulated, along with the shoes you can

wear and the socks, etc. your group is recognized by what's written on
your happi coat. You had a certain role to play in the festival, you play
it. Oh, that's the group from such and such, or that's the group from the

Board of Education, or that's the group from GM, or that's the group

from Toyota or something like that, or whatever business was in the

group in that parade or that festival. You'd be able to identify them.

Ellen was generally negative in her observations of Japanese society
while Denise and Paul were positive. Mary Ehrhardt and Ed Donovan both
evidenced generally a positive, non-judgmentallearning stance in China.
They coincidentally chose some very similar issues to talk about in their
observations about their experiences in China. They both were surprised at
the level of poverty they witnessed in the country. They were concerned
about and commented upon gender inequities, particularly the burdens which
many women faced. They both greatly admired Chinese artistic and cultural
traditions including brush painting, calligraphy, wushu, and tai ji juan,
Chinese martial arts. They also commented upon the traditions of respect for
education and age which they observed in China.

While Ed was more an observer of the arts, Mary learned by plunging
into her experiences, not content to just watch a Chinese master painter paint
peach blossoms, but to try it herself.

Another wonderful part of the exchange of being able to be a student

and after our full morning of teaching, we took several classes in the

afternoon, teachers and students together. The school provided for us a

class in wu shu/tai ji, a class in Chinese history taught in Chinese,

Chinese which met twice a week, calligraphy, embroidery, and
painting.

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She carved her own "chop" (a seal with your name inscribed in characters on

the bottom), finding it difficult to sand it down to make it even. She worked by
imitating her master teacher to construct peach blossoms. She reveled in her
"chance to be a student again" in China. These efforts made her feel that "this
experience just got richer and richer, day by day, overwhelmingly rich."

Mary's description of learning brush painting allowed her to
experience Huangshan, the yellow mountains, as if she were "stepping into a
painting."

Through the classes that I took in China, I really learned a tremendous
amount about brush painting and calligraphy and even embroidery so
that now my appreciation for especially Chinese painting is much
greater. I really learned how the job of a novice is to emulate the
master and my experience was making many attempts and only getting
a "keyi "'- being OK, possibly OK - but my bamboo rarely measured up to
the teacher's bamboo. I understand now that there is an essence and
that the job of the Chinese painter is to paint it as lifelike as possible,
but there is a very prescribed way with only three strokes or that each
peach branch, plum branch can only have blossoms that come with one
petal, three petals or five petals. So, in a way, it's a bit formulaic but on
the other hand, this is the way that the master artists saw it so this is the
way one has to copy, one has to emulate the master.

When Mary traveled to Huangshan, the yellow mountains, a place which had
served as the setting for many famous landscape painters, she was
overwhelmed by her awareness of the possibilities of art or the feeling that
she was in that setting, a part of that art.

Going to Huangshan, climbing Huangshan, one of the nine sacred
mountains where there are the elements of - the yellow mountain -
elements of clouds and rock and pine trees and water are all the
elements in Chinese landscape painting. That was just a remarkable
experience because you felt like you had just stepped into the painting.
Then you can really see why these are the things that the landscape
painter paints. They have to have each of those elements and so when
you attempt a landscape painting, you paint rocks as the master did, but
the master actually saw the mountain. I certainly now can show my
feeble attempts, but also can explain to my children when they're brush
painting that our way is to be impressive and to use our imaginations
and to create, that's not the Chinese way. The Chinese way is to emulate
the ideal, to emulate the master. So perhaps that's the beginning of
their appreciation for Chinese painting.

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Ed Donovan talked enthusiastically about paintings and calligraphy

scrolls that his artist friend had given him. This was the friend with whom Ed
had struggled to communicate for five hours one afternoon in China.

That lotus blossom, that's one that he's given us. We've got several
calligraphies of his and a couple of them that I like very, very much we
gave away. Even my kids or my in-laws like the stuff and so we just
gave it to them. They display it, so it's kind of neat when I walk into
their houses and see it. I've got a very traditional set of paintings that
my daughter just had to have. She took them and one's of spring,
winter, fall, and summer. Which is a very traditional kind of these for
artists to do. Of course, it's got the traditional things in it like the
mountain and the water and the trees and the people are about the size
of - they're just minute, they're so small. It's a very Daoist type of
school. The clouds, that was the other thing. Clouds and mountains and
water and trees. You've got all of that and you've got everything.

Declaring that he loved Chinese art, Ed described how

I've watched this guy paint with a brush and with his fingernail. I've
watched several artists do that sort of thing. I've got another artist
friend of mine from Kunming who is a more modern artist. I suppose
we'd call him a commercial artist. But now he wants to get into more
traditional painting because there's more status to it. You've listened to
all of this kind of stuff and some of the old stuff is still there. They can't
get rid of it.

Mary and Ed learned by observing Chinese artists, while Mary took her
learning one step further by participating in creating Chinese art forms.
While they appreciated and learned from the artistic tradition in China, Mary
and Ed were not prepared to see the kind of poverty that they observed there.
Mary saw China as a land of tremendous, even "jarring" contrasts.

Even though I had taught about China, I was not prepared for what it

means to be a developing country, to be living in a developing country.

It was much poorer than I ever expected. The juxtaposition of things

that represented poverty, but not even poverty as much as I knew it,

just very basic living, that juxtaposed with what is now evidence of
economic ascendancy like cellular phones and luxury cars, always made

me do a double take. It was very jarring to try to make sense of it. I

guess the other thing about being in a developing country was that I

really had a hard time kind of orienting myself to a time period.
She bought a broom at a street market near her neighborhood which
symbolized the simplicity of life in China, the lack of space for storage and

centuries of tradition.

186

The one thing that I decided to bring back that was a symbol of my
experience in China was this broom that I bought just on a street market
in my neighborhood. It's just made out of grass and this is what my
hostess used to sweep the floors in their house. But it's kind of primitive
and it's the kind of broom that I think has probably been used for
centuries and centuries of time. In China, as a matter of fact in Suzhou,
I actually saw a lady gathering the twigs and then making the broom.
The woman making the broom was squatting on the sidewalk beside a
Mercedes. But for me this is truly a symbol of my daily life in China.
This is an implement that was used every day and yet it's probably been
used every day in China for a thousand years. Street sweepers, you
might remember, used taller brooms but this is the domestic broom. It
takes up less space. There were no closets in my apartment and this
could nicely fit in a little corner.

Ed Donovan connected his earlier study of anthropology with what he
observed in China, for example, what he witnessed as a Chinese way of walking
and living on the street. He, like Mary and Denise, often viewed Chinese
tradition and living practices from a comparative American standpoint.

Even the whole idea of privacy, anthropologically. Americans consider
privacy to be when they can get away from everybody else and to be
shut off. The Chinese consider as privacy to be what they keep in their
heads without revealing to anybody else. So you'll see Chinese walking
down the street, they don't even see you. They're in a private world of
their own. They're avoiding, it's kind of a second instinct instead of a
conscious effort. Even in Shanghai, you'll find people out on the streets
with a hose running into a basin and they're washing their hair. Not
dressed for what we would consider to be public viewing. And yet,
they're out there washing their hair just oblivious to everything going
on around them.

Mary Ehrhardt, too, was struck by the small living spaces. She looked
for a stool to bring back because it also reminds her of how much of Chinese
life happens on the street.

I thought this was going to be another momento of what I saw every day
as I rode my bike back and forth to school, was a stool, a tiny stool.
Because so much of life takes place in the streets. I suppose because
most Chinese families live in one or two rooms, they do a great deal of
every day living right out in an alley. The little stool is used if you are
shelling peas or making dumplings or playing a game of chess that's
going to take place over time, or visiting with your neighbor, or
knitting. All of those kinds of things went on right in the alley and
they used these charming little chairs or little stools. But, I didn't find
one to bring home with me. I did have photographs, and that's one of
the photographs that I right away enlarged. It's just like China to me,
China in 1995.

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The use of one wok and chopsticks for cooking and serving food made such

sense to her when she lived and experienced the small space, even in a
luxurious by Beijing standards, four room apartment.

So I think I was really struck by the simplicity of living when you live
in one, two or four rooms as I did. It's very understandable to see why
you use one bowl and one pair of chopsticks and the cooking is very
efficient. Perhaps a pot of rice and the wok, which is used to make
several other dishes. My family shopped almost every day, even though
they had a refrigerator. They did maybe a little more extensive
shopping early Sunday morning market or later in the day on Sunday.

I really, on a weekly basis, I did my own hand laundry in a basin with
cold water and even though my family also had a little small washing
machine, just the details of every day life were simple.

Ed and Mary both reflect their sense of empathy and concern for the
people in China who must cope with tremendous difficulties in comparison to
middle class American social and economic conditions. Ed, during his 1995
experience in China on his way to a monastery, observed poverty which
surprised him. Although the area of China where he and Heather had lived
for a year was quite poor, the poverty in this village shocked him.

We went through absolutely the poorest village I've ever seen in my
life. I don't think any kid under 15 was wearing shoes. Kids were pretty
raggedy This was at a wedding. It looked like people who came out of
the Cultural Revolution. That's how poorly they were dressed. The kids
in the wedding party, there were three girls and three guys. The three
guys had suitcoats on, but they were old and shiny. The girls had nice
clothes and they carried pretty flowers, no shoes. They showed me their
school. It's a brand new school. They were very proud of it. Two rooms;
two teachers who had graduated from high school. Those were the two
teachers. They had six grades in those two rooms and those teachers had
to contend with that. Every kid there was just a ragamuffin, a dirty
little kid.

The mayor and townspeople graciously welcomed Ed and his Chinese
colleagues in the midst of this wedding celebration.

The mayor of the town greeted us. He was preparing the wedding feast.
He was the cook for the town every time they had any kind of a
celebration. He wore a red t-shirt and brown shiny trousers and open
sandals, no socks. He offered us tea. The tea came in - one was a cup,
one was a short thick glass, and one was a pottery container. Those
were our three things of tea. He didn't have two things that matched or
two cups that matched in the village. The wedding was in the second of
three days. This was the singing day. This was the day when the

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storytellers get up and tell the stories that go on and on for 24 hours.
The first day had been the dancing day. I guess everybody was pretty
ragged at the end of that day that they had all danced. The third day,
which the mayor was preparing for, was the feast day. That would be
the final day of the wedding. It's in an open area restaurant with rough
wooden benches and tables. It's cobbled, cobblestone, but very uneven.

According to Ed, this experience had a "profound impact" upon him. "I've
never seen people that poor. Yet, they seemed to be fairly happy. Except the
mayor said, 'We cannot keep young people in the town. They all went to the
city.'" Ed explained what he meant by "happy."

They were happy in terms of not worrying about where the next meal
was coming from. They were happy in terms of the relationships with
each other. From what we could see, I don't think that the young people
are happy with that plight in life. I think that they want something
better. There was one black and white TV in the town. That was it. That
was in the restaurant area. Everybody would go there to watch TV. The
picture was terrible.

Ed was later concerned about how much this generous hospitality might be
costing the Chinese, but at the time he had been thinking about answering
their questions.

They extend all of their hospitality to you. I'm sure that we didn't break
them and a glass of tea isn't going to break them. But the fact is that we
drew a lot of people away from other kinds of things for the 45 minutes
or an hour that we sat and talked with this village mayor. It did [bother
me] afterwards. I realized what had happened. I didn't realize it at the
time because questions were coming back and forth and you're
concentrating on the kinds of responses that you think you ought to
give They wanted to know about America, they wanted to know about
what I did, and how may students were in my classes. Just general kinds
of things. I was an information giver.

They also wanted to know what Ed thought of their village.
Of course you know I said, "Oh, it's picturesque." What am I going to
say? It's the poorest village I've ever seen in China? That I enjoyed the
storytelling even though I didn't understand the Chinese. But I
understood what the process was and what was going on. And the
reaction of the crowd and things like that.

At the monastery he took pictures from the roof to capture the incredible

scenery. "All you could see is a range of mountains running away from each

other from this particular monastery, like the spokes off of a hub. Just

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incredible!" There he learned that the people in the monastery walked two
kilometers each day to the wall for water. "They'd come all the way down the
mountain, walk the two kilometers to the well, get two buckets, and walk back
up. One of the ladies was 76 years old and still doing that."

Besides being surprised by the poverty, Ed and Mary also learned a great
deal about gender issues in China. Ed flatly stated that women were viewed as
basically inferior in China, while Mary focused on the dilemma that talented,
young women faced there. According to Ed, even though:

the basic assumption being that the law says that women are equal in

China, the culture still says that women have to cook and take care of

kids. Are there strong women in China? Oh yes. Are there wimpy

husbands? Oh yes. But by and large the culture looks at women as
inferior.
This is one reason Ed had insisted on changing the seating arrangement in his
classroom.

Mary's concern for the daughter in her host family's household,
reflects the personal nature of her growing knowledge about the pressures on
many Chinese young women in this generation.

She is 21, graduating from college, making important choices for

herself. Because on the one hand her parents wanted her to go abroad

to experience the world beyond China, but on the other hand she is the
only child. The one child, she at age 21, pays a great indebtedness to her
parents. They have cared for her from her infancy, and she now will
step into the role of caring for them. It's time for her to have a boy
friend, a serious boy friend and it's time for her to get married. Even
though, she prepared to have a career and she would like to further her
education, perhaps abroad, but these expectations are so much a part of
her life that it's very hard for her to go against them.
Mary considers this situation as representative of: "a real dilemma for women
in that culture. This is a bright young woman who has facility with English
and the parents can give her opportunities, but the traditional values and
roles will probably prevent her from realizing her potential in many ways."

Mary treasures a collage given her by her host daughter's IS-year-old cousin,

"who dreams of being a fashion designer." This girl lives with her family in

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two rooms and a detached "tiny and dirty" kitchen, shared by several families.

"The several times that I visited, I had to use the public bathroom on the street
which was preferable to whatever they used in their living quarters." Mary
felt that this young girl "was a very good artist. In fact she goes to a high
school that emphasizes the art after school and she dreams like many Chinese
young people, of using her talent to get ahead, to become successful and to
break out."

In addition to her concern about gender issues, Mary empathized with
the plight of middle-aged English teachers whose lives had been affected by
the excesses of the Cultural Revolution, 1966-1976, when all schools were
closed and they did not receive what they considered to be adequate
preparation and training as teachers. On their field trips with the English
teachers, several of them opened up to Mary and her colleague about their
frustrations and disappointments. To Mary this was a chance for these
teachers to "tell us their own stories." They talked freely of the Cultural
Revolution experience, how dramatically it changed their lives, how one
married the wrong man because of the Cultural Revolution pressures and went
without love as a result. One was accepted but was prevented entry at Bei Da
[Beijing University] because of her father's "political background." Mary
witnessed a "kind of hopelessness" in these teachers, who were feeling "I'm
forty something and change may not happen in my lifetime." They expressed
great "worry about the immediate future." Even though they believe "the
people will not allow a return to the Cultural Revolution," they fear what kind
of leadership is going to emerge once Deng Xiao ping, China's paramount
leader, is dead.

Mary Ehrhardt and Ed Donovan demonstrate a depth of learning which

translates into empathy and concern. Their learning has gone far beyond

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their own assumptions, needs, wants, and desires to a genuine empathy for the

struggles of others. Their knowledge also goes beyond cultural differences to
affirm a common humanity and represents the kind of concern for human
dignity which John Dewey promotes in his work (1900, 1902, 1904, 1916, 1938).

The observations that all of these teachers emphasized in these
interviews had to do with assumptions they and others had held before the
experience and what they felt was most important to report about the culture.
Underlying this emphasis was a great curiosity about how people in Japan and
China lived their lives and what was different about these cultures that they
had not understood before the experience. Only Ellen Stacey, with the longest
tenure living abroad, seemed to feel threatened and alienated by Japanese
culture. The loneliness she expresses poignantly describes feelings the others
felt to varying degrees about being foreign, being what the Chinese call
"waiguo ren," an outside country person.

The range of these observations include negative and positive extremes.
We can learn a great deal from them within the context of what we already
know about each teacher. Mary, Ed, and Denise seem to be especially elated
about the opportunity to learn they have experienced abroad. This may have
been the result of better preparation for their experience, the context of the
experience, and their own ability to be flexible when difficulties arose. Stories
abound about the frustrations of travelers in China; for example, the work of
Paul Theroux (1988), Mark Salzman (1986), Bill Holm (1990), and Alan
Samagalski and Michael Buckley (1984), the two Australian explorers who
made a travel book, China: A Travel Survival Kit. into a hilarious excursion in
itself.

It surprised me that the case in this study of the most frustrating and

negative experiences comes from the narrative of a teacher who lived in

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Japan, not China. Ellen's characterizations of Japan within the framework of

rigid bureaucracy and violent crime may be understood as an outgrowth of
her own inability to flexibly interact with others in a different system. Ellen
offers a very different perspective on living and working in Japanese culture
than Denise or Paul Vandemere, who mainly talked about how his experience
in Japan positively affected his teaching and life here in the U.S. Ellen's
perspective should not be discounted, but it should be understood in
conjunction with other perspectives and her own background and
assumptions about Japan. The significance of the great variety of
observations in this study is that how each teacher prepares for and manages
the culture shock, the being an "other" in a foreign country, is very
important. The quantity and quality of time spent in another culture is also
important. The way each teacher reacted to the stress of living in another
culture is key to understanding how they learned or failed to learn from this

experience.

Being Strangers in a Strange Land

"There goes the United States." (Ed and Heather Donovan)

How the five people who had more extensive experience felt about this
strangeness is reflected in Ed Donovan's expression about "cultural antennae"
becoming overloaded, causing the human organism to shut down for a while
and regroup in this new and alien environment. Even though they felt they
had been well prepared by the program leaders, they were not emotionally
prepared for being on display so much of the time. When Denise Green talks
about not showing your negative emotions, she expresses the pressure
associated with representing the U.S. on an exchange program with Japan,
that in a sense she bears the weight of representing a group, even though she

is only one individual. Heather Donovan felt this sense of cultural

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responsibility especially keenly because there was hardly any time when she

and Ed were not a center of attraction whether in their teaching, shopping,
visiting sights, entertaining students in their home, or just walking down the
street. It seemed that there was no place to hide, be alone, be unobtrusive as a
foreigner for a year in an area of China which had been home to few
foreigners before 1986. Ed explains:

We felt like we were the show piece in town. All the time. We
represented the United States and people looked at us and said, "There
goes the United States."

Since that time, Ed has noticed that many people, even his brother
living in Toronto or his student from Great Britain, go through a sort of
cultural trauma when faced with living in a different society for a significant
period of time.

I talk about my brother going to Toronto for two years and coming down
with culture trauma. They can't believe it. They speak English and all
that sort of thing. But different signals, different body language,
different words. You have to be paying attention so you don't foul up. It
put him in bed for a week. He couldn't get up. His antenna, everything
just shut down. Some people get it very, very badly and it doesn't take
much. Can you imagine going and living just in Detroit, where the
culture is different than it is in the suburbs. If you have to put up with
that stress for a long period of time, pretty soon your antenna shuts
down. It can't hold it.

How people handle this cultural trauma varies, but he experienced it with
Heather in China that first year.

One of the things that happens is that you come out and you don't want
to face anything. You don't want to look at people, you don't want to talk
to them for a good two weeks. It happened to Heather. She walked along
looking at the street for two weeks, three weeks after that. She shut
down for just three days. I had to bring her meals to her and prop her
up and feed her. It was just like she was a rag. She couldn't even get out
of bed to go to the bathroom. It just - everything shut down. I can talk
about it a little bit and say this is one of the things that you ought to be
aware of. It can happen to you, don't panic because of it. It's normal.

Gradually, Heather got better after curtailing their activities and slowly re-

entered their social life in China.

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We shut down a lot of our evening visits. In fact for two weeks, we

didn't have anybody. The third week we had one or two people in that

she could tolerate pretty easily. Lou Wei was one of them that managed

to help a little bit. And a couple of other gals. She wasn't threatened.
Mary Ehrhardt found it tiring to be constantly stared at in Beijing as well. "I
think you get very tired of being stared at and it is part of the fatigue that you
feel is that you feel that you're on stage and there are lots of curious looks, lots
of attempts to engage you in conversation. You do feel like you are the
goldfish in the bowl."

The conditions for these teachers in Japan and China were radically
different, as the countries themselves are very different. It is important that
we not confuse the two. The stresses of being an "other" in a foreign country
can occur anywhere. In Japan, there is less of a propensity for people to stare
at foreigners than occurs in China. There is a great deal more wealth for
ordinary people in Japan which has allowed many of them to travel abroad.
China is still emerging from enforced isolation of the Cultural Revolution
period and before. In some areas of China, especially the economically
booming south, the people are more used to seeing foreign travelers and
business people. But few Chinese see a foreigner going to work on her bicycle
in February. Kunming is not an area of China where many westerners have
lived and worked. Great isolation and poverty, which Ed Donovan describes,
exists there. Modern Japan is a very different place, an economic power
house, with highly educated people, many of whom have studied western art
and literature in greater detail than some of our own citizens. The feelings of
being a stranger then occur within extremely different contexts among these
teachers.

Ellen Stacey felt emotionally drained from her experience in Japan,

especially after the third year. This fatigue was not caused by being stared at

195
constantly but by how she felt she had been used, a sentiment which Denise

Green also expressed, although not as vehemently as Ellen.

By the third year, I was mentally drained and this is the part I do not
like about the Japanese. They milk your brain. They milk it for
whatever they can get. That's why it was so enticing for these young
people. They don't take people over 35 They'll take new graduates and
they drain their brain. They'll say, "We have a million dollar project we
are working on." They'll pick their brains for all that four year
university where their memory is good and they'll just pick it, pick it,
pick it, pick it, till there's nothing left.

She described her first day in Japan as a time when she was very tired and

wanted to be left alone.

I remember the first day I had gotten to Japan, I didn't know anybody, I
was totally exhausted. It was the first day they left me alone so I could
get my life together. I had unpacked all my luggage and I was just
laying in bed and had finally gotten to fall asleep where I felt like I was
getting good sleep. I get this knock on the door and there's this
Japanese woman saying, "Hi. I'd like to take you to this place, this place,
this place, and let's go here, let's go here. Pack up your things and let's
go now." I said, "I'm very tired, I'd like to sleep right now." She never
came back I would only be invited to certain things if they could use
me in a certain capacity.

The British evidenced a sense of reserve which Ellen felt Americans would be

advised to emulate.

The British refused to share any information with the Japanese. The
Americans, "Oh, sure, what else do you want to know?" But that's why I
think the Japanese loved the Americans. You see, you are not
considered Japanese if you leave the country. So they can save a lot of
money, it was cheaper for them to bring over graduates from the
university than it was to send their guys over to America.

Like Ellen Stacey, Denise Green wondered whether she was being
invited to people's homes because of friendship or because she was wanted for
her English skills.

Because we were the model English speakers so therefore people would
come over and say, "I'd like to practice my English" or "will you come to
dinner at my house so we can practice our English?" So in that sense, I
mean that was our purpose for being there, but in that sense sometimes
I wondered are they doing it because she's a person or because I can
spout out some of the English gems of wisdom to their children to say at
the dinner table.

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Denise Green, while not evidencing as much bitterness or cynicism about

Japan as Ellen, also reflected upon the pressures she felt. She considered it her
responsibility to try to have empathy for their feelings of people in any
culture in which she considered herself a guest. She attached great
importance to:

Learning to read people from other cultures, trying to figure out what
they are thinking but not saying. Dealing with their accepted
etiquettes. Trying not to let it show on your face, when what's put in
front of you [to eat] and you don't know what it is. If you knew what it
was, how do you eat it? If you do know how to eat it, do you really want
to? And once you do and it tastes awful, you can't spit it out. You know
you just must swallow it. Just trying to deal with that and not to insult
people. You know they had gone through a lot of trouble.

She describes how she handled not slurping soup when she was invited to a
Japanese home for dinner shortly before she was to return home.

I was very comfortable being in people's homes and knowing the
different kind of etiquette that they had. In fact when they served the
soup, they looked at me funny because I wasn't slurping it. I was going
to be going home and I understood the Japanese style of eating and I had
enjoyed it but, as soon as I got home and if I slurped some soup, it would
be considered just horrible bad manners and I had to break the habit.
So I said for the last two weeks I was there, I was going to try not to
slurp my soup because of what they thought if I slurped it. Also, I said
in America it's bad manners to pick up your bowl and put it to your
mouth. So I decided I'll still pick it up in Japan, but I'll not slurp it
anymore in Japan just to help me out. So they understood and laughed
at me when I did it.

In spite of her warm feelings about these sorts of interchanges, Denise had no
illusions about being a stranger in a strange land, an outsider.

I always felt like a stranger because of the generations of foreigners
who are still not considered Japanese. But they even look the part
physically. I knew that I was never going to plan to be as comfortable
as I could be other places simply because I would always be looked upon
as a gaijing, a foreigner. First of all, there was the physical aspect that
I didn't even look Asian. At least if you looked Asian, like the Asian
people look near Japan and in Japan, then it's kind of assumed you
belong unless you open up your mouth and blow it. Because they claim
that they can tell if someone is not Japanese yet they've lived in the
country a long time and they look Japanese and they speak it fluently,
they find that there is a difference.

197
She describes a time when the exchange teachers in her program were invited
to an English-speaking society at a university in Kyoto. The groups asked each
other questions, one of Which "we had been wondering about" concerning
how' they would treat a second or third generation person of another cultural
background, such as Chinese, who spoke Japanese fluently,
"Would you have problems being friends with them?" We knew what
they were going to say because we'd asked other people. There was a
long silence. They said, "They are different. They may look like us, but
they are different. There is something about them that won't be
Japanese and we'll always be able to tell." So if that's the way they feel
about people that look like them physically, then for those of us who
don't, obviously we'll always be looked at as an outsider.
A complication of her status as an outsider could have been the fact that she is
an African-American outsider. It was not her African-American ethnicity,
however, but her status as a foreigner which she felt put her in this outsider
role.
Everywhere I went, I knew that it was obvious that I was a foreigner.
First, because looking at me there was no way they could mistake me for
otherwise. I was always aware of that. I didn't always feel like a
foreigner. I knew I was always looked upon as an outsider.
The strain on her "cultural antennae" tired her at times similar to Mary
Ehrhardt and especially, Heather Donovan. Denise elaborated:
Sometimes it bothered me because 24 hours a day you didn't always want
to feel like you were on display. When you're not working and you have
some time off and you go to work Monday morning and you find out
where yOu went all weekend because you were seen different places,
that is how your body language and your facial expression have a
message that it's difficult to disguise. Sometimes you can get tired of
feeling like you're on display, which is an advantage to going out of
town for the weekend because when nobody knows you, you an feel a
little bit more relaxed. I mean I felt relaxed.
Everywhere she went in the city where she taught, she felt like she was
"being watched". The trains to other places were escape routes in a sense, 80
she could maintain a distance, a little anonymity. "I was glad that because of
the trains that I was able to get away, sometimes for a weekend to somewhere I

didn't feel like I was on display."

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Denise thought sometimes that the Japanese did not think of her as an

African-American even when she informed them of this.

Sometimes I don't think they believed me when I said that I was
African-American. At that time I said black American because your
hair is black, your eyes are black, your skin is a black. I would have to
explain why we all come in different colors.

She found that in some of her self-introductions at the schools, when
she stated that she was a black American, or that she was divorced, the teacher
translating would not translate those things. She was surprised that a
Japanese exchange teacher who had worked where her father was principal
of a school in Indianapolis had told teachers that she was a white American.

When I would give my introductions, even when I would try in
Japanese, I would always tell my race. If I did it in English, sometimes
the teachers would translate. I would always pause and many times that
didn't get translated and I would say it in Japanese. The teacher didn't
say it. I always told them I was divorced too. That was another thing.
The same thing would happen. Then I would have to tell the children
that African-Americans came in all different colors.

She used slides of her family to show that ethnicity in America included
complexity and many different shades of skin color.

Now, depending on the teacher, I did take slides with me. Once in a
while I did get to show them and the slides were of my family and family
celebrations. They could see that in my family and I would focus on the
slides that the people were all different skin colors and that we were all
black Americans. I would make this quite visible in the slides. That was
something that I would always bring up. I found that my race became
the topic of discussion with certain teachers and I heard this from
another teacher that was there. He said they were asking him was I
white because of my skin color and hair color and the fact that my eyes
are brown and not black. He assured them that I was and it was
interesting because that teacher had worked for my father when my
father was principal of that school [in the U.S.]. So he knew my dad
from a long time ago.

Even though she was "not sure how they perceived me," she thought that she
was not treated differently as an African-American in Japan because her own
skin color is very similar to the skin color of many Japanese people who, like

everyone in the world, "have different skin tones in their race."

199

I wasn't perceived as being African-American and that's the way they
treated me and my skin color was not a whole lot different from some of
the Japanese that I ran into, because they had, like everyone else,
different skin tones in their race. That I think was a consideration that
my color wasn't a whole lot different than some of theirs. Looking at
the eyes and shape of some African-Americans, so there were some
physical things there that may not have matched up with their
expectations. Therefore, they may not have seen me as being
physically all that different. They know I wasn't blond haired and blue
eyed, so I'm wondering how that affected it. But also considering I was
not your ordinary tourist, I was in a special kind of situation so
therefore, in the schools I found I was treated quite well and I didn't
detect any different kind of treatment than the other female teachers.
From the males, yes. But then within their society there's going to be a
difference in the way they are going to treat females and males. I think
that's a whole different issue. Now I think if my skin were darker and
they couldn't help but notice right away, then they may have had a
different reaction, I don't know. But I think that because of my skin
color, it didn't turn many faces as soon as they looked at me I can't
help but think that it wasn't a factor because like I said, if you put their
arms up against my arms, sometimes the only difference you saw was a
little more yellow cast to their skin. But the darkness would be about the
same, and for someone very, very fair skinned. Then if you looked at
the noses, some of the noses were more like mine and some were more
Caucasian styled noses and the same with the lips.

Denise has had to grapple with this question because she "had people who are
African-American ask me what I think about that. I tell them the same thing.
I was treated I think well, but I don't know how it would be if my skin were a
lot darker, what the reaction would have been."

Denise felt that her experience in Africa had helped her be as
culturally sensitive as she was because she was so concerned about not being
viewed as "the ugly American."

I guess that came from the experiences in Africa. I was an outsider

there even though I might have been a racial majority, I was a cultural

minority. I had to understand just how American I was and I had no
right to impose my ways on them. I felt that I did not want to come
across as being the "ugly American"; you know, someone who is just
going to come and complain and say you need to do things this way or
you're uncivilized.

The five teachers who lived abroad for extended periods all thought

about and experienced being different, not actually an outcast, but knowing

they are in a minority, under some circumstances a minority of one, in a very

200
different culture from their own. Ed Donovan's metaphor of overloaded

"cultural antennae" seems best to describe their various reactions. It must
have been difficult for Denise Green to feel that she must so thoroughly
disguise her emotions, but she may have had experience doing this growing
up as an African-American child in white middle class America. She, Ed and
Mary seemed most able to deal with this "otherness." Mary may have been
much more tired of feeling like "a goldfish in a bowl" had she lived in China
much longer than four months. Ellen does not describe this feeling, except
that she feels used by the Japanese; that she felt so lonely in the culture.

Ellen Stacey seems to be the only one of the six teachers to be feeling
such a negative residue from her experience there. She also did not seem to
have the level of support as the others felt from their colleagues or spouses.
This chapter includes many different reactions of these teachers to being
strangers in a strange land, which is a helpful precursor to our analysis in
Chapters 7 and 8 of the extent to which this international experience affected
them.

Conclusion

The learning of these teachers took many different forms, as expressed
in Bill's thoughts about efficiency in Japanese business meetings, Denise's
observations about a community spirit demonstrated by festivals, Ellen's
concerns about the Yakuza, Paul's interest in the tea ceremony, Ed and Mary's
love of Chinese art, and their concern about poverty and gender issues in
China. Their learning included new things, experiencing things previously
"known," and experiencing an unexpected or surprising challenge to
assumptions. Most were actively involved in their learning abroad. Some of
them sought out as many learning opportunities as they could. Those who

talked about feeling like an outsider in their host country at times did not

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dwell on this issue because they had managed to cope with that reality,

although it was a strain.

