by Katherine Green, photos by Libby Hyde
by Katherine Green, photos by Libby Hyde
As the result of recent arrangements between STA and its Japanese sister school, STA students may be able to travel to the sister school in central Japan on a cultural visit in the near future. Principal of academic affairs Barbara McCormick and college counselor Liz Majors have been coordinating with the sister school to plan a trip. The principal of the sister school named Saint Joseph Gaishasfo discussed this trip with McCormick during her visit to Kansas City on Oct. 8.
Saint Joseph Gaishasfo is one of the other seven high schools founded in the name of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Carondelet. There are 550 – 559 students currently attending STA’s sister school, according to Gaishasfo’s foreign language teacher Anthony Hollinghurst, who also visited STA Oct. 8.
Located 6,500 miles across the world is Saint Joseph Gaishasfo. The school, stationed in Tsu, a coastal city in central Japan, is about 4 hours west of Tokyo, or 200 miles.
In the cultural visit, STA students would travel to Tsu for seven to nine days, staying with a Japanese family and learning about their sister school’s culture from a first-hand account.
Another program would allow students from the sister school to come to Missouri for a similar visit. These students would also have the option to study abroad at STA, an option STA students do not have. Japanese students from Saint Joseph’s would study for one semester or year in the states while staying with a home-stay family.
“I wouldn’t deny a student to go over [to Japan] for a year if they wanted to, or study abroad, but [the student] will lose a year [because studying abroad is] not going to have transferrable credits,” McCormick said.
Although studying abroad is only an option if a student does not want to graduate with their class, the students from STA still have the chance to learn about their sister school’s culture through the cultural visit or having Japanese students come as a foreign exchange student at STA.
