Saturday, December 14th was an exciting day for JETAADC. It marked our first weekend JET Ambassadors program! For those of you who don’t know, JET Ambassadors is a volunteer-based program inspired by former Ambassador Ichiro Fujisaki that brings former JETs to DC area schools to share their experiences from Japan through interactive self-designed presentations. Over the past three years, volunteers have given a number of presentations at local schools.
We thought, why not give students a chance to learn more about Japan, no matter what school you go to? And so we set out to organize our first ever non-school weekend JET Ambassadors event at the downtown Bethesda Library. The program was geared toward upper-elementary school students. Our presenter was Amy Sherman, an elementary school teacher who was on JET in Okinawa from 2006-2008.
There was a winter weather advisory on Saturday, but some brave families still stopped in to hear about school life in Japan. The kids learned about school lunch, cleaning time, and how to play janken train. Some families in the audience had experience living in Japan, so the educational exchange went in both directions!
If you have an idea for a future JET Ambassadors weekend program, let us know! And if you’ve wanted to volunteer for JET Ambassadors but couldn’t make it to schools on account of your work schedule, this is your chance. Register for our volunteer database here: JET Ambassadors Volunteer Survey
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