Only Ellen appears to have been truly lonely in Japan, which we must
consider when we think about her observations as being fraught with fear
and alienation. Her case could be the basis for more study which would center
around how one might construct an international experience for a teacher to
prevent the kind of loneliness and alienation which she experienced. I
believe that her case in itself can be instructive to any teacher who teaches
abroad for a significant period of time. A program which at least causes a
teacher to probe her assumptions and preconceived notions about a culture
would be very helpful. A realistic appraisal of work schedules, living
conditions, and support groups would also be helpful.

The observations and feelings that these teachers have reported reflect
a wide range of learning opportunities for teachers abroad. The possibilities
include comparative assessments of school and teaching practices and
political, social, and economic conditions. Their learning also includes the
affective domain of knowing how it feels to live as an "other" in a foreign
society. How their learning breaks down stereotypes and affirms a common
humanity connects with confirmations of previous knowledge, as Mary
Ehrhardt demonstrates with her foray into the world of Chinese art. The
richness and depth of their learning is also affected by their background,
preparation, and personality characteristics as well as the environmental
context in a foreign country. The ability of each teacher to forge friendships
and connections abroad is a key indicator of the depth of learning which can
take place in a teacher who engages in international study and experience.

How each of these teachers perceives his relationships and connections,

his feelings of being a stranger, a minority in another culture, will greatly

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impact his learning and teaching about this culture, which is the subject of

Chapter 7. To what extent has this experience affected the pedagogy of these
teachers? The first issue we will explore is: How the experience affected these
people in their choices in the classroom? After this, in Chapter 8 we will
generalize to an exploration of what they feel has been transformative about

the experience in their personal and professional lives.

CHAPTER 7
COMING HOME

How are we affected by changes in our experiences, especially the
radical changes in lifestyle that five of these teachers experienced? What
happens when they are welcomed home from such an international
experience? According to all six of my informants, they felt transformed by
the experience almost to the point of feeling like different people. Most of
these teachers felt that the experience had incredibly enriched their lives,
while in one case there was a loss of important family relationships and
spiritual foundations to the point of depression. Yet five of the six teachers
considered the experience to be a positive transformation. Four of these
considered it to be a profound experience which greatly affected their
personal and professional lives.

We have considered factors which forecast and led up to the experience
in Chapter 3, then explored the professional and personal nuances of this
experience in Chapters 4, 5, and 6. In this chapter I will analyze the
perspectives of these teachers on the effect of this experience upon their
lives, and especially upon their pedagogy as classroom teachers. The effects
which they talk about include their perspectives on how the familiar has
become strange while the strange had become familiar in their life abroad.
Other effects have to do with their changes in teaching style, curriculum
emphasis, and relationships with students and colleagues. The way they share
this experience with students and teachers provides background for a deeper

understanding of what they mean by transformation: how this international
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experience of living in and/ or studying about another culture has changed

them in ways which mean a great deal to each of them.

Reverse Culture Shock
"Like Going to the Moon" (Ed Donovan)

Four of the teachers who lived abroad for four months or more
expressed varying degrees of culture shock in the foreign country. Upon
returning to the U.S., several described their feelings as being more intense
and long lasting than their feelings of culture shock when they initially
arrived in their host countries. While they all expected differences in
cultures to affect them while they were away, few indicated any preparedness
for the difficulties they might face about coming home. Bill Holm, an English
professor at Southwestern State University in Minnesota, wrote a book of
vignettes about his year teaching in China entitled Coming Home Crazy (1990).
One of my informants, Ed Donovan, recommended that I read this because he
related to some of the feelings expressed in this book. I found that in some
ways this book tapped into some of my own feelings upon returning home
after living and studying in China for ten weeks during the summer of 1981.
At that time, I could only imagine what I might have felt if I had had the
opportunity to live there for six months, a year, or more. For the teachers in
this study who returned from China there was an intense appreciation of
things previously taken for granted, such as the blueness of the sky, the
brightness of our supermarkets, of what it means to be an American. Teachers
who returned from China became more critical about materialism and
wastefulness in the U.S. There is no question that all of these teachers looked
at some things differently when they returned. How each of them coped with
varying degrees of "reverse culture shock," sets the stage for our discussion of

how their experiences influenced their classroom practice.

205
Many Americans, myself included, have described their first experience

in China during the late 708 and 808 as akin to "going to the Moon." This
expression was meant to emphasize the tremendous differences between the
American and Chinese societies. However, when Ed Donovan used these words,
he was referring to how he felt about returning to the U.S. after a year in
Kunming, not his impressions upon going there. While his wife had
experienced cultural trauma in China, Ed had more difficulty acclimating back
to the U.S. than he had adjusting to China in the first place.

The first day back, my son, who had just bought a brand new Ford
Bronco, was visiting. Heather said, "I need somebody to go to the store to
buy something." Whatever, it was, three items. I can walk back and
forth to this store in 20 minutes and do my shopping in that 20 minutes
for three items. My son wanted me to drive his new car. So I did. I was
gone for an hour and a quarter. Because when I got in the store, I had
forgotten how bright everything was. Chinese stores don't have very
much light. Here is this place with fluorescent lamps going, spotlights
on things. All of a sudden, I was into a system of organization that I had
to learn all over again. I kind of went up and down aisles, just walking.
You know, Coming Home Crazy. He talks about the same kind, it's exactly
that. Clerks were polite. I wasn't used to that. No haggling over prices.
It's just as it's marked. Right. Anyway, everybody thought that I had
smashed up his new car because I was gone so long. But it really did
affect me, really tremendously. I think both of us, Heather and myself,
did not get over the culture trauma coming back, I think for seven or
eight months. It was April or May when we got into spring house
cleaning when it began to dissipate.

Just as Mary Ehrhardt had felt that life was more simple and less intense
in China than upon his reentry in the U.S., Ed also felt like he was in a
different time frame, the pace of life in China having seemed much slower by
comparison. To Ed, the way everyone was in such a big hurry appeared
strange.

I didn't feel like I had to rush anything. I could take my time. It didn't
make any difference. I think the handling of time in China is so much
different. I became very conscious in our culture because everybody
was just whizzing by, doing this and doing that. I had the attitude that
everybody's nuts. I used to drive, I was a fast driver. I very seldom was
within the speed limit. I came back and I couldn't care what the speed
limit was, you know 30 or 35 on a 40 mile zone, it didn't make any
difference. That didn't catch up to me until probably the next year

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where I started going the speed limit and all that kind of stuff. So time
was one of the real big, big factors and the use of time. The whole idea
of intemperate haste is the way I saw it at that time. On the part of
Americans.

The hurriedness also included what he felt was "a sense of contentiousness"
embedded in a society so dedicated to the selling of materials goods as in the
U.S. It was not until a year or two after he returned that he became aware of
that "we didn't need as many things to live as people were trying to sell us".
Advertising, on television and elsewhere, caused them to think about their
lifestyle in a different way when compared to their experience in China. "I'm
not sure we became minimalists. I think we became a little harder in our
judgment about what we bought."
Mary Ehrhardt reflects many of Ed Donovan's sentiments about
simplicity in the Chinese lifestyle as compared to her life in the U.S.
I really learned to enjoy the simpler living and to see that their needs
were very well met with many fewer things and that they had time that
I often didn't have because my lifestyle was much faster. I came to
appreciate all of that. I didn't really realize what an impact it would
have on me when I returned. But the two things that were significant
were returning to my school and seeing how intense it actually is
That, plus just being bombarded in the United States with
advertisements, visually and orally, were marked. There was so much
that I just had not given too much thought to before having had this
experience: How much we are told we have to have and how much we
buy into that and how intensely we live compared to the simplicity of
the Chinese.
She thought differently and more appreciatively of the lovely place she and
her family have spent vacations together for more than twenty years,
Chautauqua, in western New York state.
While I was there [China], I really thought about, because Beijing is so
devoid of color and yet it's more colorful now than it was in the past, but
because it's so devoid of green, I thought a great deal about the place
that has been a regular summer spot for me in most of my life. I
thought about the moisture and the greens, the water, the clean air.
That really sustained me a lot.
Ed Donovan, like Mary Ehrhardt and Bill Holm, marveled at the blue sky

in the U.S., something he had looked at differently in the past. "There were

207
two other things that really affected us. One was the blueness of the sky. It

just is a different sky altogether. Another things was the green grass." Mary
Ehrhardt also found that she had become used to a different diet, a change
which she has continued as a life-style change.

I just have changed my diet. Not having any intestinal difficulties, but
just that it really was a significant change. I don't use butter, I don't eat
as much red meat. I'm more interested in Chinese cooking. I'm trying
to do that a little more.

Mary, and to a much greater degree Ellen Stacey, felt somewhat
frustrated about returning home and to their schools with a wealth of
experience and knowledge which they both wanted to share. The frustrations
centered around their feeling like different people who were expected to
perform again in the same roles. It was difficult for Mary to return to the
same position without a concrete way for her to share what she had learned
and gained beyond her classroom work.

There was not an awareness of the impact or that this experience had
changed me. I think Walden is a really high-powered school and the
expectation is that I will fit back into my slot and prepare children to
march through the Walden program. The requirements of doing that
really don't acknowledge that I'd bring anything different than the
competent job I did before going. My job is to prepare children to
continue through their Walden education. The pace quickens from the
minute that the fall comes so that there really isn't even time to have
informal discussion with colleagues or to really say, "Hey, wait a
minute." I either would like different responsibilities or at least some
way to express what I've learned and what I've gained. That's pretty
hard because there are some ways. I did teach an elective in shadow
puppetry and I did do an assembly program and I did have the
opportunity to speak with parents and write about my experience. But
the expectation on a daily basis was that I'm back in my slot and I'm
doing what I've always done.

Ellen Stacey was so energized after her first seven-month experience
the fall of 1988 in Japan that she explored many new ideas with her students.
' However, when she returned after living and teaching in Japan for three
years, she experienced a devastating loss of rapport with the teachers and

principal of her middle school. While she was in Japan the second time, her

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school had become a charter school within the school district. The teachers

had gone to training sessions in Chicago to prepare them for team teaching.

It was the first time we had teaming. Other school districts send the
whole staff to these. It was held in Chicago - how to team, what the
reason behind teaming was and inspired them to the nth degree. Well I
was in Japan, so I had no opportunity to go to this thing, but I felt that I
had lived first-hand experience. I could fit in and my enthusiasm was
really high. I wanted to share, "Well in Japan they did it this way. Let's
try it this way because it really worked well in Japan."

Ellen had hoped that her knowledge about how schools really functioned in
Japan would help the staff; however, she found that her colleagues did not
want to hear about her experiences or her ideas.

The first time she returned, she became aware of a great gulf in the
attitudes of respect for education between students she had taught in Japan
and her students in the U.S. She had not wanted to return to teach in her
former school because she knew this would become a problem.

My principal wanted me back there. I was really depressed. After

seeing, even the bad students, it was nothing like I was facing again in

Milwaukee. I can't explain to you how that was. I mean when you

walked into a Japanese classroom, there was such eagerness to learn,

such a respect for those who could get the most education. Even with
the had kids, the communication with the teachers, they would walk into

a teacher's room and they would talk to them like a big brother or

something. There was a bond.

It was her fascination and curiosity about this "bond," this family atmosphere
which she found lacking among students and teachers in U.S. schools that
provided much of the impetus for her second experience in Japan.

Then I came back to Milwaukee and there was "that kid over there" or

"that teacher over there." There was no unity, there was no teaming,

there was nothing. At 3:00, who could beat out the kids to the parking

lot to get to their car and go home. 'That's not my problem' or 'That kid
has a problem, send him out of my room' There was so much I missed
and that was the whirlwind. When I went back to Japan, I wanted to
know what made that, what caused that bonding.
In spite of the fact that she was asked to present workshops in other buildings
and a presentation to the State Board of Education, she encountered a very

different reception in her own school.

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My colleagues didn't want to hear about it. Not one teacher asked me
anything about my trip to Japan. My principal had lived abroad, we
only talked once. She never wanted to talk about it after that. "Welcome
back. How was it? Yes I know what you're going through." That was
the end of that. She never would say, "Come on in."

She was in a state of exhaustion and confusion when she returned in August
1993 after her second experience in Japan.

When I came back, I had lost a lot of energy. I don't know if it was
because I was in a state of confusion or what. Or I felt that I was trying
to do everything before I went to Japan. When I came back from Japan,
I tried to focus. Become a little bit more focused on small things instead
of the big things. Before I went to Japan, I was social chairperson, I was
a member of this society, I was a member of that society. I was taking
the kids on trips. When I came back, I tried to focus in a little bit
smaller, do a little bit smaller chunks instead of such big chunks.

Because she felt like she had missed out on three years of American
culture, she used the suggestions of the art teacher to have her students make
presentations about famous Black people during those three years.

When I came back the second time, I had missed out on three years of
American culture. I really felt deficient teaching these kids. I didn't
know what they liked, I didn't know the music, I didn't know the TV
programs, I didn't know the personality. February was Black History
Month. I asked them - it was the art teacher - I talked to her first and
she told me to try this. I had the kids do a presentation, but I didn't want
historical people. I wanted famous Black people in the three years that
I was gone that they liked: musicians, TV personalities, actors,
basketball, sports heroes, anything. Anybody they would like to do a
report on. I caught up on three years in one month with the kids doing
presentations. I learned the music, I learned the basketball players, I
didn't know who they were. "The Dream Team," who are they? Who's
this Magic Johnson? Who is this Michael Jordan? I had no idea who
these people were. The kids brought me up to 1993 real fast. It was
wonderful, they loved it. They really enjoyed it, so I thank my art
teacher for that.

A racial incident occurred in her classroom soon after she returned. It
was brought on by her assignment of the story The Slave Dancer to her
students. She had taken a female student aside, as she had seen Japanese
teachers do, to tell the student "one on one, that I wasn't happy with her

behavior and she was very rude to all the members of the class." Ellen thought

210
that this student had retaliated by complaining to her mother about the stOry

because it contains the word "nigger."

The Sglave Dancer talks about when the slaves were being brought over
and what did they call them back then. She told her mother that they
were reading a book with the word. Mrs. Stacey was teaching them this
book that had the word "nigger" in it. I had the NAACP, I had the WCBH,
I had Black business all at my school wanting to know what this white
teacher was doing using "nigger" in the classroom. I thought stress was
bad in Japan. It couldn't even come near to what I was going through at
that time in Milwaukee.

This incident, she felt, had irreparably damaged the rapport she thought she
had with students in her classroom. To clear the air, she used a methodology
which she had observed in Japan to discuss controversial issues, but with a
democratic twist.

I went back to the students, I was thinking of using a Japanese
technique on this, I asked the students their feelings about the
situation. Was the book so bad that I should have banned it from the
school? Because that was what NAACP and everybody wanted them to do.
The students had a conference and it took a whole period for the
students to voice their opinion. I said, "I'll remove myself from the
picture. I'm going to put anybody, whoever, your student council rep,
that will be the person in charge. And you need to come up with a
conclusion." And the kids came to the conclusion after about 45 minutes
that the real problem was, the book was not bad. It was a white teacher,
teaching them Black History. That was the bottom line. So I asked them
to put it in writing, but I did it democratic - I thought it was a democratic
way - which I don't think they would have done it in Japan. But I had to
resort back to my Americanization [meaning the use of democratic
methods]. It was a very difficult year adjusting back in.

Not only did she feel a lack of rapport with students, but also with her
colleagues. Ellen was surprised that not one teacher nor the principal asked
her to share her experiences with staff or other classrooms.

Not one person, not one person on our staff asked me to do a

presentation on Japan. Our social studies department never asked. I had

said I would like to. Nobody ever asked. I asked my principal if I could

do a workshop at our school to give them an idea of how Japan worked.
No, he wouldn't allow me any time to do any presentations.

211
One teacher whom she had known quite well had sent her postcards while she

was in Japan. He might have provided support for her, but he transferred out

of the building.

One teacher transferred completely because when I came back, he
himself saw that he had not grown in any capacity. He had been in the
same classroom, teaching the same subject to the same grade level for 25
years. He did send me cards while I was in Japan and I would send him
letters back, but the year I came back, he moved. He went to another
school. And he had mentioned that he had to move. It was time.

In addition to a general negative feeling about her work when she
returned from her second trip, she also felt a sense of malaise and isolation in
her personal and family life. She had previously taught full time, gone to
school three nights a week, worked out three days a week and "enjoyed a very
active social life."

Before I went to Japan, I was always in the social scene, always. Now
I've been back from Japan and I have cut off all my friends. I distanced
myself from everything including family. It's safe to talk to my parents
because they live in Georgia. But as far as my family itself, there's a big
gulf there. Where before I used to be at my sister's house all the time,
we'd have dinner together with her family, and I was considered part of
her family. There's been a wide gulf there My dating has gone to
nothing.

The "reverse culture shock" and "deep depression" Ellen went through
had ramifications on her spiritual life as well. She had become somewhat
cynical about western religions, especially the Roman Catholic church, in
which she was raised.

I think I went through a period of deep depression when I returned
from Japan. They say reverse culture shock is worse. That was true. I
didn't think it would have been, but it was and I think in some aspects it
still is. l was restless when I came back. I wanted to do everything
because I thought money would be able to open all those doors. I had
enough money to do all those things then. Right now, I am realizing
that it's not the money. I remember when I had my fortune told in
China, they told me I need "di chi ti bao'" more "physical strength" to
sustain a life there and also a devout, more of a spiritual nature. These
days, I've been thinking about the spiritual aspect of my life I think I
tried to do it, but I wasn't happy with what I've seen in Catholicism in
America versus Buddha or Shintoism in Asian society. I'm more cynical
about religions, western religions, than I was about eastern religions.

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Neither Denise Green nor Paul Vandemere discussed any sense of

reverse culture shock upon returning to the U.S. from Japan. Denise and Paul
had had what they each described as a very positive experience in Japan.
Their experience is in direct contrast with Ellen's more negative descriptions.
Mary's and Ed's living conditions in China starkly contrasted with their life in
the U.S. The experience of Denise as an exchange student in Africa is more
similar to that of Mary and Ed in China than her experience in Japan, a
modern developed country like the U.S. Thus, the material living conditions of
the people and the teachers may have a bearing on the stress they feel living
abroad and in returning from that experience. Denise talked about her
difficulty communicating with her African-American friends about her
college exchange experience in Ghana.
When I went back in the dorm and started back to classes, I guess that's
when I realized how much of an impact that experience had had on me.
Because I looked at things differently than other kids did. At that time,
there was this big black power movement and all that And I looked at
things about Africa, about African-Americans differently and I felt just
totally different from other people, other students that were my friends.
When I tried to talk to them about it, a lot of times it was really difficult.
Because there were just certain experiences that were really hard to put
into words because I couldn't truly express the feelings that I felt. It
was just that some of them were not interested, really.
Reflecting similar sentiments with Mary Ehrhardt and Ed Donovan, Denise had
had difficulty getting used to the "materialism and how we waste food and
waste energy." She had felt the difference in her life when she had spent the
night in a friend's home in Ghana. "When you spend the night in someone's
home, where you have to go in a toilet that is better than a hole in the floor,
because it's got the porcelain seat," she realized just how much luxury she had
taken for granted before this experience. "We expected certain amenities we

just took for granted which for most people of the world, weren't things they

were accustomed to. They were luxuries."

213
Denise described to a professor her frustration about describing snow to

an illiterate man in Ghana.

I was trying to explain snow to a west African gentleman who had
never seen it. And this was someone who was not literate, so he couldn't
have read about it. But I was describing life here, and he asked me
about clothing. I said, "The part of America where I come from,"
because he didn't call it the States, he called it America so that's what I
called it, "what you wore depended on the weather." And he said, "Oh,
like the dry season or the rainy season?" And I said, "No, whether it is
summer or winter," which was a concept that was new to him.

She described the setting of this conversation, reminiscent of the poverty that
Ed describes in the village where he observed a wedding party. Denise
continues:

When they are sitting in this dirt floor home, the walls and the ceiling
are pieces of scrap metal, there is a bare bulb that you screw into a
socket. I don't know where the toilet was because I didn't have to use it
during that visit, so I didn't know where they went. And in it there was
a community tap, that you took your buckets to. Cooking was done over
an open fire and there was a hole in the roof for that. And trying to
explain snow. And I said, "Well, it's almost like shaved ice." They shave
ice (he knew about shaving because of skin), but shaved ice was not
something in his experience. I said, "Well, it's as cold as ice, and it's
white and it's fluffy." And he got this real puzzled look.

Her professor said she could have talked about soap powder or whipped up
some liquid dish soap. Denise responded, "But we really didn't have any
electricity except for the one light bulb." Not understanding Denise's point,
the professor continued, "You could have gotten a paring knife and taken a
bar of soap, and kind of shaved some soap of ." Exasperated by this professor's
attitude, Denise thought:

My goodness, what a waste of soap. The man would have had fits if I'd
have done that and that would have been so wasteful. So even if I would
have bought the soap, it would have been very - I would have been like
the ugly American to sit there and waste a whole bar of soap trying to
shave it. That would have been really wasteful of me and really
insensitive. She really didn't understand. And that's what I ran into
with some of my friends. They really didn't understand and finally I got
to the point where I said, "You really have to go there. There are some
things I just can't explain."

214
Denise describes this as a difficulty expressing her experience, while Ellen

describes this feeling as an aspect of "reverse culture shock."

Mary, Ed, and Ellen have all described changes they viewed in their own
classroom practice. The trauma some of them have described could have
presaged a tremendous period of personal and professional growth, or the
opposite, or something in between these extremes. For Ellen, and Mary to a
lesser degree, it was hard to adjust back into an environment where colleagues
were not that interested or, as in Ellen's case, hostile to their desire to share
their insights, knowledge, and feelings about their experience. Mary felt a
sense of wanting to perform a somewhat different role with her colleagues.
There was little acknowledgment on their part that she had changed; that she
had been through a transformative experience.

John Dewey discusses the difference between what he termed
"educative" and "miseducative" experience, the former leading to a profound
transformation and the latter a precursor to stunted growth and even
regression. Educative experience is accompanied by continuous learning
which is focused, not haphazard and often very difficult. Ed Donovan became
more cognizant of his teaching style and is continuing to change his
pedagogy. Paul Vandemere worked to incorporate global studies into the State
curriculum guidelines. Mary Ehrhardt began to redefine herself as an
educational thinker and leader. Each of these teachers consider these changes
a result of their international experience. By contrast, when Ellen says she
thinks she has "lost what Ellen is all about," she is describing a painful
transition. The way this personal trauma/transition has played out in each
individual has ramifications on the major question of this study. How does
extensive international study or experience impact the classroom practice of

these teachers?

215
Changes in the Classroom

All but one of these teachers clearly felt they were better teachers for
having had the international experience. Only Ellen Stacey indicated that she
had been more energetic and creative before her second experience. In fact,
in the 1-1/ 2 years between her first and second experience in Japan, she was
named Teacher of the Year for all of Milwaukee's public schools. Even the
extent to which the impact of her three years of teaching in Japan was
positive or negative upon her teaching performance in Milwaukee is
debatable. The following analysis will include some very promising examples
of changed pedagogy in her case. All of the other teachers described changes
in their teaching practice.

Bill Notebaum's change started with his awareness that the traditional
methodology in his view was counter-productive to achieving the kind of
results which he most values in education. Even though he did not feel he had
time to change his methods entirely, he gives examples of approaches to
specific lessons which are different now than before he began this study. He
is now grappling with the kind of teaching he will foster in the International
High School he initiated just after he returned from Japan and which will
open in the fall of 1996.

Paul Vandemere and Mary Ehrhardt felt that the experience brought an
authenticity and depth to their teaching about East Asia, while Denise Green
viewed her experience as providing a model for the children, heightening
their perception of what is possible. Ed Donovan described changes in his
pedagogy and curriculum choices which he considered directly attributable to
his experience in China. Their perceptions of change in the classroom
include their methodology, how they teach; their philosophy about teaching;

what they teach, the authenticity of their work in subject matter areas such as

216
the humanities and East Asian history, culture and language; and their

empathy and rapport with their students.

Changes in How They Teach

Paul Vandemere found that the content of his teaching changed
significantly at the same time as his methodology because he was "studying a
lot about instruction and became increasingly aware of the importance of
students owning their learning". He knew that his work in debate or forensics
was successful "for a reason. We had self-directed learners." It was at this
time after his two years in Japan that he decided to incorporate this aspect of
his debate and forensics work to all of his classes.

Contrary to the stereotype many people have of Japanese education,
Paul witnessed creative examples of pedagogy, especially at the elementary
level.

I saw some innovative teachers who would try some, certainly at the

elementary level, try more group projects. Kids were motivated to

learn, who also worked cooperatively in groups and they saw the
benefits in doing so. I would try to bring that atmosphere in my
regular classes. So there were certainly some days where you would
come and you would see me teach in the traditional sense. But there
were a lot of days where you would come in and see students engaged in
group projects and group presentations where I was not fitting the
normal mold of a teacher, which is to stand up and talk.
Paul, like Ed Donovan, could construct role playing and simulation experiences
in the classroom based upon their deepened knowledge of a different culture.
They both used variations of a simulation game, BA FA, BA FA, which allowed
students to experience a cultural dilemma that has many ramifications for
understanding the complex issues involved with cultural interchanges.
After his return from Japan, Paul hoped to get students to question why

cultural practices evolve in other cultures and our own. Paul started each new

class with an exercise to promote cultural understanding.

217

I very early on, the very first days of every semester with my
beginning students, I would put them in an exercise where they were
members of two different cultures, with different norms. They had to
send visitors to the other cultures to learn those norms. They had to
become observers and then see how they were treated as outsiders while
they were doing this. That began their exposure to say you have to
suspend your judgments of other countries as you are now learning
about them. You have to not be quick to make those judgments. You
have to understand.

Paul used this game to get them involved in thinking about how and why
structures and practices are different from the U.S., with the goal that they
will begin to question and understand the background to their own cultural
traditions.

They would begin to all of a sudden examine themselves in America for
the first time. I would always try, as we were dealing with
contemporary Japan or China, I spent most of my time on Japan, second
most on China, and a lesser amount on the mini dragons, I would always
have them make a comparison to what was going on in the United States
and use it as a springboard to re—examine what we do. So after they
looked at the Japanese educational system or criminal justice system, I'd
have them reflect a little bit on art. Not that I would ever say, "This is
what you have to do." I never once told them that they had, that the
Japanese approach was better and that America ought to adopt. Never
once. That's not my role. I would allow them to learn about other
cultures, they could then form their own opinions. They would make
presentations in which they would learn about the Chinese system
dealing in with dissidents or Chinese way of their legal system or other
aspects of Chinese or Japanese society. Then they would make some
judgments themselves. As long as they were based upon what was true,
that's all I asked for.

It was not his goal that they compare U.S. society negatively with other
societies. It was his goal that they understand the reasons behind aspects of
each of the societies, including that of the U.S.
Not that for a minute I was asking them to criticize American society,
obviously not. But never take for granted what we have and understand
why we have it. There's a reason why our country is organized the way
it is. A lot of times, our kids don't think about that.
Ed Donovan, after his experience in China and reflecting a similar
teaching style to Paul Vandemere, wanted his students to experience what

happened when members of cultures with radically different languages and

values interact also in the simulation role play BA FA, BA FA.

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You set up two groups, one group is real laid back. They couldn't care
less about money or anything else. The only thing that's important is
friendship. The other group is up-tight, capitalists, who are bargaining
with each other all the time to get an upper grip on things. What you'll
do is take two people from each culture and put them in a different room
with the opposite culture. They can't speak the language. The basic
assumptions you have set up in one room are so different from the other
room that it's hard for them to recognize. They have to be able to get
along in the culture. There's going to be a representative from this
group who are heavy, capitalists who want to convert this group so they
become a marketplace. These guys will work at it, and finally the laid
back culture will throw these guys out. The reason they throw them out
is because they don't depend on friendship. When you take the laid
back group and they come into the money group, they're given so many
dibs, or whatever they call those things that represent money, and
people come up and start to trade with them, and these guys just give it
away. Once they've given away all of their money, they're poor.
Nobody pays any attention to them. They want to get out. It's one of the
ways that we use to show differences in culture.

He has incorporated this role play into his course so that students will learn to
understand and respect another way, another point of view.

Ed believes that his teaching style is very different as a result of his
work in China. He now is much more sensitive to how his students are
reacting to his teaching. He no longer assumes that he is being clearly
understood. Ed also uses students who do understand what he is trying to
convey to elucidate the point to those who need help.

I became much more deliberate, I suppose is a good word. Speech
pattern slowed down in any case. Less slang, less idiomatic speech.
Really, an awareness of when the students here were not getting the
whatever was in the lesson. I really became aware of that. They were
not engaged or they just didn't understand. I don't think I had ever
had a doubt in my previous life about a youngster understanding what I
said, understanding a concept.

Ed explained why he made this change to speak more deliberately and
carefully.

I had spent a year looking at students that I had to really concentrate
on. I think that concentration carried over. It wasn't just a matter of
defining words for these people but to get them to understand how a
phrase or word was used and could be used differently. Those that
seemed to be having trouble, I could approach and talk to them about it.
Maybe clarify. It brought in something else that I started doing at that
time. That is when I saw a student who didn't understand. In order to

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clarify, I knew that I was using very standard English, kids sometimes
don't understand standard English. I would turn to somebody that I
knew had grasped the concept and ask them to explain it. I found out
that that was an effective way to get things across.

Another area where Ed's teaching practice has changed is in team teaching
with a younger man who is still taking courses in the field of education.

I'm doing more team teaching. I'm on an afternoon team now, teaching
about Vietnam this semester. I've enjoyed that immensely and with a
guy who is still taking courses in education so he's got different ideas
that he comes in with We've done more active things like debates,
discussions. I'm using a lot more video with this guy I think anything
that I bring into teaching that deals with differences in culture, the
China influence is definitely there. I talk about it and try to get a
discussion going about it and try to get the kids to feel what the
difference is as opposed to trying to just learn it intellectually.

The experience he had in China, in addition to the creative stimulation
he feels in working with a younger teacher who is currently studying about
different classroom approaches, has energized Ed considerably about his own
teaching, even though he is 65 years old. There is no shuffling off into
retirement mode for Ed Donovan!

We try to work through things, you know, "Why does somebody say this?
What is the purpose of this?" The whole Taiwan exercise for example. I
said, "What's the message here?" Well they had all read about it. I said,
"Well, what's the real message?" We fiddled around with that for a long,
long time. We started doing this projection thing like, "What happens if
Lee Teng Hui gets elected?" I said, "Is there going to be a war?" They
said they didn't know, the couldn't project that. "Well what about the
United States sending ships?" They didn't know. They thought that was
a good idea to protect Taiwan. I said, "Is it our job to protect them since
they are a province of China and they see themselves that way?" They
went round and round on that. I said, "So what you're looking at is our
lack of understanding of what the Chinese see about themselves and
what the Taiwanese see about themselves. They share the culture.
We're outsiders and we haven't got a clue."

During his international study and just after his experience in Japan,
Bill Notebaum developed an awareness of teaching methods which he admired,
but felt that he had not changed enough to be satisfied with his own teaching
style. "It doesn't look as different as it should and I'm really frustrated,

dissatisfied with that." According to Bill, the reasons for this are twofold: 1)

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one is the difficulty of changing the expectations of students who are not
familiar with a different approach, and 2) the time constraints on developing
a classroom practice which is more student centered and inquiry based.
We all work in a certain culture again, when kids come into your room
and expecting a certain thing and already have habits, they're not
going to transform those habits just because you want to use a different
approach. 80 that can be very frustrating. Particularly when your
approach more and more relies on kids own interests, an inquiry and
self motivation, they're just going to abuse it, basically. That's
frustrating, and secondly, I'm into so many other different things that I
just don't have the time and preparation, very well constructed, well
thought out methodology that involves students in the learning process
definitely are the best. But they are long and well developed. I would
need time to do that. Educational methodology is not what I have right
now and it's what I want my teachers to do, and I have views on it, but
developing it is not really me right now. I can't do everything.
Bill felt his work to develop a magnet international school including students
from ten school districts with an International Baccalaureate degree and
curriculum precluded substantive change in his own teaching methodology.
He felt that to change his pedagogy would require a commitment of time and
effort which he did not have in addition to promoting and planning the new
school. Bill passionately argues for a different pedagogy from what he
considers the traditional intimidation based lecture style and rote learning
followed by rigorous multiple choice tests. "In fact, humiliating students and
intimidating students were basically a plus. I mean that's the way the job was
done." He had come to the "educational debate" late after he returned from
Japan. This debate is past tense to Bill because "I know which side is right now
and I don't have any patience for those people any more. I'm not going to
waste [time on the debate], I mean I'd come home too upset about the
authoritarian, very torrid, instructional techniques."
This discussion with Bill about his own teaching practice reflects his

answer to the central question of this study: to what extent does in-depth

international study and experience affect the pedagogy of a veteran teacher?

