April 22, 2022

A New Connection with Oshukan Secondary School

The Japanese section has started a new connection with Oshukan Secondary School in Tokyo.

In Fall 2021, when it was still unsure when the Japan study abroad programs would resume, Japanese instructor, Yoshiko Reynolds, sought for a way to provide her students with an opportunity to interact with Japanese people and encourage them to study Japanese. She set up a meeting with Kei Matsumoto, the vice president of the Oshukan Secondary School in Tokyo. This meeting resulted in Yoshiko collaborating with Kaoru Okada, the resident English teacher at Oshukan. They came up with a project which allowed their students to use Slack (an online message board) to send and receive messages, facilitating a language exchange and interaction between the two groups.

As the students’ conversations steadily become more lively, the relationship between our schools has also grown. Earlier this semester, Yoshiko’s class wrote letters to the Japanese friends they made on Slack with their freshly learned Japanese.

At the beginning of April 2022, the Japanese Section was excited to receive the first handwritten replies from Oshukan students! First year students here at Lewis & Clark were thrilled to receive those letters, their excitement seemed to motivate them to continue their Japanese study and reach higher proficiency with renewed vigor. The Japanese section is excited about this new pen-pal relationship, and plans on strengthening the bond with Oshukan Secondary School and its students.