Over a year ago Saint Joseph Joshi Gakuen, a high school in Tsu, Japan became an official sister school of STA, along with five other high schools in the United States. St. Joseph is an all-girl high school and was founded by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Crondolete in 1959.
According to St. Joseph English teacher Anthony Hollinghurst, the idea of an exchange between their school and STA came soon after they became a sister school of STA.
‘The initial motivation was really just to try to raise awareness on both sides of the existence of the sister school relationship, as well as to provide a motivation to study English for the students here,’Â Hollinghurst wrote in an email interview.
Hollinghurst contacted STA last spring in hopes of finding a group of students that would be willing to communicate with his English class. His students had been taking English for over two years when he first contacted STA. According to Hollinghurst his students were excited to be able to use the language for real communication, not just for the benefit of the teacher.
According to Hollinghurst, he was grateful when principle for academic affairs Barbara McCormick put him in contact with STA English teacher, Carrie Jacquin.
Jacquin knew before the start of the 2010-2011 school year that some of her freshmen English classes were going to have the opportunity to talk with Hollinghurst’s students. To give them more of a background on the Japanese culture she assigned the book “One Bird” by Kyoko Mori as a summer reading assignment.
“I was just the one who volunteered, which worked out well because the girls are the same age,” Jacquin said.
The students at both schools conducted surveys asking questions about school, their daily lives and their culture.
‘As we had approximately the same number of students on each side, we allocated partners, and the look of thrill on [my student’s] faces when they received personalized replies to their survey questions was wonderful,’Â Hollinghurst wrote.
Because of the time difference in Japan the students at STA had to stay at school until 4:30 p.m. and the students at St. Joseph had to arrive to school early around 6:00 a.m. The video conference was held in Jacquin’s room on her computer and an average of seven girls attended from both sides.
STA freshman Molly Corless recalls asking the girls about their boyfriends, what kind of music they listen to and what time they wake-up for school.
‘My favorite part [of skyping] was when they asked us to sing some Justin Bieber and we sang ‘Never Say Never,'” Corless said. “They didn’t know what to say, so they just laughed at us, it was a lot of fun.’Â