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In this part of the question, he is responding to how he feels this experience

specifically affected his classroom practice. How he responds is not about how
he actually changed as a result of the experience, but it is about how his
thinking about pedagogy has changed as a result of many factors including
his international experience. It is the change he hopes to initiate in his
international school that he believes has been most affected by his
international study and experience. He did not express a desire to adopt
Japanese educational practices in American schools, except, like Paul
Vandemere, for the homeroom idea. It was in the process of learning about
U.S.-Japanese trade issues and business organizational reform that he began to
think about school reform, an idea which eventually developed into his
proposal for an International Academy.

However, within his own pedagogy as a classroom teacher Bill seemed
satisfied with some aspects of a teacher-dominated classroom.

I have such a knowledge base and ability to command presence and
dominate the classroom, not dominate in a negative sense, but why not
use it. It's kind of a waste if you have, I don't mean this egotistical, but
it's kind of a waste if you have what I have to offer sitting around the
classroom watching kids fumbling around on projects. They should be
fumbling around on projects, but they should also have the exposure to
what I have to offer.

Therefore, similarly to Paul Vandemere, Bill has compromised to use a mixture
of methodologies.

What I do is lecture, I don't do anything like a formal lecture, but I have
a lot of teacher-dominated instruction. I still have very high
expectations, I always have high expectations, but what I do is force my
students to blend with traditional academics, an ongoing almost
semester-long project, and most and best scenario is one that has a
public outcome, that they put on a seminar on a topic or they publish a
report on a topic and actually deliver it to a public audience. That
blends with the coursework so while I'm teaching economics and giving
them the fundamentals, they may be analyzing for example, the State
business climate. Or right now while I am teaching micro economics, I
have my kids each taking a different commodity, this seems a little dry,
but taking a different commodity like (well my daughter is doing rice
because she went to Japan, you know how these things work), other kids
are just doing wheat or pork bellies or whatever and do a complete

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analysis of that product and its history and its current market analysis
and future markets and all that.

The key to the change in his classroom is in his emphasis upon "engaging
students" much more than he had in the past.

I see the absolute need for engaging students and I also offer much
more of a variety of experiences like computer simulation, these
projects. I have all my kids teach junior achievement classes. They all
become junior achievement consultants and teach in the elementary
school and in the middle school. If you were to come into my class
maybe three days a week, it would look pretty much like the same old
stuff. There's a lot of other things that kids are doing, either on their
own that they eventually have to hand in, or is eventually done in the
classroom at the end of the semester. They put on these things and then
teach each other. Like what I did the other day is something I wouldn't
have done in the past. The topic was England's move to the
constitutional problem that started from Charles I and led to the rule of
Cromwell, that period in English history ending with the glorious
revolution. Typically, I would lecture that to the kids or tell them to
make it into a story. It can be a good, fascinating story. As storytellers
go, I get at least an average.

In this case, his methodology was different.

I just came into the classroom and started with each kid and said that
this is the piece of story you have, this is the piece of story that you
have. They'd already read the materials and been prepared. "Now
you've got 20 minutes each one of you to get your little piece of the story
researched and be ready." They were just small pieces. How successful
was James I, something like that. Each kid had a little piece of the story.
Then after 20 minutes, each kid started telling their piece in
chronological order. It accomplished the exact same thing as me
lecturing and it was way more effective. They can buy in, and talk and
express themselves.

The main change Bill perceives in the classroom atmosphere is that he
feels more relaxed, more a teacher than a disciplinarian, focused more on
student learning of subject matter than on control.

Just the whole atmosphere in the classroom, I'm much more relaxed and
I'm not into control at all. But the funny thing about that is part of my
philosophy, it's partly now I think I have the chance to do that. When
you are young and when you're being challenged, you have to be in
control, you have no choice. But being the age I am now, in sort of a
stature or whatever, kids don't mess with me too much. It works to your
advantage. You have an aura or whatever and you create an
atmosphere in your room and you don't have to be a policeman.
Although, I have to say that when I get a particularly bad class then
I've got to switch back to a different mode again. Otherwise, you just
can't get anything accomplished. As long as I can be completely relaxed

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and don't have to play disciplinarian, then that's the way I play it. I also

reach out to kids a lot more now by simple things, just normal

interpersonal relations.

Within the context of how he believed his teaching practice was different
after his international experience, Bill did not indicate that this change was
directly the result of this experience. Ed Donovan also describes a more
relaxed classroom atmosphere with regard to his relationship with his
students, a subject I discuss in the forthcoming section on empathy in this
chapter.

Ellen Stacey's and Mary Ehrhardt's changed pedagogy included
engaging their students in more projects where they took responsibility for
the work as well as introducing them to the Japanese practice of standing and
greeting the teacher when she enters the classroom. Mary and Ellen both
adapted knowledge from their experiences in China and Japan for classroom
use. Both were impressed with the practice of standing and greeting the
teacher. While Mary Ehrhardt did not require her class to do this every day,
she often referred to this practice as an example of the respect shown by
Chinese students to the teacher and to each other. Expecting her students to
take more responsibility for classroom tasks and their own behavior than she
had before her experience, Mary invoked the behavior of her Chinese
students as a model.

I've especially pointed out in discipline, using my Chinese students as

models in discipline. How respectful Chinese students are and how

especially what the practices are. When the Chinese teacher enters the
room, they rise. And the teacher asks them to sit down. They do not
speak unless they are called upon. I have many times found myself
referring to my Chinese students versus the disrespect it is to the
teacher and to their classmates when something that someone says just
sets off a general conversation. This class is very much prone to just -
they don't have the self control to listen without just verbalizing their
own experiences. I have to model for them what it is like in a Chinese

classroom, what the decorum and behavior of students is like. It is
helpful. They take it to heart.

24
Ellen Stacey went further than Mary on this issue, compelling her

students to stand and participate in greeting the teacher, a practice she had
experienced in Japan.

What I did when I came back is I felt that maybe what I should do with
my students is make them stand, like they did in Japan when the teacher
walked into the room, and greet me, say "Good Morning". Then I would
tell them to sit down. They hated it. They literally hated it. "What are
we gonna do, say the Pledge of Allegiance?” I said, "No, you're going to
say hello to me." Then I made them stand to say, "Thank you." Those
kids came back to me now and they say that they remember that the
most about my class, that I made them say "Good morning" or "Good
afternoon" and "Thank you." It's cute because they hated it but it was
something I was not going to be swayed from.

Ellen was also impressed with the sense of national loyalty she observed
in Japan and tried to imbue this sort of feeling about being an American into
her students.

I made them look at our flag and I said, "This is our country." I made
them realize that this flag was in my classroom. I never had a flag in
my classroom. I made sure I had a flag in my classroom. You do not
know how patriotic and how lucky you are after seeing those diversities
in schools. You don't know and realize how lucky you are to be in this
country. You say and you respect that flag. That's our flag, that's
America. I really became patriotic all of a sudden too. When I came
back from Japan, I realized that there was a national unity. They would
go shopping and they would pay $200 more for a product even though
they could have gotten a cheaper product made in Taiwan or whatever,
but because this was made in Japan, it had more value to them than this
product that was - the same product - just didn't carry the Japanese logo.
A strong loyalty. I felt that if we had, it I could create that kind of a
loyalty to our country that maybe the students would feel that "I'm not
black," "I'm not white," "I'm American and this is our goal to make
America a strong country."

Ellen also tried to incorporate the map skills field trip which she had thought
was an excellent method of teaching map skills into her curriculum, but the
lukewarm involvement of her colleagues and legal realities in the U.S.
thwarted her.
I tried to get my social studies department and myself to work out a map
where we could take our kids in May down to the Cultural Center, and I
wanted to do a map and I wanted to plan it where we could go here. "Oh
yeah, that's a very good idea. But you do it." I thought, "But you want to

take the trip." Right, my goal also was to get this gentleman to help me
organize it so the kids would find the unity between us as well as with

225

the kids. This teacher in the city. He said, "Oh that's a wonderful idea.
Do it." But that wasn't what I wanted. We ended up taking the trip, but
there were no map skills. He told me the city police would not allow 70
children, junior high kids, running through the Cultural Center
following maps. I didn't see there would be a problem.

Ellen's pedagogy, her methodology and curriculum changed very
drastically from the description she gives of herself as a teacher before her
experiences in Japan. She is the only one who seems to become more
traditional and book-oriented, especially after her second three-year
experience in Japan.

When I came back from Japan, for some reason I went right into a book.
I depended more on the book than I did on my creativity. The only
thing I could think of at this point, it's easier. Someone wrote a book,
kids' parents paid for it out of their taxes. I've never used, I think I
should use it. I still am teaching out of the book. Now in my classroom, I
say, " Bring your English book and open to page 36. Now let's read this
and discuss it." Maybe what I'm trying to do is, trying to teach them
grammar points, trying to teach them the tried and true professional
way of writing stories.

Her students "do creative writing [but] they don't like my topics, they tell me."
She describes the year I interviewed her as the worst year of her teaching
experience. She had worked with her students on the computers for three
months. When the system "crashed", all their work was gone.
This year is the worst year for me. The worst year. I wanted to use
computers, I wanted to put computers into their world. So we did a lot of
research, we used the book, we got the research, we wrote letters, we put
all the information in the computers. I didn't back it up and the whole
system crashed on us. All their work was gone. That was three months
of work and I had nothing. The only thing they had was the artwork
that was hanging out in the hall. That happened in November. We still
don't have the computers working. I think this year has been, I feel, a
total loss.
This hopeless feeling is in stark contrast to the effect she saw on her
teaching after the first seven month experience in Japan. "The year that I

had come back, the full year before I went to Japan, I won more awards for my

students' writings and skills than I had ever done prior to that time." She had

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used may of the techniques she had seen work in Japan, including teaming

and group work.

When I went back into that grouping, making ourselves feel that we
belonged together, there was a lot more communications. I was having
lunches with my kids in the classroom, we were talking about problems
that they were having. I was tutoring, I did it all on my own after
school. I had a Japanese program after school two nights a week. I had
tutoring two nights a week. I wanted the kids to stay focused and on
target. I didn't want them falling behind. We would do writings, we
would do stories. We entered all these contests that the school would
send us. I would enter my kids' works. An administrator called me up
and said, "What are you trying to do?" She was in charge of the Reading
Writing Connection. She wanted to know what I was trying to do
because my kids were winning all these awards. My kids were on the
radio. They read their writings on the radio. We were personally
interviewed by the newspaper.

Linking this enthusiasm with her experiences in Japan, Ellen explains,
"I admired the way, when I came back the first time, I had admired the way the
teacher in Japan communicated with those kids." The work she had done with
her American students where she had returned from Japan the first time left
her feeling satisfied. She had created something like the atmosphere in the
Japanese schools including the student teacher connections which she had
admired.

I think the kids had a good bond that year, even though it was only half
a year. But the kids seemed to have, at the end of that year I walked
away thinking "I did a good job this year." I think I really taught well
that year I came back. I think my outlook at the kids as though, instead
of being students they were my children. Almost that kind of a change
in my way of thinking and approach to the kids. I made a lot of contacts
at home that year. I must have called every student at least three times
that year, at their home, telling their parents that their kids are doing
great or I was having problems with them, which was something I
hadn't done before. I would call and say "I'm having problems with
your child," but I had never [before] called a parent and said, "I'm really
enjoying your child."

Feeling alienated from her colleagues, Ellen had immersed herself in the lives
of her students but only after her first experience in Japan.
I thought since I couldn't get involved with the teacher's lives, I would

get involved with the kids. And I did. I submerged myself into the kids'
lives. I think that was a very good year for me. Because I was being

227

burned out and going there and coming back I was renewed. The three
years over there, I think I came back burned out.

In spite of Ellen's feelings of being burned out and tired, she still
teaches differently than she had before. Like Mary Ehrhardt, she expects her
students to take on more responsibility.

I assigned each student a role just like they do in Japan. One student's
job was to take care of the chalkboard I gave them jobs, I gave them
errands, not errands so much. If someone was sick, it was your job to
take that person to the principal's office because he was sick and he
needed support . And that was the Japanese way.

She used a Japanese style motivational style to get the students to take
responsibility for something they wanted, a new carpet on the old wooden
floon

I asked them if they would like to have carpeting. They said "yes." I
asked for almost three months, "Do you want carpeting?" Then I didn't
ask after the 3rd month and the 4th month at Christmas, "When are you
going to get us carpeting?" And I said, "So you really want it?" I said,
"But if you want it, you cannot chew gum in my room." It was a trade
off. But I wanted them to want it. And they promised they wouldn't eat
gum so I put carpeting on the floor. I had no problems with that group.

When Ellen returned from Japan the second time, she thought about the
English language as a vehicle which ties this country together. This idea led
her to essentially "go back to the basics" and teach English diagramming to
help her African—American students develop good speaking and writing skills.

I felt that if the kids could understand the language of English

diagramming, that they could then explain some of the culture of

America. Because it lies in the language, it lies in the culture of our

country. These kids had a language skill that was really, if you were to

hire them, they would not be the ones that you would hire for an

engineer or a scientist because they had very poor language skills.
Ellen found herself returning to childhood values within the context of
experiencing a rigorous language program in Japan. A month of testing
frustrated her plans to use the month of March for diagramming sentences.

I went back to my childhood to show the kids the value of grammar and

how important it was to diagram sentences. That part I felt was a focus.

My students were forced to write and had no idea that there was a
subject and a verb in a sentence. So that forced me to become more

228
traditional. That part I think I picked up from Japan. Their English

skills are really poor. I wanted to diagram this year, but I have no time
to diagram for the month of March because it's all testing. I found out
that just like the Japanese, I was more aware of how important testing
became in America when I returned. When I left, it was important, but
now the big emphasis is 'testing'. A whole month of testing, that's
ridiculous.
Ellen expressed that as she was getting older, she was much more aware of how
much these students needed basic language skills, even as a base so that they
would understand the structure of another foreign language. What was most
important to her was:

Sentence structures [and] the memorization of sentence patterns. (I was

getting older). If I was teaching them English, I had to give them the

ability to really write stories, to be able to really express themselves in

writing and instilling in them the love of the English language so

that they would want to read more, and that they would want to explore

language itself and also prepare them to take another foreign language.
Ellen Stacey reflects ambivalence in her use of words to describe changes in
her teaching which relate to her international experience: "lazy," "by the
book," "not as creative." Yet this is juxtaposed with her attempt to create a
warm atmosphere in the classroom, integrate more rigor into her classroom,
and expect a higher level of responsibility from her students.

These teachers express how their international experience changed
them as teachers and presented some dilemmas about their own practice. The
content of the curriculum for every teacher involved in this study changed
with varying results in terms of their own sense of effectiveness. Mary, Paul,
and Ed make the case for positive and creative changes, leading to a more
authentic curriculum. Denise felt that her experiences in Japan modeled a
sense of limitless possibilities for her students. Ellen, after her first trip,
worked to create a sense of student-teacher bonding in and out of the

classroom. After her second trip, she stresses rigor, "back to basics" (i.e,

sentence diagramming) and patriotism. While Bill's approach became more

229
student centered and interactive, the lack of time to develop kis knowledge

base and pedagogy frustrated him.

All of these teachers have described changes in their teaching style
within the context of how they felt their methodology had changed as a result
of their international study and experience. Mary and Ellen describe changes
in their pedagogy by sharing their admiration for the display of a mutual
respect demonstrated in the tradition of standing and greeting the teacher.
Bill and Paul describe a more gradual evolving change which was affected by
their perceptions of the educational reform movement in the U.S. However,
they both connect the experience they had abroad with their greater
awareness of the educational debates of the late 808. While discussing the
central question of this study, they both spoke at length about school reform.
Neither explicitly connected international experience to school reform but
felt that their minds had been stimulated to consider new options about
schooling, such as different ways of organizing the school day, which Paul
mentions in Chapter 8. Ed Donovan's change in how he speaks to his students
seems more concretely defined. He does not speak about grappling with more
fundamental changes involving questions surrounding the teacher-dominated
versus student-centered pedagogies. Nevertheless, he does talk about his use
of role plays, such as BA FA, BA FA, which is not in the mode of the traditional
lecture approach. In fact, he indicates disapproval of latter pedagogy which
he considered the norm in China and different from his "Socratic approach".
Ed's experience in China seems to have reinforced this approach to teaching
while he, to a lesser extent than Paul and Bill, also considered issues of school

reform in connection with his discussion of changes in his pedagogy.

230
Changes in the Content of the Curriculum

All six teachers discussed changes in the content of their curriculum as
direct results of their study and experiences of another culture. Ellen Stacey,
Mary Ehrhardt, and Denise Green consider this their major area of change in
their classrooms. They choose not to emphasize differences in teaching style
or methods; it is the content of the curriculum which they describe as
different in their classrooms. Denise Green integrated her experience in
Japan within the curriculum, rather than concentrating on a single unit on
Japan. She had also used this method during her teaching career to share her
undergraduate experience in Ghana with her students.

I still had a regular classroom after I came back from Japan the first

time. I was teaching Japanese as part of the school day. Before I went, I

remember in classes I had we did an extensive unit on Japan. But after I

came back, it was not so much a unit per se, but things as they fit in, as

we came across things. Maybe that sounds a little vague, but besides the
language, the art is more oriented toward Japanese things. It was
probably more in depth. There would be things around the classroom
that would fit in and not because this month we're studying Japan,
because it related to something else we happened to be doing. This is
either a comparison or contrast; another way of looking at
accomplishing the same thing.

Paul Vandemere, Mary Ehrhardt, and Ed Donovan felt that their
teaching about East Asia was more authentic and greatly enriched by their
stories and artifacts which they could share with students. Ellen Stacey
became more book and grammar oriented to help students appreciate and use
the English language more effectively. Ed Donovan, like Paul Vandemere,
incorporated what he considers to be much more depth into the content of his
curriculum.

Each of them had different kinds of examples of how they changed the
focus of their curriculum and what new things that they had added. When
Mary Ehrhardt was in China, children in grades 4, 5, and 6 who had

experienced her China curriculum in the 2nd grade sent her questions to

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answer while she was there, which she did. "I wrote them letters which they

shared among their classes which responded to their specific questions about
China and the first graders are just dying to come to second grade to fly to
China, to learn about China." In February 1996, when I first interviewed her,
she was just about to launch the six week make-believe China study tour with
her second graders (described in Chapter 3). She is adding two new areas of
focus which she had not included before her experiences.

One is this whole issue of what it means to live in a third world country.

Second, is how being a country of 1.2 billion people impacts so much of

every day life. I felt that I really could not have given credence before

to the implications of having to manage the needs of that many people
and how so often so many issues that came up, the pat response would
be, "Well it's very complicated. We have just too many people in our
country." I think that I need to work those two factors somehow into
the curriculum.

Mary had presented an all-school assembly about her experience,
which her students had attended. One of her examples about Chinese
population will be "If the 25 children, that one table of 5, there are 1, 2, 3, 4
tables in the class, that the 1 table which has 5 children represents China
compared to the other 3 tables which represent the whole world, the
remaining population of the world. China represents 1/ 4 of that." She will use
her experience learning about brush painting to help them enjoy this art and
understand that the Chinese ideal in this particular ancient art is "to emulate
the ideal, to emulate the master. So perhaps that's the beginning of their
appreciation for Chinese painting."

Probably the most radical change of the content of her curriculum is
the introduction of Chinese language to her second graders.

Rather than asking a Chinese speaker to come do the language

component, I've been able to do that myself. I've been able to teach

some Chinese and use Chinese frequently during our China studies so
that the boys and girls are much more interested in learning the
language and so the language is more a focal point. From my Chinese

study, my pronunciation is better and my understanding of the
language and actually my ability to read a little and write a little has

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been intriguing to the children so that we're picking up more books
that are written in Chinese and identifying some characters. The
language has been much more of a focus. I'm just so pleased with that
because I feel that it adds an authenticity to the curriculum. The
language has been a big part.

The language work, the artifacts she brought back to share with students, the
stories she told greatly enhanced the authenticity of their work on China.

Just this afternoon, we have just recently flown to China, taken our
imaginary trip to China. This has been as successful as it has been in
other years. It seems that second graders are still pretty gullible and
they do love pretending. They really get into taking the trip and they
do believe that they are in China and that their hotel rooms each night
look remarkably like their own homes, their own bedrooms at home.
But they come back every day willing to travel on someplace different.
So this afternoon, we visited the home of a Chinese child and learned
about her family and their activities and we are in Beijing for a few
days now. We visited the Forbidden City and the Great Wall through my
slides. The whole experience of China for these children is much more
real because of my experience. So the materials that I was able to collect
and bring back including the slides and other artifacts that just really
enriched the teaching. I think that at least in this part of the study I am
more like their tour guide and every day we look to see where we are
going today. I like that aspect of it. For several weeks we've been doing
some comparative geography study of China and the United States
through mapping of many different kinds of maps. One of the most
interesting ones is looking at rainfall and then discovering how that
impacts where things grow. So then the children actually create a map
on which they apply things like tea and millet and rice. They begin to
get a sense of the geography of China. We also, by the time we take the
trip to China, have learned some language so that we can speak a little
bit.

The students had learned how to do some calligraphy and how to say
some words and phrases, especially typical greetings such as 111' hao
(pronounced knee how) for hello.

We have learned typical greetings and how to say "How old are you?",
how to count. We have learned the basic strokes, calligraphy strokes
and a little bit of the history of Chinese writing and how some
characters represent picture and how other characters are often a
combination of pictures. Often the language came out of the celebration
of a holiday. 80 we learned how to give holiday greetings, how to say
"Happy Birthday," "Happy New Year," and then I guess though I have all
along used a little Chinese. When I say "slow down," "quiet," or "speed
up,"so perhaps there really has been just all along a little language
emphasis.

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This year when the students got together with their penpal friends in the

Chinese bilingual class in Boston, they all were able to share a little more
because Mary's second grade students knew some Chinese and enjoyed using
the words.

The class is a second grade, it's a bilingual class from a Boston public
school. Because of Boston's extensive bussing program, most of the
Asian children are bussed to the school from their communities which
are primarily Chinatown and East Boston. Very often these are children
whose families are newly arrived in Boston so that probably English is
not spoken at home. This particular school has the bilingual Chinese
program from kindergarten through the 6th grade. But the objective is
that each year some of the children will have enough English
proficiency to move out of the bilingual program to a regular class.

She also felt that the struggle to learn Chinese would help her students
empathize with what many of the seven and eight year old Chinese
immigrants were going through in their struggle to learn English.

Coming up next week, we will explore Chinatown with them, their home
community so that I think whereas we're struggling to learn a little
Chinese, we have a greater appreciation, our children do, for what it
feels like to be a newcomer to America in the course of the semester.
One or two Chinese children have either just arrived or have moved
back to China so that we're aware that these are very new immigrants. I
don't know what the chemistry is of this particular class. This
particular Chinese class has really been great in that they've not been
shy. Even though the language has been a barrier, they have
interacted at play and around activities such as tan gren puzzles and
creating a dragon at the New Year's time so that their comfort level is a
very good one, a high level of comfort.

The two teachers carefully paired the Chinese students who were
having the most difficulty speaking with a student who has a better
understanding of English to make it easier for them. Because many of the
bilingual students speak Cantonese rather than Mandarin, Mary's students
became aware of the complexities of many dialects in China, including
Cantonese.

On both sides, we try to facilitate that by pairing - being careful about

the pairing of children and pairing a really non-English speaker with

another Chinese child who can almost be an interpreter who is a little

further along in their English. Interestingly enough to Boston, most of
the families who come, come from the south of China so they speak

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Cantonese not Mandarin. This bilingual Chinese teacher does speak
both Cantonese and Mandarin. Not only are the children learning
English, these children, but they're also being exposed to Mandarin too.
That's interesting for my children to know is that even though the
reading and writing is the same for all Chinese people, there are may
dialects and just as there are many English accents, there are many
dialects so it's difficult for a very large country, it's difficult for people
to speak with one another sometimes.

Mary felt that the way she had introduced the population issue combined with
her first-hand experience there had caused the children in her class to be
more open and receptive to the Chinese class than she felt her students had
been in the previous nine years of the penpal exchange program.

My realization of the population density in China were in our very first
sessions, which were actually videotaped so that the parents could see
how we introduce a unit of study. So for me, one of the focuses that I
really wanted to emphasize was what a billion people is like and also
what for me were the extreme contrasts between modernization, but
what it was like to be a third world country. So perhaps, just from the
fact that from the very beginning we said that this table of five
children represented the population of China versus the other four
children being all the other countries of the world, or if we were in a
group that represented all the peoples of the world, one in four of us
would be speaking Chinese. That Chinese is the language most
frequently spoken in the world. Maybe this year there has been a
greater emphasis on just what the reality of living in China is and the
reality of China in the whole world focus. So I think because of my
experience that the fact that I experienced it first hand, I really wanted
that to be a major focus. So perhaps that has helped establish an
openness, a receptivity to the Chinese children who are our penpals. It
has been remarkable the way the relationship just got off the ground.
Even though their teacher and I both said we have very active and
challenging classes this year, when they're together they have been
marvelous. They have great experiences together.

Mary's work studying Chinese as a prerequisite to her being accepted in
the program greatly enhanced her experience in China and was a key
component in a curriculum change which allowed her students to connect
more meaningfully with the Chinese students in the Chinese bilingual class in
Boston.

I sought out this kind of exchange or this kind of experience for my

children so they would have an opportunity to hear Chinese, to meet

Chinese children, and so that they would feel that they had some

connection with the Chinese children. So this is part of one of the
reasons for learning the languages so we can use it and they do, both in

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their greeting and leaving, good-byes and hellos. They do notice in

their exchange of letters how difficult it is to put together an English

sentence and then also though how eloquent the children are in their

Chinese calligraphy, their writing. So when we write back, there was

generally a big emphasis at least being able to say zai jian [good-bye] or

at least be able to write some characters to show that we are able to write

a little Chinese too.

On a personal level, Mary continued to experience connections and
enrichment because she had made the effort to learn Chinese and has in this
respect become a model for her students about the connections one can make
when the effort is made to learn a language. The authenticity and meaning of
her experience resonated when she was able to share with her class the
birthday cards sent from two 14-year-old students in China and further
enhanced their empathy for Chinese children who are working so hard to
learn English.

Just within the last month, on my birthday, two of the students with

whom I had a very close relationship, sent a birthday card and a little

gift. A wonderful birthday card in English which said "Wishing
happiness especially you for." That was something fun to show my
class, my children at school that in China, they struggle with English.

Paul Vandemere also considered the authenticity of his curriculum to
have been tremendously enhanced by what he could bring back to his
students from Japan. When talking about geography and the symbolic
significance of Mount Fujiyama, he could speak about it from the perspective
of someone who had climbed the mountain. When they studied the tea
ceremony, Paul's wife, Ruth, actually performed it with the class. Like Mary,
Paul used slides and pictures to make Japan come alive to his students. He had
his students perform role plays about the proper ways of bowing and
presenting and receiving business cards in Japan for teacher workshops such

as the 1992 National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) national conference,

where I observed their presentation.

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Paul returned from Japan in August of 1986 to direct and teach in the

newly created East Asian Studies Program in his district. Initially, this
program was a magnet center with students being bussed there from three
other high schools. Subsequently, the program was expanded to another site.
For the eight years that Paul taught in this program, he used his experience in
Japan and his five weeks of touring China to help make these areas "come
alive" for his students.

To make these countries come alive, it's very tough to do for a teacher.
When you can bring your own experiences and experiences of others
into the classroom, not only your knowledge of just the culture, etc.
which you're going to be teaching, but the stories that you can tell and
the experiences that you can share, it makes your lesson more credible
with the kids. It brings a degree of authenticity and it brings,
hopefully if you do it right, it brings that country to life for them and
the people to life for them. You get beyond the stereotypes.

Paul felt that a textbook-based curriculum would not include the kinds
of cultural experiences that he could offer his students. Ed and Mary also give
concrete examples of how they were able to enrich, because of their
international experience, the content of their curriculum in ways that went
far beyond what could be accomplished in a textbook. Paul listed the issues
that he felt his experiences had enabled him to explore with his classes.

I came back with a much greater insight into various aspects of East
Asia. Even though I only spent five weeks in China, it still helped me
there and I did visit the other East Asian countries a number of times
and it allowed me to have a much greater insight and again, not just the
traditional areas that are taught, the geography, the history and
political system, etc. But to me it's important that our students know
about how a country is organized and not just at the government level,
but how they related to each other; how the individual fits in in that
society as compared to different groups; different relationships,
different roles that people have, are they similar or are they different.
What is the role of women; what is the role of children in that society;
how are families raised; what role does the community play in that?
These are all things that you don't learn necessarily that much in a lot
of the courses you take. They clearly are not in the normal textbooks
that students would be getting. That's not the kind of topic that they
would get, maybe a paragraph or two, as an add-on or as an extra credit
kind of thing. So I revamped my curriculum to what I hope I was trying
to reflect the society as it was. Dealing with issues at a much more in-

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depth basis, topics on a much more in-depth basis. Clearly my living
there allowed me to do that.

He knew the proper degree of bowing and could demonstrate this to his classes,
the honored seats in taxicabs or restaurants, for example, the meal experiences
and many other cultural experiences with which most Americans are not
familiar.

The respect that you have for someone else, the deference you give
depends on your position or level compared to that person, either
socially or from a business standpoint. Then your language adjusts, the
degree of the bow that you give adjusts. And other kinds of things.
Then I could tell my students, here is a 45 degree bow, here is this kind
of how, here are words that are used, here is a certain deference that's
given and here's how it's done. Here's the favorite seat in a taxicab,
here's the honored seat in a business meeting, here is the honored place
in a restaurant, here is the place of honor in an elevator. These are all
cultural things that are tied in with the society and how they operate
with each other. I couldn't have gotten that; it would have been much
more difficult for me to learn that had I not experienced the culture,
had I not experienced the elevator operators in department stores, and
the affected speech that they have had and the other deferential role
that is given in all those kinds of things. To learn that traditionally that
when a kid is disciplined at home, he is kicked outside of the house: the
differences that you see as well as a lot of the similarities. But I could go
into much more depth as a result of what I was doing. Even the meal
experiences, there is a whole culture around food: what you eat, how
you eat it, who gets to eat it first. And the bathing rituals, just a whole
range of things that would be much more difficult to learn and to bring
to life if you were not actually there.

Paul's experience in Japan allowed him to organize his curriculum to include
student engagement in cultural practices in addition to his telling them about
these practices. Reminiscent of Mary Ehrhardt's experiential pedagogy with
her second graders, Paul arranged for his students to experience such cultural
practices as the tea ceremony and martial arts.

My wife will come in and do the tea ceremony. We don't just have to talk
about it any longer or show a couple of pictures. She would come in and
perform the tea ceremony. I would have students come in and do some
martial arts and not just the superficial karate, the distortion that is
frequently taking place with martial arts in this country is that they
have borrowed it from Japan and Korea and then the talk of the history
behind it. Or I could talk about Sumo wrestling and the connection
Sumo wrestling has with agriculture and the rituals that take place
before them and explain those rituals. So virtually every topic that I
taught, I could go into much more depth. I could show them pictures of

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Mt. Fuji, because I climbed it. I could show them different parts of Japan
or China, I could talk to them about trips down the Yangtze because I did
it for five days. Those kinds of things. So the content clearly changed.

Paul felt he had much greater insight as a result of living in Japan
upon which he could draw when he developed curriculum. Just as John Dewey
taught that a teacher immersed in subject matter knowledge would be better
prepared to plan lessons enabling her to shepherd a child from his own
understandings to a deeper awareness of the field, Paul felt he was better
equipped to plan lessons and curriculum about East Asia than he had been
before his experience in Japan.

