EDUCATORS FROM JAPAN STUDY AMERICAN SCHOOLS

Japanese educators are visiting Cape Girardeau public schools this week for a look at a "typical American school."

On Wednesday the group of 23 educators met with Cape Girardeau administrators and toured some schools.

The visitors are mostly middle-school and junior-high-school principals and teachers. As such they are especially interested in Cape Girardeau's L.J. Schultz seventh-grade center and Central Junior High School.

The team will be in Cape Girardeau for three days observing classrooms and asking questions.

Sadao Inoue, head of the Japanese Teachers' Overseas Observation Group, is principal of Nakai Junior High School. "Our minister of education recommended we visit Cape Girardeau," Inoue said through an interpreter.

"This is a typical American school system. It is also a student-oriented program. We want to see actual classrooms and how teachers teach and how students learn," Inoue said.

"I am interested in seeing the differences in classrooms and buildings."

Inoue said he was also interested in the district's Parent-Teacher Associations (PTAs). "How do they (parents and teachers) work together to help students?"

The goal of the trip, Inoue said, is to learn some different techniques that can be adapted to the Japanese educational system.

"We hope we can learn something better, a better method or a different model," Inoue said. "Anywhere you go, you can always learn something.

"We also hope in the future that educators from the United States and Japan can work together on educating youngsters."

Cape Girardeau Superintendent Neyland Clark said, "We were selected by the Japanese as the site they wanted to visit."

He was contacted by the U.S. Department of Education to set up the visit.

On Wednesday the group learned about Cape Girardeau's school structure and method of governance and visited Schultz and the junior high.

Today the group will visit Notre Dame Catholic High School and Jefferson and Alma Schrader elementary schools. They will attend a pep rally at Cape Girardeau High School and are scheduled to attend the school district's foundation kick-off dinner tonight.

On Friday the team will visit classrooms and attend the high school's homecoming football game.