Cross Case Features: Teachers

Clemens Middle School: Language Arts

Susan Thea, Foreign Language

Susan Thea, who teaches Foreign Language at Clemens Middle School, is a creative and motivated teacher who likes to do large-scale projects and is deeply interested in Japanese culture and history. Because students are often apprehensive about learning a foreign language, this veteran teacher is always looking for multidisciplinary approaches and ways to make language instruction fun. When she started taking the NCTA seminar, she had begun to envision a quilt project that would help her Japanese-language students understand the Japanese people. The huge commemorative quilt, which was designed and made by her students, honored Japanese/Americans who Japanese/Americans who lived in the internment camps or fought for the U.S. in World War II.

The quilt project was a combination of language instruction and civic participation. Susan used literature both to motivate her students and to teach culture and history from the Japanese viewpoint. Among the literary works studied were: Three Faithful Elephants, Chin’s Tricycle, and 1,000 Cranes. The stories influenced the students’ designs for the quilt. After locating World War II veterans via the Internet, students wrote letters to people in Japan and the U.S. They incorporated objects they received into the quilt.