I guess because I had a much greater insight as a result of living there,
I could design, I could feel confident in my knowledge and I could
design projects for kids that would have them take on different roles. I
could design, I could bring in slides I could bring in reality. I could
bring as much of the country so that's how it changed also my teaching
strategies. I could bring in my walking sticks that I used to climb Mt.
Fuji. I could bring in the daruma and talk about the good luck and how
you begin the New Year with these or other symbols. We brought back
26 boxes of things. We shipped them from Japan and a lot of them were
things that I used. That's how that really affected my instruction. I
could bring in the actual artifacts. I can bring in an actual wedding
envelope that you want to use for weddings and talk about all the
different parts of a Shinto wedding. All the wedding ceremony, all the
different aspects, because I attended one. I went to pet cemeteries.
Again, so my instruction was changed because I could bring in my
experiences and the experience of others directly into the classroom.

Similar to Paul Vandemere, Ed Donovan teaches an "Asian Studies"
course in the afternoon in addition to the China study segment of the
humanities curriculum. He has found a great resource in a Chinese library
supported by the Chinese-American community in Metropolitan Detroit.

I've been using the Chinese library... so when I talk about Chinese
Opera, I can bring a Chinese Opera in and I can bring in the books that
not just describe but also indicate what the position of the masks are for
each of these characters or costumes rather. I make sure that they keep
a journal, one article of which must deal with China. They go to an
article or newspaper and they pick a current event they want to keep
with for the rest of the semester. Like the Yangtze River is a big thing
with the kid who is an ecologist, for example. Somebody latched on to
Deng Xiaoping last year. They thought he was going to die last year.
There are a lot of things that that they have access to that are in regular

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publications that we get in the States, but the library has been a big
help.

Ed now uses more classical Chinese poetry and music in his courses, which he
became familiar with during his year in China.

Heather and I put together a bunch of poems from Li Bo and Du Fu and
some of the others. I just took down some manuscripts that I had
hanging in the room that are calligraphies. I had the translations for
them. This is the first semester I have not since I got back, that I don't
have somebody who can speak Chinese in my classroom. When the
Chinese read it, it is far different in terms of the cadences. I play
Chinese music as my students enter the room sometimes. It's not just
Chinese Opera, but things that are fairly modern, like the Yangtze River
song. The Yangtze River song came from somebody who entered the
song in a competition and won the competition with it. It's supposed to
represent Chinese feeling for their land. I've got two or three
Communist tapes that I play, Communist music like "Our Hopes are in the
Field" and "East is Red," stuff like that.

The initial reaction of American students to hearing Chinese opera voices as
they entered the room gradually changed to respect.

The first time they hear, especially Chinese music, the Chinese Opera

for example, they say, "How can people listen to that?" My response is,

"Well let's listen to it for a little bit. Maybe you can hear something in

in that you might respond to." After they have heard it for four or five

days, they cease to comment about it. They'll say things like, "Oh I like
that passage." I had one kid two years ago that took a passage and wrote

a piece of music around it. It's kind of neat, they did it down in the

music room. I don't think he ever published it but just the idea that he

could take a piece of it and work it into something that was Western.

In contrast with the experiences of Ed, Paul, and Mary on his return
from Japan, Bill Notebaum found himself in a classroom role which deeply
frustrated him. He had learned enough to know how much he did not know
about Japanese culture and history. While his work on economics with adults
was fulfilling, he felt that his students were ill prepared to understand the
nuances of U.S.-Japanese trade because they had little background in
economics. He felt woefully under prepared about Japanese language, culture,
and history because of his lack of depth in these areas.

The year he returned, he worked together with a teacher who had

studied some Japanese to initiate and team teach a one semester Japanese

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language and culture class. He was required by the large Japanese business
association which sponsored his study tour to "do something concrete when
you return back and you provide them evidence of what you have done and so
forth". Bill took this responsibility "seriously and moving into that class was
the most immediate, most concrete thing that I did". Thinking that "the best
way to learn anything is to teach it", Bill also used teaching this course as an
opportunity to learn more about Japan in areas other than economics, the
"softer side of things".

So I figured I'd just get right into here and start learning Doing

literature, Japanese literature with the kids, rather than just doing

numbers and trade. It's more where I was headed intellectually, not
where I'd really begun my career. I was the humanities type person.

So I wanted to bring the two back together again, I guess.

Within the context of this class, he practiced "words with my Japanese
friends" but was frustrated because "I just never had the time to devote to it",
in addition to his belief that "learning disabilities" precluded his learning of a
foreign language. Bill was disappointed with his performance in and the
outcome of the class, feeling that it was very expensive for the school district
when only 14—18 students had enrolled. "A brand new elective in a school that
already has a saturated elective and advanced placement honors track" is
difficult to sustain. Because his method of teaching required that he be
knowledgeable about the subject, he felt unprepared to teach this course.

Quite frankly, I don't think we did all that great of a job. It was hard to

mix the two together. We thought we'd find a natural mix and it became

more like her day by day which isn't great. Her language level was well

short of fluency. I'm not criticizing her, but I think that makes it
harder for her to make it real natural flowing. My overall comfort level
and knowledge base in Japanese was sophomore at best. I'm talking
about the whole country, the political system, etc. I had no formal study
whatsoever; I just read a couple of history books, read a bunch of econ
stuff. But you can't talk about that forever. A lot of the econ. stuff I had
was basically useless because the kids needed so much prior econ.
understanding in order to make any sense out of it whatsoever. It ended
up falling more on my weaker area in Japanese which was more than

Japanese culture piece, which I hadn't gotten that much preparation in.
At the same time so many other things were developing in my life and

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career that I wasn't in that kind of a position like a young teacher or a

mid-year teacher, totally into one thing. I had about four or five other

major things going at the same time. If I could do a little reading and a

little prepping, but I couldn't isolate myself and try to turn myself into a

total Japanese literate person. The way I teach, it affects my

effectiveness. I don't do worksheets or anything like that.

Bill brings up the dilemmas inherent in the issue of veteran teacher
learning. While this study joins the many advocates of school reform, like
John Dewey and presently Lauren Resnick (1987), Sharon Feiman—Nemser
(1983), and Mary Kennedy (1992) who promote the life-long learning of
veteran teachers. The reality, with which I am personally familiar, of
teaching 150 students a day, giving each of them as much personal attention as
is possible, is overwhelming in itself. A teacher who wants to give an essay
exam or paper is faced with 150 of these to carefully read, respond to, and
evaluate. At 10 rrrinutes per paper, one of those assignments takes 25 hours.
This does not consider time for careful preparation of each lesson. How then
can we expect teachers to learn new subjects, such as Japanese language and
culture? Many teachers, like Mary Ehrhardt, Paul Vandemere, and Ed
Donovan, use their summers to learn more about the subjects they are
teaching. Bill's frustration about not having enough time to fully study
Japanese culture is a dilemma many teachers face, sometimes forcing them to
choose between their own families and their personal growth and
development.

Mary Ehrhardt, like Bill, was also concerned that she did not have the
time to pursue her language study upon reentry to the U.S. because in addition
to her regular teaching responsibilities, she was asked to mentor a novice
teacher, a responsibility which took substantial time and effort on her part.
The pedagogy and the curriculum of these six teachers who studied and

experienced another culture changed in many ways to greater and lesser

extents. They all attributed these changes to the effect of their international

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experience upon their professional lives in and out of the classroom. While it

is not my purpose to attempt to prove causal relationships between these
experiences and teacher practice, one cannot ignore the impact that these
teachers feel their international experience had upon their pedagogy. In the
next sections of this chapter, I will explore their beliefs about the impact of
their experiences upon the classroom atmosphere, their feelings of empathy
with students, and their efforts to debunk negative stereotypes. In a sense, the
pedagogical aspects of teacher change are also reflections of personal
transformation, which is the main topic in Chapter 8. These teachers believe
their classroom practice has changed. For some of them, the impact of the

international experience was profound.

Negative Stereotypes Debunked

In addition to an authenticity which the experience abetted in the
teaching of subject matter, the experience helped these teachers to deal more
effectively with negative cultural or racial stereotypes. Paul felt that Japan
has been very successful when judged by the values of western materialism.
The idea that many high school students consider anything different to be
"weird" or "strange" was palliated by the perception of Japan as an economic
success story. This perception, according to Paul Vandemere, is another
misperception of Japan; that its economic success is the result of a people more
imbued with the work ethic, competitive zeal and company loyalty than most
American workers.

But always in the back of their [the students] minds, they understood

this is a society that has by western standards been very successful.

They have done very well in terms of the international marketplace.

Clearly, they have a much lower suicide rate and much higher

graduation rate, the longevity. You look at different measurements that

tend to be used in looking at countries. And Japan and other countries
in East Asia are clearly way up there in so many of those. 80 even

though you're right, to some the initial reaction was "Wow this is really
weirdl," then hopefully the following question is "Let's think for a

243

minute. Why are they doing this? Why is this there?" Hopefully, I
could give them an answer so they could learn an answer that then
made sense to them.

Paul was aware of negative stereotypes because some people voiced their
opposition to his program around the time of school millage elections for
funding the schools.

It's the more you know about someone, the more difficult it is to make
false judgments about them. You might still not like them, but your
reasons for not liking them are hopefully based on honest
understandings not misunderstandings. The more that my kids learned
about Japanese and Chinese people from Hong Kong, etc., the less likely
they would see them as a textbook enemy, as part of the enemy. To get
beyond the idea of Japan bashing and the stereotypes, I early on knew a
couple of people supposedly a couple of taxpayers in the district, who
said they would never vote for a millage in our district as long as we had
the East Asian program because we were teaching them about Japan and
China and that was wrong. Fortunately, they are in the minority and
there are lots of others who had a different feeling. But it's a whole lot
easier I think to get beyond the stereotypes and the myths because of
the knowledge you have when you spend time overseas.

Paul team taught the social studies credit with another Japanese
language teacher. In the first years Japanese teachers who participated in a
sister state exchange program were welcomed into the program until state
funding for this program was eliminated. The students who enrolled in the
Center were generally not in the category of racists or Japan bashers because
these students had made a two credit hour commitment to learn about Japanese
language and culture. He was sometimes confronted by students whom he did
not know in the hallway about Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor during World
War II.

Kids who had those stereotypes who had the closed minds were not that
likely to sign up to begin with. But what I did get was occasional
comments in the hallway, little derogatory things. And I would then
talk to those people, not in a confrontational way, because I knew that a
lot of times it was based on something their parents had said, someone
else, families, family experience, and grandpa. Usually we had the most
potential for friction or problem occurred around the time of our
discussion of Pearl Harbor and the dropping of the bomb. Then also on
trade issues with Japan. And those are flash points. That's when
someone would come in and say, "Well my dad said this. My grandpa said
this." You could all of a sudden understand some of the feeling, the

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intensity that someone may have. But again, because I never once
would impose my view on students regarding those flash point issues,
they could never at least successfully accuse me of trying to impose a
certain opinion on that sort of thing regarding those controversial
issues. We did not attract the bigots, they weren't going to sign up for a
class like that. We got it in indirect ways perhaps but not that much.

Ed Donovan also found that confrontations about his interest in China
were more likely to occur with students who were not taking the specialized
courses on China and East Asia which he was teaching.

I gave a slide presentation here, I think it was Martin Luther King day.
They were asking for people that had different ethnic experiences to
give things. I was talking about China, what a wonderful place it was
and how great the people were. One kid said something to the effect,
"Did you like China better than you like the U.S.?" A very right-wing
kind of question. I said, "There is no question about how that should be
answered." Then I went on with my lecture. This kid couldn't stand it.
He said, "You didn't answer my question." "Of course, I did." I said,
"Which do you prefer?" He said, "Well I prefer America." I said, "So do
I." He was satisfied and shut up. But he could not tolerate the fact that I
would praise China for some of the things when he thought that I
should be knocking them down all the time. I talked to him afterwards
and said "the question you asked was a very intolerant question." He
said, "Well I didn't know if you were beefing up China so that we'd all
want to become Chinese or not." I said, "It's pretty evident that I live
here and I do have a choice." That shut him up a little bit. I've given
talks to parent groups and a couple of the churches here. They are
much more tolerant I think than some of these kids are. The kids are
looking for identity and that's part of it.

Mary Ehrhardt was very concerned about the possibility of her students
developing another kind of negative stereotype about China on the poverty
issue, reflecting a general disdain of poor people in American society. One
way she works to defuse this tendency is to show an old film called Tom and

Didi narrated by Shirley MacLaine.

It is one of our very introductory experiences to show differences. I
remember differences in housing, the American house which has an
outside garden and the Chinese house with the garden on the inside and
the wall on the outside. Many differences are portrayed. But on the
other hand, there are all the similarities. Laughing in both languages,
the words for mother and father in both languages. That is a good
talking point. It's a good vehicle for launching some conversations.

Mary considers that one of the major goals of the study of China and the

penpal exchange, is to "lessen negative stereotyping" among the children.

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I guess that's probably one of the goals of the whole study. One of the
goals would be to lessen the negative stereotyping. One of the ways of
achieving the goal has been to show the richness of the culture and the
sort of the incredible art and crafts and incredible inventions that this
Asian society has achieved. 80 by making the cultural aspects very
appealing, being able to help the children appreciate them, then they
are less likely to just go on with their stereotypes. Especially with the
Chinese children, that's the other thing. To interface with the Chinese
children in the bilingual class - Chinese American children or many of
them are newly arrived — and they're in the bilingual class because
they are just beginning English speakers. But, we do lots of pre-
meeting talking and role playing so that we won't hurt the others. I
guess that is a part of all of it too I don't know how we do it. Hopefully
we do. I think they so appreciate the art that they do, the kite making,
the pottery. I think that they really can appreciate the culture.

Recognizing and respecting the differences among people is important for all
children according to Mary.

It is interesting on the elementary level, not so much that we were

different, but in recognizing the differences. Sometimes I always find a

tactile experience, feel this black hair, some of the quality of skin, and

just that our curiosity needs to be satisfied about the differences. So I

think they too wonder about curly hair.

Denise Green found that the impact of her experience helped her
students, many of whom were African-American children, dream impossible
dreams and expand their ideas of what is possible. Denise became a model to
them, her postcards and coins precious symbols of things they might do some
day. Within two years of returning from Japan, in 1990 she raised money and
planned a trip for twelve students and twelve parents from a unique magnet
school in Indianapolis which specialized in English as a second language.

Most of the students on the trip were in the 6th grade except for one second
grader who accompanied his older sister and mother. Denise and the families
raised $60,000.00 to pay for the trip. Even though it lasted only 2-1/ 2 weeks,
some of the students were "still corresponding with their host families" when I
interviewed her in 1994.

The students came from many different areas of Indianapolis since this

was a magnet school. Denise thought that the teachers of subjects such as

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math gave some especially creative assignments to these students. The

children would be learning and sharing their experience with their class as

well.

The best assignment I thought was from the 6th grader's math teacher.
The teacher told them to go to a grocery store and make a list of ten
things and how much they cost. And do the same in Japan and find out
how much they cost. Translate the cost from yen to dollars. Compare
and contrast, also in packaging size. That made a lot of sense to me.
Then report back to class. We also had another teacher that said to keep
a diary and then share it.

During this trip, she sent back postcards to each of her own students. When

she returned, she gave them a writing assignment to

Describe the perfect classroom, describe the perfect teacher and the
perfect field trip, three separate assignments. The perfect field trip, I
never had a response like this. The kids talked about going in a
spaceship to outer space And when I looked at them, I just kept
reading them over and over and I was just truly amazed because their
teacher, someone they knew, someone they could touch (this is my
belief) had taken some kids on a field trip to Japan. They thought that I
could take them any place. They thought the ideal field trip could be
anywhere. When I had given them that assignment in the past in other
grades, it was nothing like the response I got to this I was just amazed
by it. I thought if my going, sending back little postcards, and bringing
back the cheap little coins it seemed like they were beginning to
believe that some things were possible, that they hadn't thought about
before. It does have an impact. And it just gave me more
encouragement to keep on providing opportunities for them.

One way Denise provided these opportunities was by inviting Japanese visitors

into her class to talk about Japan.

I knew about Japanese visitors to try to get them to come into the
classroom. Of course, they [the students] always wanted to exchange a
few words with them. They'd be fascinated by that. They would beg me
to teach them Japanese, to teach them a little Spanish. They were just
fascinated by that.

Ed Donovan's method of dealing with negative stereotyping by his

students draws upon some of his previous work in anthropology about the way

many people in the world stereotype an American.

What I do is give them [his students] a stereotype of an American. All

Americans have long noses. All Americans are rich. All Americans are
well educated. So I'll take it point for point with them and give it back to
them how the Americans are viewed and stereotyped. All Americans are

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aggressive and a kid says, "We're not aggressive people." Well I say,
"Take a look at the way you walk compared to the way that the Chinese
walk. Look at the way you point. Look at the way you wave for people to
come to you." I show them how the Chinese walk and how they wave for
people to come to them and how they point. Much different. I say,
"There's a basic assumption here isn't there? When you point like this,
you're pointing like a spear. When you point like this, you're being
gracious." It's a lot different way of looking at things and you can get
right into the culture just in those kinds of things. I'm showing
something, but I'm not pointing. It's not like a spear, it's more like an
offering.

When he talks about and shows pictures of the very poor village he visited, he
is hoping that the students will develop some tolerance for the people, some
awareness about what their lives might be like.

I don't know but I'm hoping that, for some, toleration gets built in for
the poor around the world. A lot of these kids have been to foreign
countries and have never seen anything like that. In fact, they've
never seen anything except [their town]. So when you describe
something that's not [their town], it's way outside of their field of
knowledge, and the only one that I've found that had seen anything like
was a gal who had spent some time in Mexico last summer doing some
church work down there. She was in a very poor village where
conditions were very similar. So we talk a lot. She can connect with me.
She understands exactly what I'm talking about.

While sharing his experiences in China with his American students, he
discussed issues like cultural gender differences, an example of which was the
consternation he had caused by seating the Chinese men and women
differently. He also planned activities such as Ba Fa, Ba Fa, the goal of which
was to help his students understand and tolerate cultural differences.

I came here and these desks are all individual and kids would move them
around. We sat in circles and there might be a boy, girl, girl, boy, boy,
girl. You have a random pattern. It struck me I think the first time that
I was in a class, where I had a seminar and I was discussing something.
I use a lot of examples of Chinese, differences in culture, based on
Chinese and American viewpoint of things, today even. They wanted to
know if I had ever eaten a dog. Oh, yeah. Whoa! You say, you know it's
different. When you are starving, you'll eat anything that's edible. If a
dog happens to be nearby, too bad dog. People get used to that kind of
thing. Still, it's tough for them to understand: that different people
aren't just Americans in different skin or different clothing.

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When confronted with students who were showing blatant intolerance

toward one another, Ed's response was very different after his experience in
China.

They know that I don't put up with intolerant kinds of nonsense. I
won't let them kid each other at a cruel level at all. I just don't put up
with it, particularly if it's ethnic. I think a lot of things that probably
went on before are the same things that are happening today in places
all over the country. I am very sensitive to it now. Much more so I
think than I was before. I think there were a couple of times, not just a
couple, probably many times before I went to China where things were
said and I didn't even realize that they were a slam against another kid.
[Now] I confront it immediately. I don't give them any quarter on it.
They know it so I don't have a problem with it any more, except maybe
at the beginning of the year when it's different classes.

The content of Ed's curriculum changed substantially after his year in
China and continues to change with each successive teaching experience in
China (i.e., the summers of 1991 and 1995). In describing how he handles
negative stereotypes with his students, he tells the story of his conception of
the Ugly Americans in China.

I think that people who teach in China for any time at all recognize the
ugly American when they see them. We saw a bunch of them. In Xian,
a tour group dressed like Americans would dress on Sunset Blvd. or in
Miami or wild dress. Big baggy shorts and floppy t-shirts with a lot of
print on them. Walking as though they are on the muscle, very
aggressive walk. They expected things to be like it was in America and
it wasn't. They acted very badly to it. I know what they talk about when
they talk about the ugly American They drove up in this air-
conditioned Mitsubishi bus that was brand new I'm sure. They were a
California group, probably from Beverly Hills. They were dressed to the
nines. The men in yachting outfits, like duck trousers, boat shoes, and
blue blazers with captain-type yachting hats. Women were dressed in
safari outfits, with hiking boots and the stockings, and knickers.
Jodhpurs they were. They had the fan out to here along the sides; the
silk scarf with a safari helmet. As they were walking along the Wall,
they were walking as Americans do, kind of apart from each other,
giving each other space. Because they were not walking quickly, the
Chinese who were, go in between them and sometimes would touch
them. The one lady turned a little bit one way and say, "Well I never."
Then she turned the other way and said, "Well I never." This went on all
the way down the Wall. She was expecting people to say, "Oh, excuse me
for bumping into you." Nobody was having any part of that, except her.
You could hear them talking about how rude the Chinese were with no
concept in their head about the space that they were taking up or about
how rude they were because they expected people to conform to their
particular culture.

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When his students react by laughing, sure that they would never behave this

way in another country, Ed cautions them.
Mostly they laugh and see it as a funny story. Then what we do is come
back to it and say what are our basic assumptions here? How would you
behave? None of them believe that they would behave that way. My
comment is that "you are a product of your country. Unless you have
that winnowed in some way or leavened in some way, you're going to
continue to be a product of your culture. You are going to express your

culture in exactly the same way that these people did that were on the
wall in Xian." "Oh, I'd never do that." " Don't say never."

Empathy in the Classroom

Several of those teachers talked about their heightened empathy with
students in their classrooms, especially among immigrant and ethnic minority
students. In their study of teacher behavior, anthropologists George and
Louise Spindler (1994) have documented that middle class white teachers often
favor students with similar ethnic backgrounds to their own. How these
teachers feel their international experience may affect their relationships
with their students may add another aspect to the Spindlers' analysis. A
teacher's in-depth exposure to another culture, such as these teachers
experienced, can lead to their more sensitive and empathetic relationship with
students of different ethnicities and backgrounds. International experience
may affect a veteran teacher to help her become more sensitive about
negative stereotypes, as Ed Donovan clearly thinks he is.

I am very conscious of where they are coming from. Extraordinarily

conscious. I think the same thing is true when I have kids coming in

from European countries. All of a sudden your antenna goes up and you
are very attentive to what the differences might be Even kids from

Canada. There's really a difference and we don't realize it until you

have been in a different culture; [to understand] the oddities of the

American culture.

His heightened consciousness about what these young people from other

countries may be experiencing is often evident in Ed's teaching. The

experience he had with his wife, Heather's, extreme reaction in China has

250
helped him understand what some young people, who have been brought up

in different cultures, go through when they emigrate to the U.S.

I think you just pay more attention to them. If they don't understand
something, you're there so that they can say I don't understand it. Try
to explain it to them. I have a kid now from Korea who has been here
maybe three months now, from September. When she first came into
the program, she was just lost. She couldn't understand why kids
behaved the way they did or knew where to go or anything else. I kind
of took her by the hand and led her through until she became
comfortable. We have a kid from England that just came in in January
and we're still kind of leading her around by the hand and saying don't
worry about it. Just relax a little bit. She's gone through the culture
shock. She was here up until last week; last week she crashed. She
couldn't get out of bed. Her antenna had been so alert that her psyche
just had to take a rest. She came back today and I was talking with her,
and she said, "I don't know what happened. I thought I had the flu. I
couldn't move." I said, "I know exactly what happened. You have
culture shock." "Oh," she said, "this culture doesn't seem to be so much
different." I said, "It's way different, and your antenna has gone out."
So I think just the fact that you are aware of the kinds of ways they're
affected has a lot to do with orienting them into the culture so that they
can get along a little bit better.

Ed's feelings about his relationships with students in general are similar to
those of Bill Notebaum; Ed believes that there is a more relaxed atmosphere in
his classroom.

One of the things that happens, and I'm not sure it's just me, because of
the experience that I had, but one of the things that I have noticed is
kids seem to be a lot more comfortable with me, than they were before.
I don't know if it's because I've slowed down and tolerate a lot more or
because I am more sensitive.

Paul Vandemere also felt he was much more sensitive to ethnic diversity
in his classes, often taking a proactive stance with his students about their
differences.

One of the things that I tried to do was to, as I became aware of student's
ethnic backgrounds in my classes, I would try to use that knowledge at
different times when we were discussing different topics. For example,
we were discussing education, the one that the kids are most interested
in, if I knew that I had a student whose family was from the Middle East,
I would ask them if they knew about it, what their understanding was of
what things were like in their country. It gave that person hopefully a
sense of pride I would always try to have it presented in a positive
light, so that kids were respecting that person's family's background, so
that person would not be seen as weird.

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Just as Ed Donovan dealt with these issues head on, Paul let his students know

exactly how he felt about ethnic slurs based upon prejudice.

I'm tired I become frustrated when we do these knee—jerk reactions

and categorize people. We really are cruel. The ethnic slurs that go on,

that are based on ignorance, that are based upon maybe one or two
experiences. For someone to condemn an entire country for Pearl

Harbor. For someone to condemn an entire group of people because of

Sadam Hussein. On and on and on, it is just not fair. I think the more

you can make people feel proud about the positive things of their

country's accomplishments, of their family background, the better off
you are.

By comparison, Mary Ehrhardt worked in a more concrete way to
celebrate culture and diversity in her school. She had brought back some
authentic leather shadow puppets from China. Seven or eight girls, five of
whom were Chinese American, worked very hard to put on a shadow puppetry
performance for grades 4, 5, and 6. Mary felt that the Chinese American girls
"relished in the experience, in the aesthetics, in the telling of Chinese tales. It
was a celebration for them." The 6th grade girls had chosen to do this project
as an elective and Mary was very pleased with the results. "We sewed our
puppets first and we examined the leather puppets and they really, especially
the 6th grade girls, they hinged the hand, the wrist. They just did an excellent
job."

Mary had gone through a multi-cultural training course at her school
in addition to "this wonderful China experience." She feels she still needs to
work on her own awareness about diversity issues. "I think that there are
subtle issues that I still need to work on. I think all of this experience raised a
great deal of consciousness. Sometimes in order to protect a child or nurture a
child, I realize I still don't give enough credence to who they are." Mary

believes that the China curriculum helps make the diversity issue authentic,

especially for Caucasian American children.

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The connections that the children made with newly arrived Chinese

children in the penpal exchange may have been the most meaningful
demonstration of promoting ethnic understanding and respect among these
six teachers. It would be impossible to quantify what these 2nd graders get out
of such an exchange, especially under the tutelage of a teacher who models
such a sense of respect and wonder about another culture. A longitudinal
study of those children as they travel through their schooling would add
another layer of perspectives as a follow up to this study. It would be
wonderful to listen to the children themselves as they evaluate this
experience, but that work would be under the purview of a future study.
Conclusion

This chapter provides evidence that there is a connection between in-
depth international study and experience and change in a teacher's pedagogy.
The initial reactions of these teachers upon reentry to the U.S. included
feelings of "reverse culture shock," part of the context for the changes they
report in their classroom practice. "Reverse culture shock" occurs because
these teachers are changed by their experience. They are not exactly the
same people who left for an experience abroad; therefore, some of them have
difficulties adjusting, in Mary Ehrhardt's words, to their former "slots." Their
changed perspectives and new knowledge presents great opportunities for
each of them, but this awareness does not come without pain. How each of
them grapple with new-found dilemmas in and out of the classroom helps us
understand that educative experience involving personal growth can be quite
difficult, which is why it is important that positive support mechanisms be in
place for them when they return.

They all talk about changes in the way they teach, their curriculum,

and their relationships with students. Paul, Mary, Ed, and Ellen give explicit

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examples of how they have incorporated subject matter they learned abroad or

while preparing for their international experience into the content of their
curriculum. These stories often indicate that this content makes the subject
matter "come alive" for their students in more authentic ways than occurred
during this previous practice as teachers. These teachers then were able to
apply their own cultural learning in meaningful ways to their classroom
work. Their international experience has thus been "educative" in the
Deweyan sense of having provoked them to continue to learn and use this
knowledge in authentic ways with students.

Not only did these teachers believe that their international study and
experience made a significant difference in their classroom practice, but they
emphasized that this experience had a tremendous impact on their lives. They
all considered that the experience had been professionally and personally
transformative for them. They each constructed and used their experience to
differing degrees in such a way as to promote their own personal growth. This

aspect of their transformation is the subject of Chapter 8.

CHAPTER 8
TRANSFORMATION

These teachers all felt that they had been transformed by their
international study and experience. The word "transform" is used in many
different ways by the teachers. According to the Webster Collegiate Dictionary
(1985), the word "transform implies a major change". The Little and Ives
Webster Dictionafi (1958) defines "transformative" as "to change the spiritual
nature and character of." I believe the latter, older definition is closer to what
Dewey meant when he wrote about educative experience in Experience an_d
Education ( 193 8), that educative experience leads to personal growth and
transformation. The teachers clearly felt themselves to have been at least
changed by their international experience. Ed Donovan says "I'm
transformed." This change seems to have been very meaningful to all of them,
the change or transformation taking a different form in each person.

This chapter explores the different manifestations in these teachers of
educative or transformative experience. These teachers give examples that
range from experience which seems regressive at times to the development of
an International Academy. Some of these changes might seem insignificant to
an outsider, but I am analyzing what these teachers have given as examples of
their own feelings of transformation. When David Cohen writes about the "A
Revolution in One Classroom: The Case of Mrs. Oublier" (1990), her view of
meaningful change in her classroom practice is very different from an
outsider's perspective. His point is similar to the one he makes in his article
"Teacher Practice: Plus CA Change" (1988), about the extreme difficulty in

changing teacher practices within this society. In this chapter I analyze how
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255
these teachers feel this experience has changed them. I am not going to

impose my view of what transformative experience means to me upon their
narratives.

I asked each of these teachers if they considered their international
experience transformative. The answers varied little from an enthusiastic
"Definitely!" or "Absolutely!" How they described what this meant to them
tended to focus either on issues of self-confidence, empathy and/ or
connectedness with others. Examples they gave of how they had been
transformed by their international experience include their feelings of
increased self-efficacy and self-confidence. They demonstrated this
confidence in their leadership work, sharing these experiences with
colleagues, and in their attempts to express their understandings in the wider
community. Another way they felt they had been transformed was in the way
some of them took on the role of advocacy of their beliefs. An example of this
is how most of them speak passionately and convincingly about the need to
foster and improve international education in the United States.

An example of their advocacy on international or multicultural
education is their perspective on some aspects of the "culture wars debate"
exemplified by Alan Bloom (1987), Diane Ravitch (1983), Seymour Hirsch
(1987), and Chester Finn (1989) among others, who argue that the time spent
learning about East Asia, for example, is taken away from the study of western
culture and tradition (Hunter, 1991). These teachers do not agree that studying
about cultures in this world somehow undermines our sense of who we are. In
fact, these teachers give credence to the idea that international study and
experience heightens our self-knowledge and sense of conviction about basic

values.

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wastage.

Within the context of their views on their own personal and
professional transformation, I will first explore how their international
experience affected their level of self-confidence. They each shared their
feelings of greater self efficacy as public speakers and advocates.

Ellen Stacey considered one result of her first seven-month experience in
Japan and its aftermath to be her selection as Teacher of the Year from the
City Schools. She had enthusiastically involved herself with her students,
motivating them to win many district writing awards. Paul Vandemere
believed his experience in Japan and as Director of the East Asian Center to
have been part of the basis for state officials to choose him from some 100,000
teachers to be State Teacher of the Year. Mary Ehrhardt felt more secure about
public speaking and advocating her convictions than she had before her
experience of learning Chinese and living in China. Bill Notebaum's
experience made him feel confident enough to propose an International
Academy, which he is now administering full time. Ed Donovan presently
advises the local education commission in China on some matters of policy.
Delightedly he says "they listen to me," perhaps as a counterpoint to his
experience in his own district. Denise Green became the district spokesperson
on Japan and has presented programs at national and international
conferences.

For a person who was reticent to speak publicly in English, having to
give a speech in Chinese to Chinese educators in China was certainly a
challenge, especially when one considers that Mary Ehrhardt had only been
studying the language for less than a year. When she returned, she found that

speaking (in English) before large groups of people was "mei you wenti," no

257
problem. Her work teaching teachers in China had prepared her to think

about her own beliefs and practices and to be able to articulate them clearly.

I guess that by teaching teachers, I really had to articulate my beliefs
and practices. I very often in faculty work here, because we don't like
to enter into debate with our colleagues, we don't really stand up for or
are willing to come to blows over something that you hold very dear as
an educational practice. Actually having articulated my phi1080phy and
practice for these Chinese teachers, I am much more secure in doing
that in my own school setting. I really feel that having taught for four
months before as many as fifty students, I really have developed some
public speaking techniques and confidence in my ability to speak to
very large groups so that it doesn't phase me to speak to the whole
school of 200 children or a workshop of 50 or 75 adults. Those are ways
in which I have grown.

Mary believes that she can make a positive contribution, now that she
feels more confident about advocating her position.

I think that it's giving me more confidence to advocate, to really speak
from a point of view of having a firm belief. It's interesting though. I
haven't had a great deal of opportunities to do that. I think that's just
circumstantial. I think more and more I will have more opportunities to
be directly involved in curricular discussions to which I can make a
contribution.

Working with the Chinese teachers had helped to clarify her own beliefs.

those Chinese teachers were not aware of child psychology and by
telling them who are some of the noted child psychologists, Piaget and
Dewey, and how they look at children developmentally. It gave them a
little glimpse to a foundation for a practice and then I guess it also
makes me see that yes, this is the basis of our belief too, that especially
that young children learn best by being active learners. That this
comes from these notions that have been tried and tested by these
important psychologists. So there is a basis for our practice and that
was missing in their education.

She feels that the international experience has greatly enhanced her
proclivities to be a learner and has given her the confidence to question and
grapple with the new understandings.

In the American setting I continue to feel that I am a learner and I
continue to question my practice. As a representative taking American
education to China, I really felt that I could represent the American
ways of teaching based on child psychology. I think that even in my
faculty, which is an auspicious group of thinkers, that l have a
contribution to make and since words that come out of my mouth in
China, I think I can express myself in my own school setting. Right
now we are looking at teaching for understanding, Howard Gardner,

258
Multiple Intelligences, as the basis. I feel very excited by that but feel

that I can be circumspect and questioning because I am an experienced
teacher and I have seen reforms come and go, that I can look at this and
think it through and raise questions (1993).
Ellen Stacey puts similar sentiments into different words. "I think my
convictions are stronger than they were before. If I hear something, I will
fight for it if I believe it's true. I will fight, I will challenge, I will question."
Bill Notebaum woke up one morning before a state-wide conference
presentation in March 1992 to learn that his colleague, Jack, would not be
there to help him make the presentation The key note speaker, a well known
Japanese-American economist and U.S.-Japan trade expert from Bernard
Baruch College, Yoshihiro Tsurumi, attended this session.
I was pretty upset, pretty nervous, pretty uptight about that. He came
into our session and sat in the back, never introducing himself or
anything. But I knew who he was, I had heard him I think at one of the
prior conferences. And he sat there. Here I had high school kids and
high school teachers, and a couple university people, and Yoshi
Tsurumi. I was talking exactly on his topic and not close to a Ph.D. in
economics and not close to an expert on Japan. But compared to what
other people knew, I knew a billion times more. You know nothing, but
I knew it was a lot more, right?
The session was very successful. Bill felt buoyed by Yoshihiro's "positive
facial expressions Then afterwards, he was extremely complimentary and
asked for a copy of the book. We wrote back and forth three or four times. I
subscribed to his newsletter and I sent him articles that I thought he would
enjoy and vice versa." Bill felt that in the process of studying about U.S.-Japan
trade issues, working with his colleague at the Federal Reserve Board, sharing
his knowledge with teachers and experiencing Japan, he had experienced a
personal transformation. "Getting involved with Jack and doing these

speaking engagements, planning all those things and proposing the school

and all that has been a huge personal growth."

259

He now interacts with superintendents of school districts on a daily
basis while he works to promote and prepare for the opening of the
international high school.

I talk one on one now with superintendents and make economic

proposals for budgets and stuff, business managers of ten school

districts. That would have been unthinkable a short time ago, like 1988,

1989, into 1990. I just didn't interact with those people a lot and when

you did, it was more like God/ employee. It's developed or pulled out of

me which must have been there all along, that wasn't like I was some
repressed person or anything, in 1975, but I certainly hadn't reached
anything close to my potential. Maybe it was just a maturity process,
but it didn't mature on an even basis. It came along, was going and then

had some dips. I'd get discouraged with teaching, then I had young kids
and so I was more concerned with bringing up my daughter.

Collegial Sharing

Several teachers considered their ability to share their experience and
new knowledge with colleagues to be an important aspect of their personal
growth and change. The international study and experience of these six
teachers also impacted the school environment to which they returned. They
each sought out ways to share their experiences with colleagues, some more
successfully than others. They seemed to have a need to reach out beyond the
classroom to express their understandings and sometimes to express their
commitment to international understanding and education. The school
structures that created chances for sharing varied greatly. In several cases,
the school environment was not conduive for much sharing of insights with
colleagues, which thwarted the chances for personal growth.

When Sharon Feiman-Nemser (1983) analyzes why millions of dollars
invested in teacher learning centers during the 19708 reaped few rewards, she
concludes that a major stultifying effect upon teacher creativity can be the
school environment itself. When Ellen Stacey wants to share her knowledge
with her colleagues and principal, they do not seem interested. Mary Ehrhardt

also expressed some frustration about being a different person and not having

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an adequate outlet outside of her classroom to express these differences. She

did find an outlet by connecting to a network of teachers beyond her school
who are committed to the goals of establishing international links between
classrooms among countries.

In this section, I will explore how each of them shared their
experiences with colleagues by: 1) modeling their understandings via
workshops in and out of school; 2) working to make substantive in-school
curriculum and structural changes; 3) presenting programs to the students,
faculty and the community; 4) influencing curriculum and promoting
exchange programs at the state level; and 5) finding networks beyond their
schools of people committed to international study and exchange programs.

In January of 1988, Denise Green returned to her district in
Indianapolis, Indiana and was given a "special assignment" by the district
administration. Instead of returning immediately to the classroom, she was
given the full time responsibility of visiting schools to help "teachers plan
and teach units on Asia with a particular emphasis on Japan." Denise made
presentations to the math and social studies steering committees and the Board
of Education and "just a lot of informal kinds of things." Denise expressed
none of the frustration about opportunities to share her experiences that Ellen
and Mary had, both of whom went immediately back to the classroom. Denise
felt that her full-time inservice work in the schools really opened up
possibilities for students in other schools. One result of this work was the trip
she took to Japan with elementary students and parents from another school
in her district.

Denise was also encouraged to present a workshop at the district's

"Summer Academy," but a minimum of six did not sign up and the session was

261
canceled. Her proposal to present this workshop at a conference in the

Caribbean was accepted. She presented this workshop to

standing room only crowd. There were actually people standing

because we ran out of chairs. Educators from all over the world, and it

was the same thing. It was far more interesting than doing it in

Indianapolis. It's so hot! High school in the summer with six people.

Ed Donovan, like Denise, was asked to present many programs in his
school community, sometimes co-presenting with his wife, Heather. At times,
he was asked to teach units about China in other classrooms or present
programs in other schools, especially the junior high schools. He had only
one example of a negative situation with colleagues after he returned and no
overt examples of professional jealousy. He suspected that jealousy existed
"because I have had the experience. They would like to have it without doing
it." Ed would defuse this by challenging them when some would say, "Oh what
a lucky guy I am. My response is 'you can be lucky too. All you have to do is
ask."'

When he returned to the U.S. to teach in 1987, he found that he was just
as sensitive to racial slurs among faculty members as he was among his
students. Two teachers, "ex-army guys," both members of Army reserves "still
saw Chinese as 'Chinks' and used that term." Ed confronted them, saying, "It's
really offensive to hear that when I know that these are people. What you are
doing is depersonalizing people that I've become acquainted with and some of
them are my friends. I really resent it." His ex-army colleagues

didn't use the term around me after that. It gets into that whole thing of

confrontation again. I don't let a lot of stuff go by any more. If they

would have used the term Chinks before, I probably wouldn't have said
anything. I don't let it go any more. It's an awareness I suppose.
For the most part, his colleagues were "very supportive," many of them

writing to him while he was in China "which I thought was extraordinary."

"We always sent letters. Anybody who wrote, I would write back to."

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This unexpected relationship with his colleagues back home forecasted

the positive response of his colleagues to his knowledge and experience. They
welcomed him into their classrooms and in this process was part of his
transformation. He enjoyed sharing his experiences and knowledge with
many teachers and classes. He became, like Denise, a sort of unofficial
spokesperson about China. The school environment was very influential in
encouraging Ed to develop himself further as a public speaker and as a strong
advocate of international education.

Except for one all-school assembly wherein she showed slides and
artifacts and talked about her experience, Mary Ehrhardt conversely has had
no formal opportunity to present workshops or share her experience with
colleagues. A snowed out presentation to Walden parents was not rescheduled,
but she gave an informal slide presentation "upon the request of friends and
neighbors." Another way Mary was able to reach out to the greater school
community was by writing an article for the Walden Lower School parents'
association paper entitled "A Sabbatical Appreciated." In this article, she
writes "I knew I wanted to learn Chinese and validate my teaching by
traveling to China." Feeling fortunate to have been given this opportunity,
Mary expresses how much this experience has enriched her life and her
teaching.

My new knowledge of Chinese language and life has enriched me

personally and will certainly enhance my teaching. As I prepare to

welcome the "new year" with the current second graders in mid-

February, I have newly acquired props and, more important, a deeper

understanding of life in the most populous country in the world.

Halfway around the world, via letter, fax and e-mail, I have hundreds of

new friends and their stories to tell.

In addition to sharing her experience with her school community via this

article, Mary has also been asked to share with another network of educators

which she had not known about before she lived in China. She feels less

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isolated in the classroom, now that she has joined this greater network of
social studies teachers.
I have also discovered that I have been asked to share my experience
with Primary Source, which is an organization of social studies
educators in New England. But what I found is it's a real clearinghouse
for an Asia and China network I really am now part of a major
national China network that I would have never, even thought about. I
taught for 10 or 12 years about China without this experience and
without the networking that led to the experience. I don't think I would
have had access to this wonderful network of colleagues and
conferences and institutes, opportunities to study that I've now found
that I am a part of. So professionally, I also have gained tremendously
by becoming aware of this greater network. I now feel that I'm not just
a teacher in a classroom, but I'm a part of a whole network of educators
who are interested in exploring either ties with Asia or Asian issues
through the American school system. So it really has expanded my
sense of colleagueship. I don't feel I'm just unique.
Ellen Stacey, like Denise Green, was also asked to present workshops for
her school district as a "spokesperson" for the district. Instead of being a
writing consultant for the state, she "was going around and doing workshops
about Japan, what I saw, what I experienced." The State Superintendent of
Public Instruction asked her to write an article for him to be published in the
union paper. In addition, the State Board of Education asked her to present a
program along with other participants about her exchange program which
the State had partially funded. She believed this presentation was in response
to critics of State Board and Department of Education officials for using state
money to pay for their trips to Japan. "That was the time where they couldn't
justify themselves for going over and spending all that money in Japan." She
felt that doors had been opened for her because "it was the relationship back
with the Superintendent in Japan that allowed me to do these things back
here!’
It was at this time that her colleagues and principal "didn't want to hear

about it." After her second three year experience in Japan, there were no

opportunities for her to share her experience because she had not gone under

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the auspices of a state program. It was a sister school and city program

completely paid for by Japan. When she expressed her views or made an effort
to lead her colleagues in their work to integrate "teaming" into school
practice, she met animosity or disinterest.

Ellen expressed to her principal ideas about involving the students
involved in a Japanese style competition to take responsibility for keeping
areas of the school clean and free of graffiti.

That was the other thing I told my principal, I wanted to see the kids do.

You have a whole school here. You have 7th, 8th, and 9th grade. Let

them take pride in the school. You have the 7th grade take

responsibility for the front of the school. Have the 8th grade take the
responsibility for the right side and the 9th grade have responsibility
for the other side. Their job is to get rid of all the weeds, their job is to
keep the grass cut, their job is to keep the grass edged, their job is to
keep the playground clean from debris and everything. And reward
them for keeping this and watch and see how you don't get the graffiti
on the side of the building. Watch and see how well the school will run.

"Oh that's a very good idea." But she never did anything about it. She's

really distanced herself from us.

Rather than working with colleagues in inservice settings, Paul
Vandemere, upon returning from Japan, immersed himself into making the
East Asian Center in his school district a success. Like Ed, he still found time to
make many presentations within the school community and also at state
conferences, similar to the work of Ed Donovan. He often included his students
in the Center in these presentations, in which they performed role plays for
audiences of educators. The second year Paul was in Japan, he was asked by
his Superintendent to interview candidates to choose a Japanese teacher with
whom he would work to help initiate and team teach in the Center when he
returned.

He felt that the exchange teacher from Japan with whom he team
taught the first year of the program had profoundly affected his fellow

American teachers because of the friendship which evolved over that year of

the exchange.

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Shibahara had a profound effect on a number of our teachers. He was
someone who, during his spare time, would sit down in the teacher's
lounge and his English was good enough that he could easily do that and
be understood. He began to talk as he was able to do with anyone and
everyone and joke around with them. He had several teachers who at
the end of his year came up to him and said, "Before I knew you, I
wouldn't talk to Japanese. I remember what my father said and my
grandfather said about Pearl Harbor. And I wouldn't talk to you. And I
knew that some of my friends were being laid off." These were
teachers. And they said, "You've changed us. You've made us
understand that there is a human side to the Japanese and you made us
see your very good qualities. We can still disagree about certain issues,
but we're not going to all of a sudden lump all 140 million Japanese in
with the decision to drop the bomb and castigate you." They would go
out together and they would go golfing or go have a drink, etc. That had
a profound effect on some of our teachers who were normally close
minded.

Only Ellen Stacey of these six teachers did not feel that she had affected
her specific school community after her experiences in Japan. The other five
found ways to share their experiences with colleagues and the community.
Where there seemed to be extensive official and administrative support, for
example in the case of Denise Green, their need to share their insights with
colleagues seems to have been fulfilled. They all, including Ellen, functioned
to greater and lesser degrees as learning resources to their schools and
communities.

Paul Vandemere is in excellent example of how a teacher with
international experience can enhance and promote curriculum changes in
the schools. His influence was felt in many arenas in the state because he was
asked to participate on a state committee to intemationalize the social studies
curriculum in the state.

A group of us has attempted to intemationalize the curriculum and to

work with different State Department of Education people in social

studies to try and revamp the social studies curriculum to include global
studies, international studies and to provide as many international

experiences where our students can participate in exchange programs,
etc. The two main thrusts that have some potential at the state level are

the exchange programs which we would like the state to encourage and
help facilitate more so than they are now and secondly, a core

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curriculum that includes the world studies part. I've been a part of both
of those.

He also was proud to have succeeded in promoting a world studies course
in his district, mandatory for all eleventh grade students in spite of his feeling
that "it took our district far too long to get there." There are many school
districts in his state and others who have little or no required international
studies in high schools. The internationally oriented courses that exist are
usually electives, taken by a small percentage of the student body. In 1989 and
1990, he was on the State committee which was responsible to develop core
curriculum guidelines "to revamp the social studies guidelines to include
global studies, international studies" as part of a broad initiative mandated by
State law. These global studies guidelines were published and distributed
widely throughout the state, even though some parts of the law were repealed
by a political movement in favor of charter schools with less state regulation.

Paul was chosen as Teacher of the Year for the state in 1992. He was
given release time so that he could travel to many areas in the state and use his
considerable talent in public speaking to represent the teachers in the state
and promote education. In that capacity, he visited schools in one county
where the community supports an initiative in Korean language and culture
in the schools.

I went over and talked to foreign language students over in Arden

County and congratulated them for their study of Korean. There's a

strong Korean component as a result of the college that's over there. I

would take opportunities like that to congratulate the kids, to encourage

in them to continue their studies in foreign cultures and in languages.

I certainly had that opportunity.

Even though as a State spokesperson he had to be fairly general in his
comments, he included references to international understanding in every

speech.

There's no question. It was part of every talk, understanding the world.
My blue marble poster of the world, I took that down cause they just

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gave me that, but 'A good education will open a world of opportunities'.
That's been my motto in so many of the speeches I've given whether it
be the National Honor Societies of different groups, or virtually every
speech I gave, I had a connection with that. I'd talk about some of my
own experiences and the experiences of my kids who have then gone on
to different jobs around the world.

Cultural Connections and Sensitivity to Others

Several of these teachers felt that one factor of their personal
transformation had to do with their heightened sensitivity to the feelings of
others, including what people go through in other cultures. They feel a sense
of connectedness with these people and treasure these connections. Mary
Ehrhardt believes that as a result of her China experience "I am a different
person. I have an incredible experience that has really affected me, has
changed me." Reminiscent of what Elise Boulding in Building a GlolLal Civic
Culture (1990) argues, Mary sees the person-to-person connections as a major
enriching experience in her life and also as a small effort to palliate what she
feels is the deteriorating relationship between the U.S. and China.

The U.S./ China, at the official level, relations have deteriorated. But

what I find on the personal level to be really important is the warmth of

the friendships and connections with people so that we can articulate

face to face our concerns about our country's interactions. I think that

I really see the importance of the personal contacts and the importance

of the shared experiences being educational both ways, for me and my

understanding of the larger issues and for my Chinese friends to have

asked their questions about the United States to me. That has been really

enriching, personally enriching, but also I think really important to
maintain connections.

Ed Donovan feels his life has been dramatically changed, partly
because he is now cognizant of issues he had not previously thought about.

It does change your life. There's no question about that. When you
spend that long in another culture, your perspective is wildly different
from people who have not had the experience. More tolerant, maybe
more sensitive to a lot of issues that l was not sensitive to before. Or
thought that I was, and wasn't. I think a lot of that on the part of the
kids. Particularly, if they realize that you feel very deeply about it.

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Paul Vandemere described the transformative effect of his experience,

that he could now at least help bridge the gap of understanding from culture

to culture as a precursor to promoting cultural sensitivity.

Clearly professionally, it is transformative. I never would have been
back directing the East Asian program and things that came off from
that in the sister school relationship that we have and an opportunity
on a regular basis to interact, to open the eyes of my students and the
Japanese students to each other's culture. That clearly would not have
happened if I had not started that, not been in Japan.

Even though Paul left teaching in the classroom to become an assistant

principal, he still feels a powerful effect of his experience in Japan on how he

handles difficult students.

I'd like to think that I tried to understand situations and people's
reactions a little bit more. I'd like to think that I have a little more
tolerance for different ways of doing things based upon my experience
there. To not quickly form judgments and to show respect even in this
job right here, to try and always treat students who make bad choices,
still treat them with respect and to try and deal with the person and
maybe even make some changes in that person's direction.

Paul Vandemere also in his new role as an assistant principal who is now

studying education administration, thinks a lot about different educational

practices in Japan and how we might learn from them.

We have a model in our school system, I think in most school systems,
that separates the counseling function from the instructional function.
We have a set of counselors in most schools. Certainly in our school
district, we have 3 to 4 counselors, one for every 500-600 students, and
in the size of the high school, you can have 3, 4, or 5 counselors. In
Japan, the teachers take on that role. They do it partially because the
Japanese recognize that you know your students a lot better, you see
them on a daily basis.

Like Bill Notebaum, Paul would also incorporate a version of the Japanese

homeroom to help create an arena where teachers can function more as

counselors, as they do in Japan.

They have a homeroom that is set aside in which they see their students,
not always for counseling purposes, but it is an opportunity to touch
base with them, to become aware of who they are, the directions they
want to head, some of the problems they are having. Too often the
counselor design that we have here is tied up in paper work, in filling
out applications and deadlines and jobs, work study and that kind of

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think without really knowing the real person, without really seeing
them on a daily basis. In looking at the whole person, not just isolated
components. So that clearly was an example of something that seems to
make sense to try something like that. I certainly reflected about a lot
of other things too as far as organization of the day, the number of days
in which we have instruction, etc. And that's not to say that again, that
things in a foreign country can be easily transferred just lock, stock,
and barrel. You begin to think about other ways of approaching things,
other ways of organizing.

Ed Donovan believes that the greatest value in his work in China and in
the United States is to promote tolerance. In one way, the China experience
has enhanced his core conviction. He had admired his father and a favorite
uncle because they displayed tolerance. In the interviews, he uses the word
"tolerance" many times. Ed simply says "The people who influenced me were
tolerant people. I liked them so I decided to be like them."

When he talks about the transformative aspects of his experience, he
again uses this word.

I may be more tolerant, more aware certainly of problems that people
have from working in a different culture. I work a lot with some
Chinese from overseas now and try to explain things kind of getting it
into terms that maybe they can understand a little bit. A friend of mine
from Kunming is here now, the first time I've seen him was three
months ago, first time I'd seen him in nine years. He was my student.
He's working for Ford Motor Company now. The guy's 50 years old and
used to be with the space project in China in Kunming. He came here
and he fell down, he broke his arm and hurt his back. The poor guy felt
like Ford Motor Company was treating him like a piece of dross. I said,
"Let's talk about it." So I went down to Westland and visited him for a
whole Sunday afternoon and we just talked about the differences in
culture.

This talk was very helpful to his friend.

When he came back up to our place the following Saturday with a cast
on his arm, he said, "You are my psychiatrist. You make me feel a lot
better." I said, "You just have to keep in mind what Americans are like
and some Americans are not so nice, just like some Chinese are not so
nice." He said, "I didn't think they were treating me in a very humane
way." "You wanted some instant gratification the way Americans did to
find out if your insurance was going to pay for the whole thing. And if
not, who was going to get charged for it. You worried about that. You
didn't have to yet." I advised him to go talk to his boss and find out what
the disposition was. He said that Ford Motor Company was going to take
care of everything. So the big economic cloud was off his back. And
the way some people said, "You're not well, go home." That kind of

270

thing. What are you doing here? They meant go home to Shanghai.
You know, he thought "I've been doing a good job here. I work hard."

When another friend of his arrived in Detroit from Kunming, Ed picked him
up and wondered what his friend might have done had Ed not been available to
do this.
When Ma Wen Hua came here, I got him at the airport. The college
didn't. I took him to his dormitory and when he and Shir Ping were
headed back to China in 1989 right after Tiananmen, they stayed with us
for two weeks because they didn't have a place to live. You become very
aware that people are cast adrift literally. Just like the Czech teacher
next door to me here. He's got a house that he's living in down in Detroit
that is the exchanges living quarters, big beautiful house. But he's
isolated down there. He's made a few friends now, but when he was first
here, Heather and I had he and his wife and the kids over for dinner
and we'd show them around a little bit. He borrowed my car over the
weekend to go to Chicago because his car is kind of an old klunker. I
don't resent that, in fact I'm very pleased that he could do it, that he felt
comfortable enough to come to me to do it. So, yeah, I'm transformed.
Mary, Paul, and Ed have given examples of how they feel this
experience has helped them to be more aware of and sensitive to the feelings
of others. Sometimes this sensitivity has included students in their classrooms
who have come from other countries, for example, Ed's relationship with the
student from Korea, discussed in Chapter 7. Ed's stories about his adult Chinese
friends are examples he gave of how he has changed as a person, how he has
been transformed. Paul's examples of transformation include his work with
students as an administrator and his push to include a version of the Japanese
homeroom in the school. His idea of the homeroom would make school a more
humane place for students, a place where they could communicate regularly
with a teacher and other students in a nonthreatening, nongraded
atmosphere. Bill Notebaum also hoped to incorporate the Japanese homeroom
idea into his International Academy for much the same reasons as Paul. Bill

Notebaum's discussion of personal growth and transformation centers around

his work to initiate and develop an International Academy. This is the subject

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of the next section and illustrates a particularly powerful consequence of

international experience.

Bill Notebaum:
A Case of Personal and Professional Transformation

Although all of these teachers state that they feel they have been
transformed by their international experience, Bill Notebaum is the only one
who immediately took action towards the fulfillment of a dream just after he
returned from his experience abroad. Within one month of his return from
Japan, he had put a proposal to initiate and develop an International Academy
on the desk of his Superintendent. According to Bill, his one month in Japan
had served as the catalyst for his decision to pursue this goal. When discussing
the issue of personal growth and transformation, Bill saw his own
transformation as a process within a continuum of experience from the first
questions his students asked in his economics class during the early 19808 to
the opening of the International Academy in September of 1996. The nadir of
this continuum was his experience in Japan, after which he continued his
work to debunk myths and stereotypes about Japan. He team taught a class in
Japanese language and culture and worked with others to plan this school.

Although the trip to Japan was to use his own word a "catalyst" for his
action, this was not because he wished to emulateJapanese education in this
school. In fact he indicates that he was "not all that impressed" with what he
saw of Japanese high schools in particular. The trip to Japan reinforced his
belief that American schools must reform to include curriculum and pedagogy
which would help students become more effective and aware citizens of the
U.S. and the world. Rather than take the route of more standardized testing,
which some promote as an emulation of the Japanese ideal, he would promote

authentic performance based assessments as part of a very rigorous

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International Baccalaureate program. The Japanese example to Bill is more a

counter example.

I have chosen to highlight Bill's work because it is an example of how
a teacher who becomes motivated by his international study and experience
can use his knowledge to create a better school and thus a better society. I
believe that this is the kind of transformation that John Dewey felt is the
ultimate goal of educative experience. It is experience which ultimately
fulfills a purpose and in so doing has meaning. If that purpose is the
betterment of society, then the experience would be considered educative.
Dewey was promoting an authentic learning environment in schools, but his
ultimate goal, I believe, was an authentically learning society.

We will begin our discussion of Bill with his frustration after his return
home with the superficiality of his knowledge about Japan. He felt
unprepared to teach a general course about Japan. Nevertheless, he had
studied the issue of U.S.-Japan trade relationships enough to feel very
competent about co-presenting workshops on that subject to teachers. In
addition to presenting workshops: "We started our own association of
economics teachers and I became president."

He and Jack, his colleague at the Federal Reserve Board, wrote and
published a book which they distributed in their sessions, and the Japanese
business association that had sent him to Japan translated and distributed it in
Japan.

We published a little book, a research book on U.S.-Japan trade relations.
We spun off on that book, The Iapan That Can Say No [1989] that title
and called our book The U.S. That Can Say Yes. We basically took a
middle of the road, almost pro-Japanese side of the debate.

The audience for his book surprised him.

It was more teachers, economists. We got a lot of requests from
universities around the world. Jack's office, he was sending them to

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Scotland and France. I think they were surprised that, well Jack doesn't
have a Ph.D. and I'm just a high school teacher, you know. That we
could bring that kind of insight and topic Two versions were actually
printed. The text and the graphics were the same, but they published it
in Japan on their own paper, did their own publishing job there. It was
all in English though. The Federal Reserve published it as well. We just
got so many requests for it that every time we would print 100, they
would disappear.

Bill described the prevailing ideas about Japan's economic system which he
and Jack were trying to counteract.

Many American authors, business authors and economists, did not treat
the Japanese economy as a dynamic, free-enterprise economy. They
treated it more as an economy that is a reflection of deep-seated
tendencies in Japanese culture towards identity with a group for
example, that their economy is dominated by large companies that go
back to large families that probably go back to dynasties.

The topic was so "hot" that Bill and his colleague sometimes had to work hard to
maintain decorum in their sessions. He felt good about how he had learned to
manage these sessions with teachers, which gave him more confidence to
pursue his goals.

Because it is such a super-hot topic at that time, so sensitive, it was just
an incredible experience maintaining decorum in the room sometimes.
You had to approach your topic with such civility and evenhandedness.
It's not that we normally would have too many business executives,
probably had none, but we would have a lot of teachers in attendance
and there was just so much misinformation about the extent of Japanese
trade and whether it was managed and controlled and these large
Japanese business cooperatives and how they worked. It was just so
fraught with controversy and misinformation that to try to present it
and debate it in a civil manner was challenging, but it was fun.

Similar to the stereotypes Paul Vandemere had to confront with students
and colleagues relating back to Pearl Harbor, the heated discussions in Bill's
workshops included references to that event and negative misinformation
embedded in attitudes.

It was more sort of a residue of past views of what Japanese society was
like. We're talking about teachers now in their 408 to 508. They have
memories of WWII movies and I guess you could say that's going to play
a role. It's the kind of thing where the Japanese were looked at as
mindless worker bees, maybe. That attitude would surface and it wasn't
so much like racist criticism or racism, not ethnocentrism or racism, it
was a perception of the Japanese and how hard it would be to compete

274
against them. There was almost an acknowledgment that we couldn't

compete. It was an acceptance of our inability to compete against them
because of the higher priority we placed on lifestyle and creature
comforts that they placed or whatever. Therefore, it was unrealistic to
really even talk about the Japanese or to use them as models or to learn
from them since we would never want to sacrifice to the extent that
they sacrifice in their lives. That point of view came up quite
frequently.
It is important to understand the basis for Bill's economic analysis because he
believes that we need to look more carefully at Japanese economics and
educational practices before we decide to adopt them into our system. Bill
considers "the big question among economists" to be: why has a centralized
bureaucratically controlled economy "proven so well for the Japanese? In
fact, a lot of people including economists have used the Japanese model of that
and to some extent to a lesser degree the German model saying, 'Ah, there's the
key to successl'" Bill felt that he and his colleague were promoting a viewpoint
at odds with what business leaders such as Lee Iacocca were saying about
unfair Japanese trade policies as the basis for the decline in American
productivity.

Bill Notebaum's experience studying about the economics of Japan
culminated in his one month study tour there in 1991. Within a month of his
return, he had placed a three page proposal for an international school with
an International Baccalaureate Degree. The trip to Japan was the catalyst for
this work. Five years later, the fall of 1996, the school is opening with Bill as
its principal. During these five years of planning, Bill has developed the
school as an academic magnet which will include students and teachers from
ten districts in the area, a major feat when one considers the intra-school
rivalries and turf battles that such an undertaking would inevitably

encompass. "I proposed the international school right after getting back from

Japan. I did that in July. Then that fall, 1991, in the fall that's when I

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proposed the International Baccalaureate program." Bill describes the basis

for this decision:

The link was understanding that public education was a monopoly that
was operating like most monopolies do, being fairly inefficient and
unproductive and overpriced and not offering what its customers at all
wanted. I'm a strong believer, was and still am, a strong believer in
public education. I thought that for the very salvation of public
education we had to look a little bit more from a competitive perspective
and offer meaningful alternatives. So that's sort of where the econ, is
where that fits in. Then the international theme fit in from the point of
view that I was growing in experience in that I had just come back from
Japan, saw a real void in that area and knew that the economy, getting
back to the economy again, but the economy was generally moving and
would never stop moving towards more international integration. And
my God, if our students aren't fully and completely prepared for that, it's
just going to be self-destructive for our own society and our own well
being and eventually our own pocketbooks.

Five years before this, in 1986, Bill had gone to an International Baccalaureate
Conference, where he was impressed with the high standards and rigor or that
program.

I'd also been sent back in 1986 to an international baccalaureate
conference, when our school district was exploring that as a possibility,
and I thought, hmmmmmm - the public wants accountability, we want
world class standards, but who in the heck knows what they are. What I
had seen in Japan didn't really impress me that much, that their schools
were all that great, especially the high schools. 80, I thought well,
maybe there's a marriage that could take place here and I proposed that
a school of choice across multiple school districts could have a very
targeted theme and could be very focused in its emphasis I came to the
conclusion that smaller schools are better than bigger schools and that
any organization without a clear mission and all consensus and
commitment to that mission was not going to be a very effective
organization.

During the time he was developing this school, he read parts of the
controversial work by John Chubb and Terry Moe, Politics. Markets and
America's Schools (1990), the premise of which he vehemently disagreed with.
They agree that private schools are the only arena in which school reform
will succeed because the bureaucratic organization of public schools will
stultify teacher creativity. "I differed with them because I knew what private

schools were like And to think that the lack of bureaucracy in private

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schools is going to result in innovation is fallacious because the overall

culture is not going to allow it."

The purpose of the International Academy Bill is developing would be to
focus upon cross-cultural understanding within the context of what Bill
considers the realities of world economics.

I put the international baccalaureate together with the idea that we
needed more cross-cultural understanding and a much broader social
studies curriculum, and a much heavier emphasis on economics in the
curriculum because the world is much more competitive than it used
to be, certainly our economy is.

Because he thought of Japan as a counter example, he looked for
another theoretical basis upon which to develop the international school. The
work of W. Edwards Demming on effective organizations had really intrigued
Bill, especially his emphasis on a "sense of mission, a general sense of purpose,
relying more on things of motivation and moving away from simplistic
application of incentives."

We are constantly measuring them. In fact, we often times see that as a
way in which we get the best performance. Today's a quiz, all of a
sudden you have their attention. The homework will be collected. All of
a sudden you have their attention. A great big hard test coming up, now
you're motivating them. So that puzzled me in the sense that here we
are programming our young people with this kind of external
incentives and driving their behavior and their learning based on
fairly superficial external measurements or rewards, using a
combination of carrot and stick. At the same time, I saw organizations
shifting and going almost, and dropping the stick in many cases and the
carrot becoming much more humanistic, much more personal
satisfaction in the work experience as opposed to just a bonus depending
on your particular department or your particular individual
performance. Then I had to kind of combine that together with what
Demming was doing and what I pulled out of that and put into
educational practice is that what Demming was using for quality
measurement.

The problem of quality measurement in education exists because "we're left
without any form of external assessment of the quality of what we're doing.
Whereas if a business were willing to go that far and not even use Demming-

like measures, they ultimately have some measure that they're going to go

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bankrupt or they're making a profit." Like Mary Ehrhardt, Bill is proposing a
form of experiential learning.

I think in terms of measuring academic success, we should pose

questions and issues and problems for students that necessitate them

drawing upon a depth of knowledge. I don't jump to the conclusion that
therefore they don't need to know the stuff. I draw the conclusion that
we should primarily be assessing them on what they do with this stuff,
not the demonstrations of their regurgitation.

Bill also believes that education must encourage students to be life-long
learners who will take responsibility for their actions and have developed
good communication skills.

I think we need to reinforce our commitment that we want students to

. be life-long learners to assume more and more responsibility in
managing their own money. That we want students to have the
opportunity to demonstrate their learning and by means other than
written expression. That verbal skills that they need are woefully
under emphasized. Ability to work in a team has been woefully under
emphasized.

Most American schools, as well as Japanese schools, in Bill's view have
also relied too much upon rote memorization of facts, tested by multiple choice
examinations. One of his reasons for selecting the International Baccalaureate
testing format was superior in terms of cognitive higher order thinking skills
than the AP tests with which he was most familiar. "The International
Baccalaureate is a test that while not perfect, went further in testing what was
written expression and verbal expression and emphasized the cognitive
approach." The reason the International Baccalaureate test is important to Bill
is that he believes it can help move instruction into a higher level than the
traditional carrot and stick approach. This traditional approach, Bill believes,
fools many people, students included, into thinking that meaningful learning
is happening.

That combination [carrot and stick] works well in both gaining you

respect and in creating some from parents, fellow colleagues,

administration and students. Students are some of the quickest ones to

be fooled by this. I'd see the structure of American education even in
the better teachers Concrete, they're very concrete, they test on

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concrete, they cover a lot of things, a lot of stuff and they demand of
their students to be able to recall that stuff and their tests are long and
difficult from that perspective If you combine that with your own
with an authoritarian classroom structure, your life will be great.
Colleagues will respect you, your students will respect you, and there is
very little tension in your life. You can sleep easy at night and enjoy
every vacation. Other than the fact that you have to grade maybe some
papers once in a while. You don't have to do too much of that because
you can use mostly matching and multiple choice and true and false.
There's a lot of them and they're hard.

Bill states flatly that teachers who rely upon the these techniques "will simply
not get the results" on the International Baccalaureate examination.
He believes that changing the focus and structure of schools will
encourage teachers to change their pedagogy.
I don't blame these teachers because to some extent I was one of them.
All you are doing is responding to the environment in which you find
yourself. I generally don't criticize people for that Reasonable,
rational, well intended people are responding to a structure that is
producing results that we don't want. Let's change the structure.
The present system has worked for years to create just the kind of "worker
bee" mentality, an idea with which some Americans had stereotyped Japanese
workers.
The anticipatory set as it's known in education should incorporate the
big idea and big concepts, the why questions. We've belittled the
anticipatory set down to what we are trying to learn at the end of the
lesson of the day, which is creating employees of the future who expect
their boss to tell them what to do and pat them on the head when they've
done it.
As he was developing these ideas, Bill had had "serious misgivings about what
was supposedly the best students walking around the school." He was
concerned about their flexibility in dealing with less concrete or objective
situations or without what he calls the "Jolly Rancher" system of rewards.
I wondered about their ability when faced with a less definable
environment and a less objectifiable set of rewards. They're addicted to
grades and positive reinforcement junk We've played into that with a
self-esteem emphasis, we've played into that in terms of the behaviorist

emphasis If you never do anything in elementary school, you don't
get a Jolly Rancher for it.

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In the International Academy, Bill hopes to change this reward system

by motivating the students to work "in what we refer to as self-directed
product teams, where they will be the manager of the project and the end
product will be academically authentic." He described what the work of these
students might look like.
It would have to have a public status. It would be sold to somebody or
served to somebody or delivered in a sense that if it has the appearance
of being academic in the sense of holding a seminar of some kind, that
seminar will have to be organized by the students. It will have to be for
other students and/ or parent and the professionals in that area. So if
the students are really delivering the seminar itself, it demonstrates
their knowledge and communicating it effectively to others. If it's a
tutoring process, then they're responsible for organizing the tutoring
lab and running it, staffing it. If it has a budget, needs a budget, it's
budgeted. The authenticness of it is, is anybody getting tutored, is
anybody getting any benefit of what they are being tutored?
In the authentic assessment situations, students would not "get the luxury of
not performing to their full potential without really experiencing the
consequences." If they did not perform their tasks adequately "their tutoring
lab would fail. There would be nobody there to tutor the students Their
seminar wouldn't go off because nobody would bother to come to it."
Bill hoped to offer a varied and challenging curriculum in the school.
Many languages including Japanese and Chinese would be available to the
students in addition to cultural studies; for example, East Asian studies or
Russian studies. European and American history courses would be offered, but
none of these courses would be taught in the mode of traditional authoritarian
approaches. like Paul Vandemere, Bill admired the Japanese homeroom idea.
One of the cross cultural structures he has build into the school is based
somewhat upon the Japanese homeroom model. The homeroom will meet for
twenty minutes twice a week in an atmosphere of non-graded cooperation.

The student teacher ratio will be 20 to 1, so that the teacher can more easily get

to know these students.

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One of the structures we built into this school because of that is that
homeroom situation with students at a ratio of 20 to 1 with a staff
member and part of the objectives of that homeroom section will be
cross cultural understanding. We will basically have a laboratory if you
will, hopefully as soon as we have a diversity of students. It's hard not
to have nowadays, so that they will learn some textbook like things
about cross cultural understanding, but they will have a context in
which we will try them and discuss them. They will be, we hope, a cross
cultural situation This is a very specific example of non-threatening
educational experience.

Modeling the Japanese homeroom structure, which Bill had observed as a non-
threatening environment, he hoped to use it as a laboratory for cross-cultural
understanding.

I model this after the Japanese classroom in a sense that homeroom
became a non-academic safety place; a place to become a part of and
learn about and discuss the school itself, the organization itself, and
their relationship too. And it's not graded. That's what I consider true
of the Japanese homeroom, and in the American sense we would add
developing a strong personal relationship for the future. I think that
probably happens in Japan, but it's not something they probably talk
about The avowed purpose of the Japanese homeroom is socialization
to the school environment.

In Japan, Bill had become aware of the power of culture to influence our lives.

It [the experience] strengthened just how all embracing a culture is.
How much we walk with our culture. How much of what we are and how
we think and how we may approach the world is affected by that? The
contrast is just staggering, the whole atmosphere of a meeting in Japan,
I just couldn't believe it. The fact that people would come in, a minimum
of ten minutes early, five minutes early, no one was late, just the
endurance they have for barely non-entertaining meetings. Official
ceremony, everything had to have an official greeting and ceremony.

His basic convictions were reconfirmed, that people:
who want to break down some of these [cultural] barriers can do it. It's
not that hard. From a theoretical base of knowing everything about the
culture you're going into I think is helpful, I believe in putting that in
my school.
I last interviewed Bill in December of 1995. An article appeared on
April 4, 1996 in a local paper in a city ten to fifteen miles away from Bill's
school. The article was titled "District Eyes International Academy." Bill is

q noted in the article and the school is described as follows:

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Instruction will focus on cross-cultural understanding, foreign

languages, the international economy and the democratic structure.

The school will also emphasize cooperation, character and self-control

Students will have longer, eight-hour school days in an extended 205—

day school year.

A further study could entail classroom observations and interviews with
students and faculty in this school. How the vision and the ideal articulated by
Bill Notebaum works in practice could be a model for others who believe that
internationalizing the curriculum should be a paramount concern in the
United States, myself included.

Bill Notebaum, in his discussion of how he felt his international
experience had become part of an ongoing personal growth and
transformation of himself as a teacher and his life, connects the idea of the in-
depth learning of subject matter knowledge about world issues and cultures to
basic issues of school reform in the U.S. His example shows how teacher
learning can set a ball in motion which expands into the much larger picture
of how we might improve the schools to include cultural learning. This sort of
school would affirm the heritage of all students in the U.S. and also focus on
developing the self-efficacy of students to encourage them to become
continuous learners. I believe educators can learn a great deal from the way
Bill connects his international experience to issues of school reform. He is an

excellent example of personal and professional transformation within the

Deweyan ideal.

Arguing for International Education

Bill Notebaum, through words and deeds, displays his transformation.
He and several of the other teachers responded to the critics of international
and multicultural education. Those critics decry the use of precious school
time for these subjects. Part of their evidence of personal transformation was

the role they took on as advocate after their international experience. This is

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why I asked them to respond to the critics, such as Bloom and Hirsch. Because

I brought the issue up with few words of explanation, they each indicated
through the vehemence and quality of their response that they were quite
aware of this debate and its implications for their work. Bloom (1987) argues
that international or multi—cultural education has promoted cultural
relativism wherein many students are without core values.
Openness and the relativism that makes it the only plausible stance in
the face of various claims to truth and various ways of life and kinds of
human beings - is the great insight of our times. The true believer is
the real danger. The study of history and of culture teaches that all the
world was mad in the past; men always thought they were right, and
that led to wars, persecutions, slavery, xenophobia, racism, and
chauvinism. The point is not to correct the mistakes and really be right;
rather it is not to think you are right at all. The students, of course,
cannot defend their opinion. It is something with which they have
been indoctrinated. The best they can do is point out all the opinions
and cultures there are and have been. What right, they ask, do I or
anyone else have to say one is better than the others? (p. 26)
These students he believes don't really know who they are because there is not
enough emphasis on European-American based cultural traditions in their
education. Bill Notebaum's beliefs in international education are clearly
elucidated in his defense of the international school idea: that international
and cross cultural education is necessary for the effective preparation of
young people who will be working with people from diverse cultures and of
diverse ethnicity for the rest of their lives. Mary Ehrhardt argues that human
connections are important within a context of international relations and
world peace. Ellen Stacey believes that the international experience caused
her to appreciate the importance of knowing and respecting her own culture,
of the importance of patriotism and loyalty, which she observed in Japan.
Denise Green also admired the community connectedness she witnessed in
Japan, feeling that American children miss out on this feeling of being part of

a culture. In very different ways, each of them have made an argument for

international education. For example, Mary Ehrhardt, like Denise, makes this

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argument on behalf of her students while others, such as Paul Vandemere,

argue for international education on behalf of educators and students. Their
hope is that educators might use this knowledge as he and Bill Notebaum have,
as a comparative basis for school improvement.

Ed Donovan believes that students must learn about Asia, and especially
China, because their lives ad their livelihoods will be increasingly affected by
relationships with China in the future.

I know it's necessary, an absolute necessity that our kids realize these
differences between the Orient and here because they are going to have
to deal with it. I think that their lives are going to be surrounded by the
Orient and that they better be prepared to cope. Just like our lives have
been surrounded with Western Europe up until now. I see the change
coming. I see it in trade, commerce, and you're beginning to see it in
the educational systems.

Just as Bill Notebaum's argument for an international school is based upon
what he considers the realities of world economics, Ed Donovan portrays the
need in a framework of economic warfare.

I think culturally and economically they are going to be the number 1
enemy of the U.S. in the let century. I don't mean there might be a
shooting war. I don't know. I don't mean that kind of enemy. We are
just going to be at odds with each other over trade, commerce, very
competitive. We are very poorly prepared at this point to cope with it.
You can talk to people who go over there to negotiate, would just be
driven out of their minds. It's just now beginning to get a sense for how
the culture operates. It has been very, very slow in coming. How many
people do we have in this country that can speak Chinese? Not very
many. It's amazing you go to China, our population, the size of our
population, England, Australia, and New Zealand, all put together doesn't
equal the number of English speaking people that you can find in
China. Isn't that amazing?

Ed fears that because "we don't have a clue" about Chinese culture, that we will
eventually be overwhelmed by China, culturally and economically.

I am afraid of because they know more about us, just the fact that they
know language and if you take Edward Hall's thesis and you say
language is culture. They know our culture because they know our
language. We don't know their language and we don't have a clue as to
their culture. It works as a detriment in commerce and industry and
trade and every facet of life practically.

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Ed sees his work to educate young people about China in economic self defense

terms. "I think they [the Chinese people] are going to run over us in 50 years.
I think they're going to run over the Japanese too."

He responds to the idea that studying about other cultures may be
threatening to American culture.

If I came from Italy and ate spaghetti, does that make me un-American?
That's the kind of question you have to ask yourself. I mean if I come
from Vietnam and I like rice, does that make me un-American? Because
Franklin Roosevelt threw my grandparents into a concentration camp,
does that make me less of an American? I think that America is not a
single system, but rather a rule of law. We've said that the Constitution
is the guideline for the way we behave and the way we treat people. We
have a Judeo—Christian ethic that encompasses that whole thing and it's
open enough so that other people can fit if you take "The Wall Street
Journal" and they talk about the push and pull that people have for
getting ahead, become CEO or President or whatever. The attitude is that
if I've got something, that I've got to prevent people from getting theirs
because there's not enough room here for all of us to have this.

Ed feels that one of the strengths of the United States is the way each
generation accommodates new immigrants.

It may be that the value system that my folks bring from France or Italy
or Bosnia or wherever I come from, might be just a little bit off. I'm not
used to it yet. But my kids will accommodate it. I take a look at 19th
century America in the last ten years of the 19th century, we had about
ten million people come into this country, which is more than we had
come in last year: about 400,000. We accommodated them and they
became good Americans. They fought for this country. I don't think we
can shut people out that easily.

Ed thinks that Americans cannot even appreciate their own culture if they

have nothing with which to compare it.
How can they appreciate it [American culture] if they don't have
anything to compare it to? I think that you have to have something to
compare it to. I admire the whole system of rocketry, that was German.
The invention of gunpowder was a wonderful thing for the United
States, just ask the gun boys. That came from China. This is stupid, this
idea that we encompass everything. And nothing else should get in. It's
just stupid.

Ed returns to his theme that students who are not exposed to learning about

other cultures will not be able to function with efficacy in this world and even

pose a future threat to the relationships between the U.S. and the world.

285

It seems to me if you teach one thing, one culture and kids grow up and
they are say 25 years or 30 years old and they go into another culture
and all of a sudden they have not a clue about what's going on around
them. Those kids are going to come back here. They are not going to be
able to survive in a different culture. Not only that, but they could
wreck any kind of relations that the United States might have with
another culture.

Paul Vandemere sees international education as a vehicle for student
opportunity, even if it is unlikely that many of them will use their Japanese or
Chinese language training on a daily basis.

I get no greater satisfaction than to have kids who are going to go on
and continue their studies in Japanese or East Asian studies, etc.,
knowing that they may not make a career out of it, that's OK, that's fine
They will then come back and they will talk about what they have done.
I just had a boy come in today, he's the first incoming freshman in
Notre Dame's history to be accepted into the second year program in
Japanese and that's because of the Japanese he learned here. And I
wasn't his teacher for that, someone else was. It's an opportunity that is
provided. Kids take advantage of that. You turn kids on to learning, and
that can be done in any profession or in any discipline. That's what's
fun to see. Kids that walk out of here with an interest to learn more
about other people. We are both you know, we both are really involved
with foreign language instruction. We know probably 95% if not more
of our students, will not be using their Chinese or Japanese on a daily
basis. But that's OK. It's the awareness they have of other cultures, it's
what they can learn about themselves. It's opportunities that are
provided as a result of the study. It makes them a more informed citizen
when it comes to making voting decisions. It's insight that can
hopefully correct stereotypes and prejudices of others that can crop up
in conversations.

Paul considers language skills and cultural understandings to be a great asset
for students when coupled with other skills such as engineering or law. He
criticized some companies who still do not think it is necessary to hire people
in the international sales and marketing department who know something
about the language and culture of their trading partners in other cultures.

Amway would not be the number one door-to-door sales company in
Japan if it had a mindset that said that any American they send over
doesn't need to know about Japan or the Japanese. Chrysler would be
shooting itself in the foot for it to say, "We can be as successful in China
with Americans who are clueless about China and Chinese language as
we can be if they have at least a rudimentary understanding of
language and culture." We know that, and Chrysler knows that that
doesn't make good business sense. So fortunately there are enough

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companies out there who are interested in our students with that kind of
background. All things being equal. It's not going to be enough. It
may have been good enough in the past, say because a person has a
certain level of fluency in Chinese or Japanese or Korean to be able to
get a job. That is less likely now. You are going to need the business
skill, the marketing skill, the accounting skill, the engineering skill,
the architectural skill, in addition to the legal skill. But all things being
equal, I know it's true. One of my former students, three years in our
program, went to U of M, majored in Japanese, went to Ohio State law
school, and was hired by the #1 law firm in Michigan and part of what
attracted the firm to him was looking at his resume and seeing that he
had spent time in Japan. It gave him that edge. So we know from
experience that our students can have a competitive employment edge
with the background that we're providing.

Paul agrees with Bloom and Ravitch that it is important for students to be
knowledgeable about their own culture, but not "only" their own culture.

It is important for our students to understand their own culture and I
can agree that they need to know our culture first. They should not
learn our culture only. Just as I don't believe in basics only. I can
support basics first. We again, and we kind of touched this before, if we
limit our students' knowledge to simply American history and the main
groups that perhaps have contributed to that history without looking at
all of the cultures that represent the vibrancy of America, we do our
students a disservice. We ignore, if not discredit, the contributions of so
many people and so many cultures to what makes up America and what
makes up this world. We neglect, we lose a resource, a strength that this
country has. We should consider our diversity a strength. The Japanese
consider their homogeneity a strength. That's OK for them. Although
certainly the homogeneity can be taken to extremes, there are
differences in groups, etc. within Japanese society. But we have a real
strength here. We can't let the strength divide us. But it can, it should
be understood, and it should be relished. The great contributions that
different ethnic groups have made, that different societies have made.

Concurrent with this affirmation of diversity, Paul is concerned about any
form of ethnocentric education which does not provide what he believes a
balance of perspective. Any curriculum which ignores or distorts the
contributions of others, whether from a minority or majority point of view, is
just as erroneous and dangerous as the curriculum it replaces.

I am concerned about some excesses. For example, I'm very concerned
about Afro-centric education. If it means, i_f it means a distortion of that
society's contribution to world culture, then that does a disservice to
those students who were raised in that type of school. fl it means that
areas that are traditionally ignored in the white-based educational
system, for lack of a better phrase, are going to be corrected with a

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more balanced perspective, then that's fine. But to present a world to
students, any group of students, whether it be an Afro-centered world
or a Japanese-centered world or a Chinese-centered world or whatever,
that ignores the contributions of other cultures or distorts the
contributions, that is as wrong as the approach that they are attacking
there are certain charter schools and other schools in this state that
are attempting to set up an African-centered approach, etc., and
perhaps even contemplating the Moslem—centered curriculum. I don't
know first hand and so I don't want to draw generalizations, and that's
why I'll leave it at that. As long as they are attempting to provide a
balance, if they recognize that traditional textbooks and courses don't
cover those things, then that's great. But if all of a sudden they claim
that all society started in Africa, all inventions came out of Africa, all
advances in civilization came out of Africa, that is just factually wrong
and is dangerous.

According to Paul, the idea that including language and cultural studies in the
curriculum necessarily negates American tradition is also erroneous and
untrue.

Just because we want our students to understand the world, doesn't mean
that we're going to say all of a sudden we're dumping on America. We
don't have to dump on George Washington or on others in order for
them to learn about America. In my mind, no one, outside of prophets
and God, have escaped, are perfect. That everyone has done and said
things that are not as positive. Maybe yeah, George Washington or
Jefferson will perhaps not be placed on the pedestal that they currently
are, but that doesn't mean, because of certain attitudes they have
towards slavery or towards women or towards other groups, etc. But that
doesn't mean that because you present a more complete picture, that
doesn't mean that you still don't treasure and admire what they did
accomplish. If that makes sense. That is what's frustrating. For the
Ravitches and others of the world, if I'm getting my linkage correctly,
to say that "How dare you criticize anything that our founding fathers
have achieved?" is wrong and is dangerous, is not necessary. They did
so many good things that our kids can still respect for those and still yet,
there were some other things they did that maybe weren't so good.

In his discussion of the Bloom ( 1987), Hirsch (1987) critique of cultural
relativism, Paul disagrees also with what he had heard Bill Bennett say: that a
respect for other religions or cultural practices is tantamount to portraying
everything as equally valid.

At the same time, Bill Bennett, I refuse to allow his approach to all of a
sudden be imposed upon American society. Because while I can agree
with a number of the virtues that he talks about, I am not going to
impose a Christian Judaic standard on a Moslem, on a Hindu, on a
Buddhist, or on an Atheist. I could still respect a lot of the virtues that
have made this country strong. But I also recognize some of the

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downsides of some of the people that were responsible for those virtues.
And yeah, I don't believe we come across as saying, "Well everything is
equally valid." Of course not. I would never once try to portray Nazism
or the KKK as being equally valid as a way to organize a country or
people. Of course not.

Speaking also of the points brought up by Bloom (1987) in the Closing of
the American Mind Mary Ehrhardt revises the focus of his title and, like Paul

 

Vandemere, brings up the issue of balance.

I really think that's the closing of the American mind. I think it's a
narrow view and ignores the fact that in the let century the
international relations are going to be even more I think a part of our
daily lives than they have been in the 20th century. I suppose that I
guess I would have to side with the vision of the founders of the League
of Nations and of the United Nations but it's only through learning to
negotiate and understand and accommodate our political wishes that we
are going to be able to work cooperatively in the world. The economic
facts are such that we really no longer just exist as a self-supporting
United States. Most everything that we eat or wear or use is
manufactured outside of our boundaries. I just think that the more we
understand of other cultures, the better off we are, the stronger we are
as an American culture and that we've left a time when decisions are
simple. That decisions are very complex and that the greater
understanding that we help children to have of the world in which they
live, the more able they are to make the complex decisions that they are
required to make. I think their horizons have to be broadened. It's not
to say that in a child's educational experience the curriculum shouldn't
be balanced. Just the comparison with China I think that we need to
teach our children to appreciate the legal system, the American legal
system, the requirements of living in a democracy. So that there
certamly needs to be a balance, but I think the debate is interesting
about more foreign language instruction in American public schools or
in American schools.

Her argument is based on what is most meaningful to her about personal
transformation and connects in a Deweyan sense to societal transformation
based upon human connections.

I have tried really hard to make this China experience a part of my life
so that I've looked for professional opportunities, workshops, and have
tried very hard to continue to be in touch with the delegation that was
here this fall. The part that has been missing has been the language
study. I feel that I don't want to give up the experience, I just want to
still be a real vital part of my life, so that it has made me certainly a
different person. A person with a much broader world view. Perhaps
that comes to bear on teaching. It certainly was very personally
transforming and actually I've heard and the other teacher say that it
was the best, she's a new teacher she's in her second year teaching, the
best professional opportunity that she ever could have had.

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One of her most important contributions in China was helping to facilitate an

e-mail account, so that students and teachers could continue to communicate
with each other and to forge new connections.

Actually the Huangshan School where I taught, we initiated the E-Mail
account We opened an account with the Institute of Astrophysics and
then the Huangshan School was very grateful and was willing to take
upon themselves the monthly service charge. Then, now a year later,
they've just installed a modem so that we no longer have to hot wire the
telephone line to do the e-mailing. So now this is a real possibility.

She has learned at a National Council for Teachers of English about e-mail
hookups among schools in many countries.

I think this is now true through global education that and actually at
NCTE the National Council of Teachers of English national meeting in
March, we actually had a demonstration of a hookup of teachers in
Russia, in India, in Japan, in Argentina and Boston. We were all
together through picture scanned in and voice.

It is in these human connections that Mary felt her most meaningful
experience and her work with e-mail would facilitate those connections, an
example of which is her warm relationship with her host family.

Just on Saturday, Marty, I called my host family in Beijing. Bill and I
sent a fax, actually he made the first phone calls and found that fax is an
international word. My family could understand that a fax was coming.
We set up a time, so that Saturday morning it was close to my hostess's
birthday, and I called and I invited my wonderful friend who taught
with me to come because her Chinese is so much better than mine. We
had probably a 40 minute conversation and caught up. This is a very
warm friendship. It's really - I know that we will meet again.

Mary and her husband, Jack, are thinking about hosting in her home a
teacher from the school where she taught. The correspondence and the
connections continue.

The correspondence really continues. During spring vacation, the
Carlton superintendent, high school principals and chairpersons of the
exchange committee went to Beijing and each time that happens, we
send more curricular materials and more greetings. They brought back
this tea that we're drinking, it came from a colleague in the English
faculty at the Huangshan School. There is this continuing relationship
and because I feel lucky that I am part of this well established program,
that just adds layer upon layer of relationships. The next decision that I
will make is whether it is time for us to be a host family for a teacher

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from the Huangshan School. Possibly this is the year that we will host a
teacher.

The arguments that Paul, Mary, and Ed make to support the idea of
including international education and cultural learning is the last issue I have
explored within this chapter on transformation, because they have become
public advocates for what they believe. They were not content to go abroad,
return, and put the experience behind them as a unique and interesting part
of the past without much relevance to their present life. Each of them is
involved in promoting international understanding at many different levels,
in the classroom, as school policy, and in Paul Vandemere's case, as state
policy. Their transformation, like Bill Notebaum's, is manifested in their
going beyond the experience to creating conditions which will facilitate this
kind of experience for other students and teachers. Bill Notebaum's
International Academy or Paul Vandemere's work with the State Department of
Education and officials in his own district to promote student and teacher
foreign exchange programs are examples. The way Paul, Ed, and Mary argue
for the inclusion of cultural and international learning in the school and
their actions to promote this again reflects the Deweyan ideal, the
development of knowledge with an outcome promoting educative experience
in the school and in the society.

Conclusion

These teachers believed that the transforming aspects of this
experience revolved around their feelings of self-confidence and efficacy. At
times there was an almost "I climbed the mountain" quality in their accounts
of struggles and hardships adjusting to their new environment and back home
again. Not one categorically stated that he or she regretted having had the
experience, although in the case of Ellen Stacey, the three years was probably

too long for her to be separated from her family and culture.

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All of these teachers felt more confident in their role as teacher leaders.

They seemed to enjoy being teacher advocates on various issues. Often this
advocacy reflected a passionate commitment to making international
education an integral part of the school curriculum in the U.S. Their
promotion of this idea emerged out of many different motivations, from Ed
Donovan's desire to promote tolerance everywhere, in order at least to
understand the competition, to Mary Ehrhardt's drive to establish warm
friendships and personal links across borders. Although the economic
motivation seems to dominate Bill Notebaum's thinking, he believes that
schools must prepare students to work together with each other in an
atmosphere of honesty, integrity, and personal responsibility in order for
them to live more meaningful lives.

The international experiences of these teachers served as catalysts to
further action, to promoting international understanding in substantive ways.
It is interesting that Bill Notebaum has initiated the most ambitious
international education project of these six teachers while he was the one with
the least amount of experience there. Ellen Stacey, who had the most lengthy
stay abroad, seems almost paralyzed by comparison. Might we conclude then
that a little bit of international experience is better than a great deal? I do not
think so. Bill's study of the Japan and U.S. economic issues continued for years
before he spent one month in Japan during the summer of 1991. He had
participated in an International Baccalaureate Conference in 1986. The impact
of his international study and experience was an evolving process, and is still
evolving as I write.

As Mary Catherine Bateson points out in Composing a Life (1989), we are
all in the act of defining and redefining ourselves. Experience and how we

handle it changes us, especially if we allow ourselves to continue to learn. At

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least five of these six teachers are in the learning mode, meaning that they

are continuing to learn. All six of them also consider their experience to be
personally and professionally transformative.

In this chapter and those before it, it is clear that international study
and experience affected these teachers in their personal and professional
lives after they returned home. The effects were different for each of them
and sometimes painful. It is clear that they all changed their classroom
pedagogy, curriculum and emphasis to some extent. In Chapter 7, they give
many examples of how they handled classes differently; how they "enriched"
their curriculum with artifacts; or how they made their teaching more
"authentic" with slides and first hand "stories to tell." It is clear that the
enthusiasm these teachers exuded just during these interviews was enough to
wake up some students from their lethargy.

These teachers have demonstrated themselves to be "doers." This part of
them may be one reason they went abroad in the first place. Their life and
work since the experience have been if anything, more active and vibrant,
than it was before they stepped on the airplane or decided to study Japanese.
Learning from them may help us to define what such an experience may mean
for education in the U.S., which is the topic I will explore in the concluding
chapter.

In this chapter they give their versions of how they feel this
experience has transformed them as teachers and as human beings. I close
this chapter with the words of Mary Ehrhardt because part of her
transformation is symbolized in the e-mail hookup she has expedited. The e-
mail connection will allow communication between students across cultures.
It is another kind of penpal exchange and it represents her desire to facilitate

connectedness among children from very different backgrounds and cultures.

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The relationships she made, the new knowledge of a very different language,

the confidence to speak in Chinese or English before large groups, all count
toward what she and I agree constitutes transformative experience.

I close this section also with Mary because I believe that she is such a
fine example of personal growth and transformation. Her emphasis on
connectedness is what I believe is the major argument for international
education and personal transformation. People have the capacity to grow and
learn together and can learn a great deal from each other's different
perspectives. People can experience deep friendships with others across
cultural and national boundaries. This is the way we can learn to promote
each other's potential for the mutual benefit of all people. This is the best that

human beings can do in this world.

CHAPTER 9
CONCLUSION:
INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE AND SCHOOL REFORM

School reform has been on the "hot burner" political agenda
intermittently since the 18308 and 403 when Horace Mann revolutionized

education by promoting universal public education first in Massachusetts and

then in the U.S. The latest reform movement was epitomized by the Nation at
Ris_k report in 1983, decrying mediocrity in U.S. education. Blame for the
perceived faltering U.S. productivity and marketing success in the world,
when compared with the emerging competitiveness of Asian nations,
particularly Japan, was laid squarely on the steps of U.S. schools. Study upon
study financed by the Rand group (McLaughlin, 1990) or the Carnegie
Foundation (Carnegie, 1986) used international test data, especially in the
areas of student achievement in math and science, to bolster their arguments
that radical change must occur in the schools to make America competitive
again in the global marketplace.

Schools of education throughout the country joined the bandwagon to
reform themselves as a precursor to reforming education (The Holmes Group,
1986). School/university partnerships were forged to bring "the ivory tower"
into the real world of U.S. classrooms, to work with teachers to struggle with
and facilitate school reform. Sometimes, however, as has often occurred in
the past, the classroom teacher has been ignored. Milbrey McLaughlin found

that school reform will die if there is not substantive change in the individual

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teacher, and that long-lasting change is as difficult to foster in individuals as

it has been in schools (Little and McLaughlin, 1993).

The teachers in this study have taught us a great deal about the
relationship of international experience to substantive change in their
classroom practice and their lives. Teacher learning involving changes in
pedagogy and curriculum is a major issue in school reform in the U.S. In this
summation chapter, I will briefly connect their experiences to the following
concerns of many proponents of school reform: I) the ethnocentricity among
a majority of teachers with narrow cultural experience, 2) internationally
balanced perspectives within a teacher's pedagogical content knowledge, 3)
international experience as a learning opportunity for teachers, 4)
international experience to promote a learning environment in the schools,
and S) the personal and professional impact of friendships and connections
across cultures for teachers. Based upon the data in this study, I then will
make specific recommendations to program educators and policymakers who
promote and/ or develop and execute exchange programs among teachers.

My first question in this study was about who these teachers were. What
were the background influences and characteristics which led them to study
and experience another culture in depth? In addition to family, schooling,
college, and teaching influences, I found that in general these teachers are

people who love to learn.

Veteran Teachers in fig Process of Becoming
Teachers in the U.S. often have had narrow cultural experiences while
students in teacher education programs have been described as "culturally
insular". Feiman-Nemser and Remillard (1995, p. 6) describe a "typical
American teacher" as "a Caucasian female, married with two children. She

teaches in a suburban elementary school. She is not politically active." (p 6)

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Ninety three percent of teacher education candidates are Caucasian, over half

are from "small, rural towns or suburbs and prefer to teach middle-class
children of average ability in traditional settings." (p 6) This description of
veteran teachers and teacher education students is why international study
and experience can be considered as one way for veteran teachers to break out
of the cultural ethnocentricity in themselves and in their school settings. If
the work of these "worldly teachers" is encouraged by educators at all levels,
their international experiences can be shared as a learning opportunity for
the entire school. Schooling would be less defined by the narrow
ethnocentricity of teachers described above.

It would be inaccurate to describe the teachers I studied as typical.
Although I did not initiate this study with the thought that I would only
interview exemplary teachers, this small sample of teachers who had studied
or experienced another culture in depth are clearly exemplary. These
teachers self-selected themselves into this category by their inquiring minds
and determination to alter their lives and work in order to have these
international experiences. Their personal characteristics have intersected
with their biographies to create a teacher who does not fit the "typical" mode
in terms of cultural insularity. They credit these experiences with expanding
their knowledge and understanding as well as causing them to reflect upon
their own teaching practices and curriculum. Their increased sensitivity and
awareness to children of diverse ethnicity provides an example of how
international experiences could broaden the minds of teachers.

I have considered these questions: What kind of teacher would forego
the comfort level of her own family, friends, and society to experience risk
and vulnerability living and working in a culture very different from her

own? Are personality characteristics and attitude the key factors in

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influencing whether or not a teacher will participate in such a study or

experience and whether or not a person will benefit from it? Might these
outstanding teachers function as examples to others who are unable or
unmotivated to have an in-depth international experience?

Based on the data, my study suggests that a combination of factors
including personal characteristics, family background, schooling
experiences, and teaching experiences functions as a precursor to thedecision
to experience another culture in depth. They all entered into this experience
with a spirit of adventure. The two most often stated reasons for this attitude
was their desire to become more knowledgeable about a subject they were
teaching and to "recharge batteries," to escape the doldrums of teaching the
same material to the same age group over a period of years. They wanted to
feel the spark of learning again.

Each of these teachers considered certain family and cohort influences
to have been formative in encouraging their later interest in foreign
cultures. Several mentioned that their childhood was shaped partially with
the knowledge of the United Nations as an organization which would work
toward international cooperation and world peace. Four of them specifically
mentioned the Civil Rights Movement as having had a great impact upon their
thinking. Therefore, there appears to be a link between those who believe in
multicultural education, which celebrates diversity, and those who promote
international understanding and cooperation. James Lynch( 1989, 1992)
believes that social justice is the glue which can bring these two fields
together. Based on the data in this study, there need not be an "either or"
dichotomy between multiculturalism and intemationalism. When Ed Donovan
bristles and confronts two teacher colleagues who use the work "Chink" in

front of him, he is providing an example of how deeply his international

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education experience has affected him on the issue of prejudice and racial

justice.

A theme which runs through all of these six teacher's narratives and is,
I believe, a precursor to their decision to study about and live in another
culture is their particular learning style. The way they feel about learning is
reflected in their exuberance, their curiosity, and their enjoyment of
learning for its own intrinsic sake, not necessarily for an external goal.

Cyril Houle's (1961) depiction of a person who learns for the joy of it, a
life-long learner, seems to fit these teachers. They are committed to sharing
their love of learning as enabled by their international experience, with their
students, colleagues and the community at large. Whereas Houle's continuous
learners might keep their passion for learning somewhat to themselves as a
solitary exercise, these teachers sometimes exhibit an enthusiasm for
promoting a greater focus on international and cultural education in the
schools. John Dewey ( 1904) describes the characteristics of an ideal teacher,
who exhibits a focused disciplined passion for learning in combination with a
sensitive awareness of the experience and capabilities of his students. Such a
teacher will draw out her students into deeper understandings by developing
their own experience to include an ever widening base of knowledge and
understanding through inquiry. According to Dewey

Only a teacher thoroughly trained in the higher levels of intellectual

method and who thus has constantly in his own mind a sense of what

adequate and genuine intellectual adtivity means, will be likely, in deed,
not in the mere word, to respect the mental integrity and force of

children. (1904, p. 329)

Any teacher who exhibits a love of learning and a deep knowledge base will
often motivate students to share in the excitement of learning. Although

Dewey does not argue against pedagogical training, he claims "that

scholarship per se may itself be a most effective tool for training and turning

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out good teachers." (1904, p.327) Teachers must be active learners themselves

in order to be effective models for their students. The teachers in this study
are exemplary both as learners and as teachers. These exemplary teachers
model their international knowledge and respect for cultural diversity in ways
which changed their school environments.

Although I did not seek out self-actualizing people as informants in the
sense of Abraham Maslow's Psychology of Being (1968), five of the six are
clearly in this category. They each literally sparkled when they described
what they had learned from their experiences and how they felt their
experience to have been transformative. Therefore, although more teachers
might benefit from an intensive international experience, those who seek it
out are most likely to share their understandings and be models for students,
colleagues and community as continuous learning, vibrant, caring adults
likely to motivate and energize their students and change the school

environment in the process.

Culturally Balanced Perspectives Within
Pedagogical Content Knowledge

Pedagogical content knowledge, the connection of disciplinary
knowledge with teaching methods, is a concept which assumes a strong base of
disciplinary knowledge domains about which every teacher should know
before s/he tailors this knowledge into concepts that children will understand.
It has become a buzzword of the university-based reform of teaching. Within
pedagogical content knowledge, however, what knowledge is considered
valuable? It is important to integrate knowledge about the world into the
curriculum at all levels. For example, diverse cultures have contributed to the
domains of math, science, and literature. Teachers in general lack

disciplinary knowledge in world history and world cultures. They also display

3(1)
little confidence in their intellectual development (Feiman-Nemser and

Remillard, 1995). International experience among veteran teachers cannot
only mitigate the "culturally insular" backgrounds of teachers but also engage
teachers in the experiential learning of disciplinary knowledge, which they
can then transform into lessons for students. All of these six teachers, in
different ways and to greater or lesser degrees, changed their methods and
curriculum to include what they had learned abroad. They also became more
confident about their intellectual ability and development which they
described as part of their basic transformation.

For example, Paul Vandemere and Ed Donovan coincidentally began to
use a version of the same simulation game after their international
experiences. This game consisted of cultural role plays where students would
be faced with having to function in a society with different norms and values.
The goal in this experience for Paul and Ed was the same, to promote
understanding and empathy in their students, so that they would experience
some of the feelings others might experience by being the outsider. The
experience of this simulation game was somewhat analogous to the real
experience Ed and Paul had in China and Japan, respectively. Neither of them
spoke the language and were outsiders. However, they were both treated as
honored guests in their host countries. If students become sensitive to each
other and to people of different nationalities or ethnicity, it might be
interesting to devise an "honored guest" role in a simulation like Ba Fa Ba Fa.
This role play example demonstrates the change in the style and substance of
Paul and Ed's teaching practice.

According to anthropologists George and Louise Spindler (1974, 1994),
teachers who are not in tune with the way their own culture affects their

interaction with others will display a proclivity for their own kind, in

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general, white and middle class, in the classroom. This means that these

teachers will often ignore minority children, poor children, Latin-American
background children and pay more attention to the white middle class
children in their classes. The Spindlers have devised the concept of "cultural
therapy," (1994) or ways to help teachers and students to become more aware
of how their own culture affects their behavior as a precursor to becoming
more sensitive to the cultural constraints of others. Four of the five teachers
in this study, who lived and worked for a significant period of time (over four
months) in Japan and/ or China, have become, as a result of their experience,
more sensitive to the cultural issues of prejudice and cultural stereotypes than
they were before their experience. In a sense, the international experience
served as a kind of "cultural therapy" for them, because they looked at
themselves comparatively against the backdrop of another culture.

Ed Donovan expressed increased sensitivity in his very strong
prohibitions of any sort of ethnic slur in his classroom, since his year in
China. His sensitivity to the students from Korea, England, and Canada, who
are having difficulty adjusting to American culture, is one way where his own
cultural experience makes him look at himself and others in a different light.
When Ed asks his students to imagine how they might behave if they were
starving or when he talks to them about the stereotype of a "typical
American," he may be creating a classroom atmosphere which encourages
self-reflection among his students, a key part of the Spindler's idea of
"cultural therapy." Stories he tells about the arrogance and ignorance of the
American tour group on the Great Wall and the way many people walk in a
society where space has been plentiful in comparison to how people manage to
walk in less space, teaches his students to look at themselves differently.

Engaging American students in role plays, where they must imagine

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themselves as minority people with very different customs and values

interacting with American "capitalists," could be viewed as methods of
"cultural therapy" in the classroom. His goal is to help young people to be
self-reflective and tolerant, about the peoples of the world. Mary Ehrhardt's
concern that she needs to pay more attention to "who these children are,"
their cultural backgrounds, has developed because of her international
experience. Paul Vandemere highlights the positive attributes of cultures of
students in his class and he too uses role plays to develop deeper
understandings in his students. The content of the curriculum and their
pedagogy has changed, they claim, because of their international experience.

This change was dramatic for all six teachers, from Ellen Stacey's
emphasis on grammar and writing skills to Mary Ehrhardt's sharing her
knowledge of Chinese language with her second graders. Paul Vandemere, Ed
Donovan, Mary Ehrhardt, and Denise Green all brought back artifacts which
they shared with their students to help make the content areas of their
teaching "come alive". One wonders how often Paul pulled things out of the 26
crates he and his wife sent back to take into his classes to illustrate, for
example, the political significance of a Daruma doll he bought in Japan. Ed
Donovan's playing Chinese music tapes as students entered the room and his
use of scrolls portraying the words of famous Chinese poets added an
authenticity to his subject matter that no text book could emulate. When Paul
talked about the significance of Mt. Fujiyama in Japan, he could talk about it
from the perspective of one who had climbed it himself.

, When Ellen Stacey decided to introduce more book work and grammar

exercises into her curriculum after her three years in Japan, she explained it
in several ways: it is easier and she is feeling burned out; the book should be

used, not wasted; her students don't know how to write because they do not

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understand the language; and the students should appreciate the English

language as the unifying element of U.S. society. When considering the
emphasis she put on expecting students to take more responsibility for their
actions, like cleaning up the graffiti in the school, the impact of her seeing
Japanese students take charge of the clean up of school grounds and the
regimented rigor in the Japanese classroom could have affected her desire to
go back to the basics and demand more from her U.S. students. Even though
she says she makes curriculum decisions because it is "easier," this does not
tell the whole story about the effect of her experience. She is presently
teaching Japanese in Milwaukee to 7th and 8th grade students, who had
previously only had options to take French or Spanish. She is also teaching
Japanese at a community college there.

The majority of these teachers discuss their teaching style before the
experience in comparative terms, as if they were unaware of some aspects of
their own teaching until they had a comparative touchstone of different
teaching practices in another society with which to compare their own work.
For some this involved actually changing practice. The three high school
teachers, all males, describe their teaching practice before the experience as
traditional and somewhat superficial in subject matter areas. All three made
. an effort to become more progressive as a result of the experience; they
organized fewer teacher-centered lectures, and more group work, role plays,
and student centered projects. The two female elementary teachers did not
describe changes in their teaching style, as they both considered themselves
progressive teachers before they taught abroad. While they did not see their
style as changing, they talked about teaching now in ways influenced by their
time in other countries and schools. Their evidence suggests that cultural

knowledge became integrated within each teacher's pedagogy and curriculum

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in ways which they all considered transforming. Pedagogical content

knowledge which includes cultural learning can improve a teacher's

effectiveness.

International Experience as a Learning Opportunity for Teachers

In addition to cultural insularity among teachers and effective
pedagogical content knowledge, the problem of sustained motivation and
enthusiasm among veteran teachers concerns reformers. In Huberman's
study (1989) of the life trajectories of teachers, the most professionally
fulfilled teachers had gone through an experience after teaching for some six
years which rejuvenated their feelings about their work and motivated them
to continue learning and maintain positive attitudes about teaching until
retirement. Perhaps we would find in a longitudinal study that the self-
described "transformative" international experience of these teachers would
qualify as this type of experience and have a similar long-term, positive
effect. Tharp and Gallimore (1988) apply the Vygotskian idea of the zone of
proximal development, which had initially been applied to the learning of
children, to teachers. A study of the conditions under which the intersection
of the personal characteristics and background of individuals connect with
new knowledge could include international experience as one kind of
learning opportunity for teachers. Self-reflectivity is promoted by George
and Louise Spindler (1974/1994), who argue for exploring our own biases in
order to better understand the cultural backgrounds of others. This could be
considered a possible outcome of international experience. Most of these
teachers returned home, seeing their own society with different perspectives,
a change which represents a step in the direction of self-reflection. The in-
depth international experience was a learning opportunity for these teachers

which they believe changed their personal and professional lives.

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This study shows that the length of time a teacher is engaged in

international experience and the type of international experience that is
transformative varies. For example, a period of time in the classroom of
another country teaching has caused four of the teachers in this study to
think about aspects of their pedagogy that they had previously taken for
granted. It caused them to be different kinds of teachers, both with respect to
their teaching methodology and their curriculum. Teaching experience in a
very different society, such as that of Japan and China, can function somewhat
like a mirror reflecting a teacher's habits back to her. Things he may have
taken for granted, such as his clarity of speech, or her background in child
psychology, is no longer accepted as a given. I believe that this process
engenders a type of self-reflection which is absolutely necessary for school
reform in the United States to be effective. Teachers must work to understand
their own strengths and weaknesses more clearly. It appears that this
international experience has accomplished this to differing degrees in four of
the teachers who participated in this study.

Those teachers, such as Ed Donovan and Mary Ehrhardt, who were open
to the concerns of the teachers with whom they worked, learned through
their connections with others. The way the middle-aged English teachers
opened up to Mary Ehrhardt showed their trust in her, a trust that she would
be sensitive to their feelings. She was very affected and concerned for the
plight of these Chinese teachers. Denise Green very openly shared pictures of
her home and family with Japanese students and teachers as a form of cultural
sharing. Her facility with Japanese made it easier for such a sharing to take
place, which was very important to her. These cultural interchanges educated
the U.S. teachers about the concerns of students and teachers in their host

countries.

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There were other examples of teacher learning from their experience

teaching abroad. In addition to the eagerness to learn, Ellen Stacey and Denise
Green were in awe of the emphasis on the arts, especially the music program
in Japan. Denise felt badly that her American students did not have similar
opportunities to learn about music and to play an instrument as her Japanese
students. Paul Vandemere and Bill Notebaum both wanted to incorporate
elements of the Japanese homeroom into the schools where they work. Ellen
Stacey admired the close relationship that existed between many teachers and
students in Japan. She also learned about the differences between the
workloads of many U.S. and Japanese teachers. Each of these teachers learned
while they taught and brought new ideas home with them.

Bill Notebaum offers another example of personal and professional
transformation. He felt that his progression from a teacher of humanities and
economics to Principal of an international school entailed a "huge" amount of
personal growth. His international study and experience was part of his
search to find answers for students in his classroom. Each question lead to
more study and questions until he began working with an employee of the
Federal Reserve Board to help teachers develop different ways of viewing the
U.S.-trade relationship with Japan. The culmination of this work was his grant
to engage in a study tour of Japan for one month. This he feels was the
catalyst which moved him to present a proposal for an international school to
his superintendent, but it was the work he had done previously which set the
stage for this final step. It is impossible to predict how influential a short
international experience might be. Others in his group may have only
confirmed stereotypes or looked at it more as a trip than as Bill describes it, a
transformative experience. A learning opportunity depends partly upon what

the person brings with him to the experience as well as the quality of the

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experience itself. The learning opportunities that these teachers explored

abroad enabled most of them to change their school environments sometimes

dramatically.

A Learning Environment in the Schools

The learning environment in schools is dictated by how well educators
take advantage of the learning opportunities available to them. The learning
opportunity in individuals is best orchestrated by a guide, a mentor, and by
example. The modeling of these teachers and their work sharing experiences
with colleagues and children puts them in a mentoring role in the school. In
the schools where the teachers were welcomed into other classrooms and
encouraged to plan and conduct workshops with teachers about their
international experiences, the international experience of one exemplary
teacher can contribute to a change in school context.

The resistance to change in the school context is considered a major
hurdle for school reform. Because these veteran teachers are key players in
the school context, their personal and professional transformations can
transform their home schools. For example, Bill Notebaum and Paul
Vandemere have significantly changed their own school context in
substantive reform efforts. An apprenticeship of colleagues and students to
these teachers, who have a greater knowledge and expertise in one area, could
break down some of the isolating tendencies of the school environment for
teachers and students. Veteran teacher to veteran teacher mentoring in
subject matter domains could create a collegial learning environment in the
schools.

Across all six informants, K-12 schooling was not a major influence on

their interest in international or cultural learning, except for one or two

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individual teachers. The school environment did not seem to foster curiosity

about the world or anything else, for that matter. The accounts of their K-12
experience include little evidence of intellectual stimulation except for the
occasional exemplary individual teacher, who is described as being very
different from the rest. An example of Bill Notebaum's tongue-in—cheek
disdain for most of his education is in his praise for a teacher "who actually
believed that students should learn for understanding." When these teachers
were students, they all exhibited intellectual curiosity and excitement about
learning, but the learning generally noted took place at home, not at school.
In fact Paul Vandemere could not think of one outstanding teacher in his K-12
experience. His "apprenticeship of observation" (Lortie, 1975) in schooling
held few positive role models.

After their experiences abroad, all of these teachers felt more secure
about expressing their opinions, becoming advocates, joining in on the
debates waged in teacher meetings and faculty lounges, thereby creating a
more intellectually stimulating environment in their schools than what they
had experienced as students. Soft-spoken Mary Ehrhardt sees herself in a very
different role, as one who can question educational theories, such as those put
forward in Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences (1993). It is clear that she
had formerly perceived herself as a listener on many of these issues. Because
of her international experience, she has had to think about what she believes
in and wants to share these beliefs. She now has the confidence to speak
before hundreds of people, as if she knows herself and is sure of what she has
to say. She will question educational authorities or dogma, feeling she really
has something to "contribute" to the debates. She was always a learner, but
now she characterizes herself this way and is frustrated that she does not have

time to learn more, for example, furthering her proficiency in Chinese

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language. Mary Ehrhardt now feels very optimistic about her opportunities to

make "positive contributions" at all levels of the educational process. Those
contributions will benefit her students and colleagues in the academic and
general community. Her experience in China was the catalyst of her profound
sense of personal and professional growth.

Bill Notebaum's work shows how international study and experience can
change the school context. Ten years after his district sent him to an
International Baccalaureate Conference, he is managing the opening of the
only internationally oriented public high school in Ohio with an
International Baccalaureate curriculum and degree. Bill maintains that it was
his work studying the U.S.-Japan trade issue to garner knowledge for teaching
economics which started him on this path. He views his one month study/ tour
in Japan as a benchmark in his career, a time when he decided to go for a
dream. He would work to create a school where "teaching for understanding"
would be the norm rather than the exception, a reverse of his own high school
experience.

Within the context of rigorous world studies and cross-cultural
understanding, students and their teachers would be empowered to take
charge of their own learning. In this school, authentic performance-based
assessments involving projects with public outcomes would take the place of
multiple choice, true/false, and fill-in-the-blank examinations, which require
rote memorization, rather than cognitive learning skills. This public school of
choice will be located in one of the most affluent districts in the State and
students and teachers from ten other districts have applied to study or teach
there. The international experience of a teacher, Bill Noteboem, was the
catalyst for a major change in the context of a public high school in Ohio.

These teachers demonstrated how their international experience helped them

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change the context of schooling. Their personal relationships with people

from other cultures was the oft-stated, most powerful aspect of their
international experience, giving each of them a deeper dimension of cultural
understanding. The importance they each ascribe to this dimension of their
international experience must be considered in any attempt to analyze how

and why personal connections can motivate teachers and students to learn.

Friendships and Connections across Borders

Although a biased person can accept friendship across cultures as an
anomaly, personal connections meant much more to these teachers than
sightseeing and shopping. Individuals were accepted as individuals and not
seen only as representatives of a race. The common underlying humanity in
all of us is reflected in these friendships across borders. Cultural differences
did not get in the way of meaningful human connections as in the case of
Mary Ehrhardt with her Chinese host family. The deeper understanding she
gained about the hopes and fears of the Chinese people with whom she lived
and the Chinese teachers with whom she worked, is reflected in her work to
enable U.S. student and teacher connections with their counterparts in China
through technology via e-mail. The work of school reform can be fostered by
these connections by motivated teachers such as Mary. She shared her
experience with and encouraged others to engage in developing their own
experience in connection with others, in China and in her 2nd graders'
penpal exchange with Chinese children in the bilingual school in Boston.
Learning from these kinds of experiences can profoundly affect the school
environment with new and different perspectives and the celebration of a
common humanity.

When Mary Ehrhardt says, "I am a different person," she means that

international experience changed her in ways that were very important to

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her. These changes enhanced proclivities which she already had displayed

much earlier in her life when she felt that experiencing homestays in Europe
meant the most to her. It is not surprising that Mary thrived in a family
setting in China, because what is most important to her are the personal
connections and friendships that can occur between and among people
brought up in different cultures. She and Ed Donovan personify the sort of
teacher who doesn't want to just learn about and talk about world cultures,
they want to experience it themselves. They would rather have first-hand
experiences than vicarious experiences. Mary Ehrhardt, who believes in the
Deweyan idea of experiential learning, applies this philosophy to herself as a
learner.

Those teachers like Mary Ehrhardt, Ed Donovan, Paul Vandemere, Denise
Green, and Bill Notebaum, who express their cultural learning in respectful
terms, have allowed their international study and experience to educate them,
to promote their own personal growth, and to greatly enrich their lives and
their classrooms. Cultural learning has led to the quest for more, deeper
understanding and insights in all five of these teachers. Only Ellen Stacey
seems to have been closed down by her international experience.

Ed Donovan goes to great lengths in space and time to revisit friends in
China from Beijing to Hainan Island. His correspondence alone to some thirty-
five people while teaching full-time seems daunting. However, he enjoys
these experiences, describing his feelings about seeing old friends, "It was a
ball! It was a ball!" When talking about his own personal transformation, he
describes himself as the sort of person who comes to the aid of foreign students
and teachers and others who he says are "literally cast adrift" in our society.
He believes he has become much more sensitive and empathetic to these

people, because he and his wife experienced these feelings of being an "other"

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in China. This is probably why he refuses to allow racist remarks to go

unchallenged by anyone, including his colleagues. In becoming more
sensitive and empathetic, he has developed many relationships with Chinese
individuals which seem to mean a great deal to him. He likes being the sort of
person who gives his car to a foreign friend in need, a tolerant caring man
like his father and his favorite uncle.

Paul Vandemere gets a great deal of satisfaction in his work to open the
eyes of the American and Japanese students on the exchange programs he
promoted in his district and at the state level, to let them see and get to know
each other as individuals. More than any vicarious experience, the presence
of Shibahara for one year on his staff served to break down the prejudices and
negative stereotypes towards Japanese people of teachers in his school because
they became friends with him. Here again it is the friendships, the human
connections, which make the most meaningful difference in people's attitudes.

The Women's League for Peace and Freedom, Amnesty International, or
Doctors Without Borders are a few of the many organizations which work
across borders to establish human connections for the betterment and perhaps
even the long-term survival of the human race. Breaking down cultural
barriers to establish cooperative human relationships across borders is the
goal of long time peace activists like Elise Boulding. The international
experience of these teachers puts them in the forefront of this work. That
they are teachers who can promote understanding and cooperation in this
world among the children ensures that the work will continue in future
generations. This is where a Deweyan connection between "The School and
the Society" (1900) can be the ultimate effect of the international experience

of teachers.

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Four of my informants spoke forcefully on the issue of

internationalizing the curriculum and multi-cultural issues in U.S. schools.
Ed, Paul, and Bill predominantly concentrate on the economic argument for
improving international education in the schools; however, underlying many
of their comments is an optimism about human nature and human
relationships. Their goal is to not only learn tolerance of each other but to go
deeper, beyond this level, and know each other for the intrinsic value and
enjoyment of that understanding in itself. These friendships and connections
across borders are examples to students and teachers and provide another
focus for the relationship between international experience and school

reform.

RECOMMENDATIONS
In keeping with the idea that we can learn a great deal from one case, I
will make recommendations based upon the data in this small sample. I have
italicized the general recommendations within the text and summarized them

again in Appendix A.

Who should Go?

I began 'this study thinking that in-depth international experience
would be valuable for every K-12 teacher. However, when resources are
finite, choices must be made and some teachers, as exemplified in this study,
will benefit from this experience more than others. Therefore, demonstrably
exemplary teachers who are willing to put time and effort into preparation
and post experience follow-up work should be encouraged to go.

Paul Vandemere, an exemplary teacher, shared his international
experience, not only with his own students, but with students and educators

throughout the State, after he was chosen Teacher of the Year. Paul, as an

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exemplary teacher, might have encouraged many teachers to learn about and

experience some of the endless possibilities in the world.

Ellen Stacey was the teacher who seemed the least motivated and
proactive about teaching in Japan; however, she took an unpaid leave of
absence to participate in the first seven-month, state-sponsored program. She
was also very actively involved in her students' lives after her first
experience in Japan. This change in her work with students was based upon
what she had observed and admired in the relationships between students and
teachers in Japan. It is clear that the impact of experience differs for every
person, but if we can learn from these six people, the fact that they happen to
seem outstanding should not negate the possibly positive impact of
international experience upon any teacher's pedagogy.

On the other hand, as John Dewey explains, any experience can be
miseducative as well as educative. An experience can have negative
ramifications on the creativity and personal growth of some individuals. In
this study, it appears that Ellen Stacey, by her own description, would fit into
this role. "I had lost what Ellen was all about." Nevertheless, it is possible that
Ellen will work through her depression and emerge as a stronger, more
vibrant and self-reflective teacher, and perhaps not. Three years abroad
could be traumatizing to many people, especially if they were not prepared for
the negative effect of, as in Ellen's case, moving from the status of "honored
guest" to "permanent outsider." Although Ellen thinks that "any misfit" can
get along in the U.S., the tales of immigrants in this country tell a different
story, one of painful assimilation and/or angry alienation (Ekoneskaka, 1990;
Rodriguez, 1982,1992; Takaki,1989).

All four exemplary teachers who taught in the public sector in Japan or

China felt they had made many positive contributions in the host country's

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schools. They took it upon themselves to promote more interaction with

students than they felt was the norm. They added humor and flexibility to the
teaching of English. They shared many materials and ideas such as role plays
with their English teaching colleagues in the host country. Delighted to talk
about this, they were confident in their methods, often comparing them
positively to their perceptions of very traditional, formal lecture styles which
they observed in their host countries. As they worked with teachers,
essentially teaching the teachers and students, they were also learning. The
discussion that Mary Ehrhardt had with her 7th grade class in China about
American perspectives on age, for example helped her to define and
understand the Chinese reverence for age and think about that cultural
difference. This is an example of how an outstanding teacher can benefit
from international experience and subsequently share her new

understandings with students and teachers in the U.S.

Preparation

Based upon these teachers' reactions, I cannot over—emphasize the
importance of a realistic preparation, including discussions of pertinent
reading material, for any teacher who is going to spend a significant period of
time teaching overseas. If the program is ongoing, meeting with others who
have previously gone is essential. I would suggest that videotapes and/or still
pictures be taken of living accommodations, schools, and neighborhoods
where people will be living. I would emphasize that if people need a great deal
of alone time and space, China and Japan will be very difficult for them. I
recommend that any teacher planning to teach in Japan read Thomas Rohlen's
lapan's High Schools (1983), articles by Manabu Sato (1992) and David Berliner
(1993), which paint a more realistic, less rosy picture of Japanese schools than

often emanates from the American press. I have often recommended to people

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going to China that they read Mark Salzman's Iron and Silk (1986) and Bette

Bao Lord's novel Spring Moon (1981) as a cultural and historical context for
understanding their own experience in China. I would add Heidi Ross's Chin—a
Learns English (1993) and Bill Holm's Coming Home Crazy (1990) about his year
teaching in China. I believe that when people are prepared for worst case
scenarios as well as the high points of international experiences and still
desire to meet this challenge, they will take the conditions more in stride, as
did Ed Donovan.

The Donovans, nevertheless, went through a difficult time with
Heather's breakdown from culture shock. The experience of Heather Donovan
and Ellen Stacey has lead me to rethink my own experience and offer another
suggestion: that the preparation for teachers who intend to teach abroad
include the oral and written stories of others who have had a difficult time
adjusting to the culture. Even accounts of the trauma felt by many immigrants
to the U.S., such as Richard Rodriguez (1982), could develop a teacher's self-
awareness, and in Ed Donovan's words to understand that a certain amount of
cultural trauma is "normal". I recommend that these books and articles be
read and discussed in detail with people who have had these sorts of
experiences as a formal part of the preparation. I suspect that if Ellen Stacey
had had this kind of preparation, she may have declined to go to Japan in the
first place, or she would have had a different attitude about many aspects of
Japan, especially her living conditions.

The way each of them handled their living conditions enabled me to
better understand some of their general reactions to living in another culture.
Mary Ehrhardt and Ed Donovan, who accepted living in the most difficult
physical conditions, seemed to forge the closest and most long-term

relationships with people in their host countries. Mary considered her living

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conditions without heat in the cold March to be a challenge. Ed Donovan did

not speak much about the inconveniences he was faced with, i.e., hot water
only at certain times, unpredictable electricity. He felt that he had been well
prepared by his program leaders, so it was not an issue for him. Denise Green
also does not say much about her living situation, which leaves Ellen Stacey as
a counter example to all of them.

The importance Ellen designates to space and convenience in her living
accommodations suggests several possible interpretations: 1) that the
preparation which state officials gave her was inadequate and misleading or
that she had disregarded this preparation, 2) that many of her assumptions
were erroneous, and 3) that Ellen was unable to flexibly adjust when she found
that conditions were different from what she had expected. Feeling like she
was treated like a "Queen" during her first experience, she was increasingly
bitter about her treatment during her second three-year experience in Japan.
By contrast, Denise Green took the position that one should not show negative
emotions to her hosts. She felt it was important for her to be a polite and
gracious guest. She felt that this was part of her responsibility in the program
to keep her feelings to herself, allowing her feelings to surface only in the
privacy of her room. Denise, being brought up as an African-American in a
white-dominated and often racist world, may have had plenty of practice
keeping up her front, not allowing her true feelings to show through. She
seemed very much more in tune with Japanese culture when one compares
only her and Ellen's very similar situations for seven months in Japan.

Ellen Stacey was frustrated by the rule bound educational bureaucracy
which would not let her return home to visit her dying sister, even though
her work was done. Her examples of violence in Japan and apparent fear of

the Yakuza are not much tempered by positive relationships with Japanese

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friends, such as Sumi. It is almost as if she had held an ideal of Japan which

was betrayed by her perceptions of reality. Proper preparation ought to
debunk stereotypes which make it difficult for the teacher to adjust.

The four other teachers who spent over four months in Japan or China,
experienced racial minority status for the first time in their lives. I wonder
how much of the psychological trauma of culture shock, which Ed Donovan so
aptly describes, is based on this minority position. Mary Ehrhardt found that it
was sometimes difficult to be stared at so much. Heather and Ed Donovan
certainly had the feeling of being on display. Denise Green felt the need to
escape her city in order not to feel like she was being watched much of the
time. One of Ellen Stacey's young African-American boys in her Milwaukee
classroom asked her if she felt funny being the only white person, a distinct
minority, in the Japanese society. She answered that she had not ever thought
about this. And yet she expresses the most fear, alienation and sense of
loneliness of these six teachers. Her African-American student was speaking
from knowledge of his own, living as a minority in a white society. If she had
thought about this question and her own reaction to being a minority and an
outsider in another culture, she would understand better some of the
alienation toward the U.S. in the African-American community in which she
worked. Lisa Delpit (1995) describes her frustration with white colleagues,
whose conception of school reform is what works for white middle class
children, the concerns of African-American teachers, a refusal to listen or
hear. Ellen Stacey heard her student's question, but I wonder if she was really
listening. The trauma of culture shock should be explored through readings
and discussions with others who have had positive and negative experiences

abroad.

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I am convinced that every one of these teachers, except for Mary

Ehrhardt, may have benefited from further, more careful preparation. In
spite of the international orientation of his family and the international
relations courses Paul Vandemere took in college, he now feels that he went to
Cairo to teach for two years unprepared and ignorant, living in a foreign
compound which allowed few meaningful interactions with Egyptian people.
Clearly the international influences of his youth and his college studies were
not enough. Paul acknowledges that he needed a gread deal more study and
preparation than he had for this experience. Even Mary's preparation seemed
to be part of her rich in-depth experience, for example, her work with the
Chinese exchange teachers two nights a week to help her prepare and practice
the language, and the bonding she felt in meeting with the American students
and her colleagues in the semester before she left. I consider her preparation
ideal, and her experience I believe reflected the quality of the preparation.

The fact that she was given a sabbatical by the private school where she
taught to prepare for and take this teaching assignment in China, brings up
another issue. Because this sort of preparation is expensive, few public
schools give teachers sabbaticals to study and develop themselves as teachers.
I believe this policy should be rethought in spite of the high cost. Mary's
present and future students will reap the benefits of this investment in Mary's
professional growth for as long as she teaches. Such a program would
energize and revitalize many schools if a well thought out follow-up program
is developed which promotes the collegial sharing of these experiences among
teachers.

Teachers should be prepared for "reverse culture shock. " Four of the
six teachers spoke about what Ellen Stacey calls "reverse culture shock", that is

the traumatic effect of fitting back into what Mary Ehrhardt calls her "slot."

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Because they all felt changed as people and as teachers, four of them almost

spoke of themselves as "square pegs" trying to fit back into their formerly
appropriate, comfortable "round roles" in the society and in the schools. Some
of them accomplished this quite easily. Ed Donovan, Mary Ehrhardt and Ellen
Stacey all spoke at length about difficulties they had adjusting back into
American society and American schools.

Ed Donovan looked around when he returned to Michigan and saw
everyone moving ridiculously quickly, almost as if they were "nuts." He and
Heather were taken aback by the rampant commercialism and materialism in
the United States, something they had not noticed as much before. Mary
Ehrhardt enjoyed the simplicity of life as she saw it in China, in comparison to
the hectic pace of life in New England. She and the Donovans became more
sensitive to the amount of advertising we are faced with in the U.S. and
thought about simplifying their lives by eschewing unneeded material things.
This was also the reaction Denise Green describes after her year in Ghana as a
college student. An American teacher who intends to live and teach in a third
world country outside of isolated foreign enclaves must be especially well
prepared for the experience and also for a changed perspective upon
returning to the United States.

Of the teachers who went to Japan, only Ellen Stacey seems to have gone
through a very traumatic experience of reverse culture shock, not after her
first seven month experience, but after her later three-year teaching
experience in Japan. Why Ellen chose to stay the third year given the
discomfort she felt the second year in Japan is a puzzlement. Length of time in
a different culture may have been a key determinant of her difficult time

there. Teachers who intend to spend more than one year abroad should be

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carefully screened and the preparation even more rigorous than for shorter

experiences.

Language Study

This brings up the matter of language in international or cultural study
and experiences. I believe that language study is essential for the most in-
depth, richest experiences in another culture. However, because so many
American teachers who are not foreign language teachers have never studied
a foreign language seriously, making language study a prerequisite would
have eliminated the male half of my informants. I would call this American
aversion to language study on the part of teachers a reflection upon the
society as a whole. The majority of Americans who live in the United States
speak English, only English. Some Americans even seem to revel in this status.
language study was seen in many quarters as a useless frill. When one
considers the less commonly taught, but most often spoken, languages in the
world such as Chinese and Arabic, a relative handful of Americans not of
Chinese or Arab background have made an effort to learn these languages.
Therefore, if I limited this study to veteran, non-foreign language teachers
who had attempted to learn the language of the country they were visiting, I
might still be engaged in finding informants today. In addition, I think we
can learn something from teachers who have made a significant commitment
in their lives to study and experience another culture, even if they have not
chosen to work on the language.

I am convinced that language learning is possible for all ages at some
level of proficiency given consistent effort. I agree with Mary Ehrhardt that
it is worth the effort to be able to communicate with others who do not speak
English. Mary's Chinese host family showed that they appreciated her

struggle to communicate with them. I believe that those Americans who do not

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make the effort do not know what they are missing. A level of intimacy can

occur with people that would otherwise be impossible to reach. This is not to
say that Bob, Ed, and Bill did not benefit from their international experience.
Had they attempted to learn more of the language, their experience would
probably have been richer.

I feel that there is an arrogance to a position which puts another
person in a situation of having to learn your language in order to speak with
you while you make no attempt to learn his language. Realistically, I am
aware that with the pressures of teaching, to expect veteran teachers to learn
a language as a prerequisite to an international experience is difficult.
However, if I had input on funding such an experience, I would make
language study mandatory for at least six months and preferably one year
before the experience, because I agree with Mary. It is worth the effort.

Friendships and relationships with people are generally facilitated
when there is an attempt to learn each other's language, even at simple
rudimentary levels. Ed Donovan, who did not formally study Chinese, used
quite a few Chinese phrases in his descriptions which, I believe, helped him
forge friendships. Denise Green also found that her language proficiency
eased social situations in general as well as her classroom work. Mary
Ehrhardt felt that her stay with a Chinese family who spoke no English would
have been very difficult and probably impossible had she not studied enough
spoken language to at least get by. Certainly her relationship with the host
family, which meant a very great deal to her, could not have been as warm and
friendly as it was. This part of her experience. I am convinced that the
experience of anyone living in another culture can never be as rich and
rewarding as it would be if that person attempted to learn the language of the

people and used it, however awkwardly or haltingly. Mary Ehrhardt is the

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main support for this argument, in addition to my own experiences in China in

1981, 1985, and 1988. The connections, the friendships, are what most of my
informants talked about in warm and glowing terms.

I cannot imagine spending a considerable length of time in any
country without attempting to learn some of the language before and during
this experience. It is the connections with the peOple which also meant the
most to me. The scenery was lovely, the art was breathtaking, the food was
delicious, but the language facilitated those human connections with Chinese
people. Therefore, on behalf of these human links across borders, I would
strongly recommend that any international teacher exchange program
include language and cultural learning.

On the other hand, I would not want to dissuade U.S. teachers such as Ed
Donovan from living in China because of a language requirement. Older
teachers such as Ed (he is 65 years old) need a nurturing and non-threatening
language learning environment and many confidence-building exercises.
Many techniques perfected in the English as a second language (ESL)
programs can be used to great avail for language learners of all ages. Within
45 minutes I have had adults such as school board members giving commands
in Chinese to their colleagues who follow them correctly. The phobia in this
country toward language learning has translated to a lack of support for
language and cultural studies in K-12 education, which I believe is going to
put our nation truly at risk in world communication, trade, environmental
cooperation, and in every arena of life where we need to understand each
other. It is the responsibility of policy makers at every level to encourage
language and cultural studies in the schools to better prepare students for the

inevitably greaater international contacts than exist today in the future.

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Administrative and Collegial Support

Teachers who live and teach for a significant period of time in another
country should be accompanied by a significant other, such as a spouse, or
colleagues from the U.S. who could function as a support group for them. Paul
Vandemere and Ed Donovan were both accompanied by their wives, who each
enthusiastically participated in the experience with their husbands. Mary
Ehrhardt's program was planned so that her 28-year-old colleague with whom
she collaborated on teaching plans, trips with the American students, and
teacher seminars would conveniently live a few floors apart from her in the
same building. This expedited their work together in addition to
accompanying each other on their bicycle rides to school.

It is unfortunate that preparation and a support group did not appear to
be a formal part of the program Ellen Stacey participated in for three years. It
seems that the other foreign exchange teachers partially performed in this
role, but not in a structured or planned manner. This lack of support, for
whatever reason, did not help Ellen feel secure in her situation and in fact
seemed to contribute to her miseducation. She often talked of feeling
extremely lonely in Japan. Without friends from your own culture with whom
you can blow off steam and not feel like an "other", an outsider, an alien in a
strange land, it is understandable that a person who has not been fully
prepared might feel negatively about her experience abroad. I also suspect
that this situation may be generalizable to the feelings of foreign immigrants
or students living in the U.S.

The fact that Mary Ehrhardt was given a sabbatical by the private
school where she taught to prepare for and take this teaching assignment in
China, brings up another issue. Because this sort of preparation is expensive,

few public schools give teachers sabbaticals to study and develop themselves as

325
teachers. I believe this policy should be rethought in spite of the high cost.

Mary's present and future students will reap the benefits of this investment in
Mary's professional growth for as long as she teaches. Such a sabbatical
program would energize and revitalize many schools if a well thought out
follow—up program is developed which promotes the collegial sharing of these
experiences among teachers.

Every one of the six teachers expressed a need to share their experience
in the classroom and especially with colleagues. Ellen and Denise both were
on state-sponsored programs, where they were asked to make presentations
before school boards, in other schools, and plan workshops for teachers.
Ellen's second experience entailed no such institutionalized program of
sharing. She returned to the classroom feeling isolated and alienated. Any
school administration could find inexpensive ways to promote the collegial
sharing of an intensive international experience of one teacher. Ed
Donovan's school district did just this. They re-arranged some schedules to
allow Ed to visit other classrooms and school buildings. School officials treated
him much differently than school oficials in Ellen and Mary's schools who
essentially ignored their international experience.

Sharon Feiman-Nemser's (1983) work shows that many teachers who
are exposed to creative methods and new content will often revert to
traditional pedagogies because the school environment is not conducive to
change. It is important then for the school administration to encourage these
teachers to share, not to expect them to go back into their "slots" and do their
job the same way as if they had not had the experience. It is the responsibility
of administrators to create flexibility in time for this kind of sharing by
giving these teachers release time and offering them as speakers for classes

throughout that school and in others. This was done for Denise Green and Ed

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Donovan, neither of whom felt frustrated because they had few opportunities

to share their knowledge. These teachers became tremendous resources for
their schools at very little cost to school districts. It is really surprising that a
very well endowed New England preparatory school would not use Mary
Ehrhardt more as a resource. In this area the public schools, except for the
inner city school where Ellen Stacey teaches, did a much better job of using
this resource and creating a fulfilling, sharing experience for these teachers
as well as a very inexpensive learning opportunity for their staff.

The key to this issue is follow up. School districts who ignore the
experiences of their teachers remind me of old Army stories which purported
to have physicists mindlessly digging ditches. These schools are wasting a
valuable resource. To encourage a veteran teacher who has made the effort to
study and experience another culture in depth to share this experience with
students and colleagues is to bring some aspect of the world home into the
classroom at minimal expense. The example of this teacher could, as in Denise
Green's classroom, broaden the horizons of children and other teachers to
include the possibility of cultural learning, a prerequisite for living
efficaciously on this planet where international interactions will become
more and more a part of all of our daily lives.

School districts should allow teachers to return to their former
positions. Ed Donovan's school administration promised him his former
position back when he returned after one year in China. This was also the
case with Mary Ehrhardt, Denise Green, and Ellen Stacey. School districts or
funding agencies could set up yearly competitive grants to be given to
teachers who demonstrate how an investment in their intensive study and
living experience will be shared with students and colleagues in the schools.

There are many ways districts can encourage their teachers to develop

327
themselves professionally as teachers. This study shows that the impact of a

certain kind of international study and experience would be worth the
expense.

School districts should encourage cultural connections locally available
to teachers, such as penpal exchanges, among students of diverse cultures.
When the students experience the difficulty of learning any second language,
particularly written Chinese, they cannot help but know a little about how it
feels to grow up in a society where children must memorize some 2,500
characters to be able to function normally as an adult. This at least creates
respect if not the deeper sense of empathy towards other cultures. In Mary's
classroom the penpal exchange is the most poignant example of how a veteran
teacher's international experience can affect a classroom. She describes the
"marvelous" interactions that now occur between the Chinese immigrant
children and her children after they have exchanged letters bearing the
American children's awkward attempts at a few Chinese words. When Mary's
children greet the Chinese-American children with "ni hao" rather than
"hello," feelings become warmer, allowing for connections in an atmosphere
of trying to communicate and caring about that communication.

In a longitudinal study of these children, the impact of this very
unusual experience could be better gauged. The penpal exchange in Mary
Ehrhardt's class with Chinese students cost her school very little. Mary had
initiated and participated in this exchange for nine years before she went to
China. Her China experience made the exchange a more meaningful
experience for children. There is no reason why more American schools could
not foster inter-cultural exchanges and opportunities for their children,
especially elementary aged children. This might be one small step in a very

long process to eradicate racial prejudice and bigotry from our society. Any

328
professional growth opportunity to increase the subject matter knowledge of

teachers through cultural exchange programs and study tours such as the
Fulbright-Hays program should not be denied to early elementary teachers on
the basis that it will not be useful to the children and the schools. The example
of Mary Ehrhardt shows how beneficial a cultural experience can be for the
children of a teacher who participates.

After their return, the learning of these teachers during their
international experience became integrated into their curriculum via their
teaching methodology, stories, different kinds of role plays, use of artifacts,
and their introduction of language into the curriculum. Ed Donovan also
became more aware of whether or not his students in the U.S. were
understanding at a level he had hoped they would. His effort to speak more
slowly and use students to help clarify issues shows that even 56-65 year-old
teachers can learn and change their pedagogy. Mary Ehrhardt's quest to
learn Chinese at age 54 also, like Ed, breaks stereotypes about the learning
potential of older people, and especially older teachers, when given
encouragement personally and professionally. Even though Bill Notebaum
felt that at this stage in his life he did not have the time to become as
knowledgeable about Japan as he would like to be, he still chose to devote
himself to promoting a school atmosphere where courses would be taught by
teachers who had found the time to become knowledgeable about many areas
of the world which are often neglected in American schools, i.e., Japan, China,
Russia, and Latin America.

This presents a dilemma, and that is the issue of time to study another
culture. Time for any professional growth experience is a commodity in short
supply at most schools in the U.S. where there is a lock step S-hour, 50—60

minute class schedule during which time most high school teachers meet with

329
at least 30 students per hour and 150 students per day. Doing a good job with

each of these students every day leaves many teachers exhausted and little
motivated to throw themselves into learning Japanese for example. Therefore,
it is important to consider that those veteran teachers must be given time
before and after their experience abroad as an incentive to follow their
interests, because the responsibilities of raising families in addition to the
pressures of teaching can be overwhelming, just as Bill Notebaum describes.

This kind of experience with a clear followup could be very valuable for
many teachers because it might encourage that teacher to engage in further
learning. Five of these teachers, not including Ellen Stacey, describe
themselves as even more active learners than before their experience. Ed
Donovan found resources in the Detroit-Metro area like the Chinese Culture
Center where he could take out materials to share with his classes. Paul
Vandemere went back to school in educational administration, an area where
he could work to change the structure of schools after learning different ways
of structuring the school day and year in Japan. Denise Green offered elective
Japanese classes to children at the elementary school where she worked. She
also organized a trip to Japan with homestays for a small group of elementary
children and their parents. Denise, Ellen, Ed, Paul, and Bill all shared their
experiences in workshops with teachers and educators. Mary Ehrhardt shared
slides and artifacts with an all-school assembly. She, like Ellen, after her
second experience in Japan, expressed some frustration about not having
opportunities to share her experience with colleagues and the school
community.

The knowledge of these teachers should be utilized in the development
of any exchange program. For example, the Japanese companies who

sponsored Bill and his colleagues also required evidence of follow-up work,

330
which gave him the experience of teaching about Japan, as well as encouraged

him to co-write the U.S. That Can Say Yes with his Federal Reserve colleague.
Followups on how these teachers are using their experience should be
undertaken on a yearly basis for at least three years. This in itself would
provide a way for these teachers to gauge the impact of the experience over
time. It is amazing to me that the Fulbright teacher exchange programs
include no long-term follow-up studies according to my inquiries. There are
many opportunities to learn from these teachers. Follow-up studies could
improve the program from the point of view of long-term advan tages or
consequences.

Bill Notebaum is my Abe Lincoln example of how international study
and experience can affect a teacher's pedagogy He was a self-motivated
learner to begin with. He educated himself informally, rather than formally.
He was driven to know and understand more to feel good about standing in
front of students and guiding them to learn and study themselves. My key
point here is that his school administration supported and encouraged him to
develop his knowledge. They sent him to the International Baccalaureate
conference in 1986. Administrators wrote letters to support his quest to go to
Japan. He was given days to do in—service training on economics with
teachers. Finally, they gave him the green light to plan this school and
release time to do this. Many teachers have the spark that Bill carried within
himself. I agree with Feiman-Nemser (1983) that there must be a school
environment which encourages these teachers, not isolates them, as was the
case with Ellen Stacey, and to a lesser degree, Mary Ehrhardt.

Paul Vandemere, Ed Donovan, and Denise Green were also given support
by their school administrations to share their experiences with teachers and

students in other schools. This was a full-time responsibility for Denise Green

331
for one semester when she returned from Japan. District and school

administrators supported her efforts to raise funds for twelve elementary
children and their parents to go to Japan two years after she returned. Ed
Donovan's school administration allowed him flexibility in his schedule to visit
several schools in the district as well as other classrooms in his own school.

Paul Vandemere was recruited by the school superintendent to direct
the East Asian Studies Center when he returned. The district had applied for a
state grant to train other teachers in Japanese language and culture. The
district also qualified to host exchange teachers from Japan to teach with Paul
in this Center. Upon returning, he stepped into a ready-made arena in which
he could use his experiences on a daily basis. The district and school
administration had worked together to use Paul's experience and talents by
developing a committee of teachers, counselors, and administrators to promote
this program. Paul was also encouraged to work on state-wide committees to
promote internationalizing the curriculum. Paul would have resigned
permanently from his teaching job and stayed in Japan had he not been
presented with these opportunities. This is an example of how an enlightened
school administration can make use of talented teachers like Paul.

Most of these teachers essentially take an existential leap into
experience with the conviction that the international experience is worth the
effort and the risk. Risk taking is rare. It needs and deserves administrative
encouragement. I strongly recommend that any school administration
fortunate enough to have such teachers in their midst should do everything
possible to encourage these teachers to engage in international study and
experience and share their experience with other teachers and students. The
evidence of this small sample of teachers shows that their teaching practice,

including the content of their curriculum, appreciably improved in five of

 

332
the six cases, and in all six cases, if Ellen Stacey's second experience in Japan is

not included.

An astute administration might even have turned the aftermath of
Ellen's three years in Japan into something much more positive. Ellen's
extreme negativism about Japan, her reaction to organized rime, the Yakuza,
as almost a defining element of Japan, however, could have done great harm if
she had had access to large groups. Nevertheless, she can talk about discipline
and social outcast problems in Japanese schools which might bring more
balance to the rosy picture Stevenson and Stigler (1992) and others paint
about Japanese schools in comparison to American schools. Ellen's idea about
Japanese style classroom contests to keep areas of the building clean and clear
of graffiti might be useful to many U.S. school administrators.

A sensitive school administration could try to develop an atmosphere in
the school setting which would affirm a teacher's experience and encourage
others to take the risk of adult learning in many areas. It seems a shame that
Ellen reacted so bitterly when some of her staff asked her for help applying to
another program in Japan. Whatever caused this much animosity between
Ellen and the rest of her staff seems to have been ignored by the
administration. This is an unfortunate waste of the potentially positive
benefits of one teacher's experience, and a counter example to the experience
of the other five teachers. The shame of this waste of talent is that it occurs in
the inner city, the last place in this country where teacher resources should
be ignored, and where there is the greatest need for positive examples.

The authentic aspects of an already outstanding second grade China
curriculum, when augmented by a teacher who could incorporate stories of
her experience living with a family in Beijing into this curriculum, and who

studied, spoken, and written Chinese, is a strong argument for the National

333
Fulbright—Hays Program to include early elementary teachers. This

prohibition reflects a predilection to antiquated American ideas that language
and cultural studies are wasted on young children, and that therefore it is not
as important for their teachers to become educated in this way. This prejudice
diminishes the potential of what young children and their teachers can
accomplish. Learning to respect and admire the contributions of other
cultures may be even more effective if it begins early in a child's schooling.
Young children have been observed to be more receptive to learning the
spoken form of other languages than their cohorts in high school, where
unfortunately, students most often have their first opportunity to study a
foreign language. Teachers at the Burton International elementary school in
Detroit, Michigan, have provided evidence during conference presentations
that students who participated in immersion foreign language programs in
Spanish, French, and Japanese often excelled in other subjects such as math
and science (Pacific Rim Consortium conferences 3/ 1/ 89, 1 1/ 90, 3/ 13/ 92).

Until I initiated this study, I was not aware that the Fulbright-Hays
grants excluded early elementary teachers. I believe that the work of Mary
Ehrhardt merits a reevaluation of this policy. John Dewey made it clear that
he considered the mind of a four year old to be worth the attention of a teacher
who has been immersed in his subject matter. Philosopher Bronson Alcott
worked with three to five year olds during the 1840's and 50's until his
inclusion of an African-American child caused an enraged community to close
down his school.

Therefore, on a long-term basis, I recommend that language learning
be required for all American children, starting in the first grade or earlier.
Children easily learn language, especially in the spoken form, and especially

when English as a second language methods are used. My experience

334
directing K-8 Chinese and Spanish programs in six elementary and middle

schools is that children love it. They have fun learning and doing at the same
time, the way many of them learned their first language, English. I also
recommend that all teacher education programs require at least two years of a
foreign language study including elementary and pre-school levels. This will
facilitate the goal of exposing all American children to foreign language at a
very early age as well as encourage them to be culturally sensitive.

The language study in all these cases must include a cultural
component, so that the children, as in the case of Mary Ehrhardt's class, will
learn to admire and respect the art, the cuisine, the livelihoods of people from
another culture. The goal here is to promote positive attitudes in children
about people who have different cultural backgrounds. Future connections
among the people of the world can promote friendship and cooperation, and
prevent racial and ethnic hatred which is still a threat to civil society in the
United States today, and a major problem in this world. I agree with Elise
Boulding (1990) that friendship and people-to-people links across borders are
some of the best ways to promote peace, cooperation, and good will on this

planet. Language learning expedites this goal.

In-depth Experience

How does a person experience a culture other than the culture in which
he was born? There are many different ways and levels of approaching and
experiencing another culture. One way would be to spend many hours in a
fine library reading quality works about this culture. Another way would be
to formally or informally study the language of a culture. A person who
studies this way for a period of years probably has a more in-depth knowledge
of the culture than the woman Paul Vandemere describes as having "been

there" and "done that."

335
What makes cultural learning an in-depth experience? I believe it is in

the human connections that develop between individuals in cultures. When
the kind of trust happens where people let down their facades and talk about
what really concerns them in a cross-cultural context, we begin to find the
oneness and interconnectedness of all of us as human beings on this earth.
The power of these interchanges are what could eventually keep international
power politics from fomenting war. When Mary extols the goals of the
founders of the League of Nations and the United Nations to promote a world-
wide arena where nations might cooperate with rather than fight each other,
she sees her work as promoting warm, friendly, cooperative relationships
with individuals as small steps toward world peace. Mary, Ed, Denise, and Ellen
put a high priority on personal relationships that they developed overseas,
congruent with Elise Boulding's (1990) model of world citizens reaching across
borders to establish relationships. I believe that cultural studies and
international experiences can be hollow exercises without human
connections. I see the scholar in the library as a precursor stage to deep and
meaningful human relations, which might not have occured without his long
term interest and effort to learn about the culture.

Relationships that these teachers made in the schools with students and
colleagues were very important to them. Ellen's best friend, Sumi, was a
substitute teacher in one of her assigned schools. Ed Donovan and Mary
Ehrhardt's friendships all emanated from the school community. Denise Green
and Ellen Stacey were both critical of the programs in which they participated
because the short time in each school precluded their developing long-term
relationships with people. Both Mary Ehrhardt and Ed Donovan felt very

satisfied about the relationships they had forged while in China. Both were

336
assigned to one school, or one classroom, for the duration of their teaching

duties.

This leads me to believe that it is very important for any teacher
exchange program to consider quality of contacts rather than quantity.
Except for occasional speaking opportunities, teachers should be assigned to no
more than one school and should have continuity in the classes in which they
teach. The tremendous awareness and understanding which Heidi Ross (1993)
exhibits from teaching a high school English class in China for one year could
not have happened if she were assigned a "show and tell role" in a different
school each day like Ellen Stacey or in one school every two weeks, like Denise
Green. I wonder how Ellen's feelings might have changed had she been
assigned to one school every six months or year. This points out that a major
aspect of a beneficial, meaningful international experience is if this
experience entails opportunities for relationships to develop between teachers
in the U.S. and teachers and students in the countries where they teach. This
last point carries over into our understandings of these relationships as part
of the non-teaching aspects of the international experience of living in
another culture.

The changed perspectives that Mary and Ed brought back to their homes
and their classrooms reflected their thoughts about values in the U.S. These
are the importance of materialism and commercialism, the need for tolerance
throughout society as well as in the classroom, the need for understanding
rather than negative stereotyping and ultimately the need for empathy, the
ability to feel another's struggle, another's pain, and joy even when that
person has been brought up in a very different culture from what exists today

in the United States.

337
A Final Word: "Yes"

The work of these teachers to study and experience another culture has
had a tremendous effect on them as individuals and on the many people with
whom they come in contact, especially their students. What can we learn from
them? That being an exemplary continuously learning teacher holds its own
rewards in the classrom and in life; that the expression of warmth and
friendship across borders can enhance a teacher's life and classroom
performance; that loving our brothers and sisters of all races, colors, creeds,
backgrounds need not be empty words in and outside of the classroom; that
expressing our friendship the way Ed Donovan reaches out and helps
sometimes lonely and distressed foreigners in our midst and his own students
is a way of showing this respect and this love; that the sensitivity that some of
these teachers develop to people of other cultures carries over into the
classroom in a sensitivity to ethnically diverse children in the classroom; that
teacher learning often breeds more student and teacher learning; that the
excitement and enthusiasm of these teachers, age 45 to 65, can be a great
resource for school improvement; and that there is a link between the
international awareness and understanding of veteran teachers and the
educational reform movement in the U.S.

Is there an effect upon the pedagogy of veteran teachers of
international study and experience? To use the words of Ed Donovan: "You bet
there is!" This effect is also within John Dewey's goal, the life-long inquiry of
a veteran teacher to know and understand her subject matter. For example,
Mary Ehrhardt translated this knowledge into a pedagogy which shepherded
students also toward life-long inquiry. The goal is to live a meaningful life, to
respect, understand and accept those who are different from ourselves, and

engage in cultural learning "to break down cultural barriers," so that the U.S.

338
and Japan for example, can both say "yes" together to each other and with

each other. Students of every ethnic background in the U.S. can look at their
teachers who have studied and experienced another culture as examples and
say "yes" to each other and eventually to students abroad via the e-mail
connections which teachers like these establish. Students and teachers would
not be limited to perceptions developed in only their own isolated
environmental context, but within the context developed by their "worldly
teachers;" a world of cooperation and human connections which no longer
says "no" to those who are different from others, but says "yes" to mutual

respect and life long learning together.

APPENDIX A

APPENDIX A
RECOMMENDATIONS SUMMARY

Who should go?

Encourage demonstrably exemplary teachers who are willing to put time
and effort into preparation and post experience follow-up work should be
encouraged to go.

Encourage outstanding teachers, who are more likely to benefit from and
share their new understandings with students and educators in the U.S. to

go.

Preparation

Develop a realistic exchange teacher preparation program, including
discussions of pertinent reading material, for any teacher who is going to
spend a significant period of time teaching overseas.

In an ongoing program, arrange meetings of teachers with others who
have previously gone.

Share videotapes and/ or still pictures of living accommodations, schools,
and neighborhoods where the teachers will be living and working.

Prepare teachers for worst case scenarios as well as the high points of
international experiences.

Include the oral and written stories of others who have had a difficult time
adjusting to the culture to be experienced.

Plan a formal program in which books and articles are read and discussed
in detail with people who have had these sorts of experiences.

Debunk stereotypes which make it difficult for the teacher to adjust.
Explore the trauma of culture shock should through readings and
discussions with others who have had positive and negative experiences
abroad.

Give teachers sabbaticals to study and develop themselves as teachers.

Develop a follow-up program which promotes the collegial sharing of these
experiences among teachers.

Prepare teachers for "reverse culture shock."

340

341

Prepare teachers, who intend to live and teach in a third world country
outside of isolated foreign enclaves, for the difficulties and also for a
changed perspective upon returning to the United States.

Carefully screen theteachers who intend to spend more than one year
abroad and make the preparation even more rigorous than for shorter
experiences.

Language learning

Encourage teahers to study language for the most in-depth, richest
experiences in another culture.

Expect to learn from teachers who have made a significant commitment in
their lives to study and experience another culture, even if they have not
chosen to work on the language.

Advocate that language learning is possible for all ages at some level of
proficiency given consistent effort.

For funded international experiences for teachers, make language study
mandatory for at least six months and preferably one year before the
experience.

Provide a nurturing and non-threatening language learning environment
and many confidence-building exercises for teachers of all ages.

Administrative and collegial support

Encourage the collegial or familial support of at least one U. S. person in
the foreign context.

Consider the quality of contacts rather than quantity.

Except for occasional speaking opportunities, assign teachers to no more
than one school with continuity in the classes in which they teach.

Relate the stress of feeling like an "outsider" to the feelings of foreign
immigrants or students living in the U.S.

Find inexpensive ways to promote the collegial sharing of an intensive
international experience of one teacher.

Allow teachers to return to their former positions.
Set up yearly competitive grants to be given to teachers who demonstrate
how an investment in their intensive study and living experience will be
shared with students and colleagues in the schools.

Encourage cultural connections locally available to teachers, such as
penpal exchanges, among students of diverse cultures.

342

Give teachers time before and after their international experiences as an
incentive to follow their interests.

Utilize the knowledge of these teachers as a part of any exchange program.

Conduct followup studies on how these teachers are using their
international experience on a yearly basis for at least three years.

Allow teachers flexibility in their schedule to visit several schools in the
district as well as other classrooms in their own schools.

Develop an atmosphere in the school setting which would affirm a
teacher's experience and encourage others to take the risk of adult
learning in many areas.

Offer professional growth opportunities to increase the subject matter
knowledge of teachers through cultural exchange programs and study
tours such as the Fulbright-Hays program to early elementary teachers.

Require second language and cultural learning for all children starting in
the first grade or earlier.

Require at least two years of language study for all students in teacher
eduation programs.

Integrate culture into all courses which specifically include subject matter
about the world especially at the college level, for example, international
relations.

Encourage the teaching of the less commonly taught languages, such as
Chinese, Japanese and Arabic in addition to French and Spanish at all levels
of education.

Encourage language and cultural studies at all levels of education to
prepare prepare students to function in an increasingly interdependent
world.

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