Creative Lesson Planning

Making Personal connections with Global Issues

I.Poetry, "Dear Fukushima" and I

Yoko Nishimura-Parke

(National Asian Languages Studies in Schools Program - Languages Support Officer,Secondary Education, Learning and Leadership Directorate, NSW Department of Education and Communities)

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Since I was a child I loved reading poetry. The first poem compilation I got during my early primary years was called Mother by Hachiro Sato. I also liked trying to write poems. By the time I was in high school, I enjoyed reciting poems by Charles Baudelaire and Tatsuji Miyoshi, without really caring whether I understood or not.

Speaking of reciting, I think it must have been when I was in junior high school, when we had to memorize the "Ogura HyakuninIsshu" ("One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets") over the winter holidays for homework. I remember memorizing the poems just by sound without understanding their meanings. It wasn't until decades later that I found out about the form of marriage, the status of women in society and the kind of lives poets led in the Heian era; and for the first time, the poems I had memorized just by sound moved me with an intense power. The power of the words that were passed down over more than a thousand years was unchanging human emotion.

When I saw the poem "Dear Fukushima"in Click Nippon, I was instantly inspired and I remember thinking 'This is it!!' I was in charge of a Grade 12 Japanese Heritage class and I was looking for ideas and materials I could use to design a unit on the theme of  'An individual as a global citizen'


Yoko Nishimura-Parke Yoko Nishimura-Parke
(National Asian Languages Studies in Schools Program - Languages Support Officer,Secondary Education, Learning and Leadership Directorate, NSW Department of Education and Communities)

Immigrated to Australia in 1990 as a high school Japanese teacher. Employed in the NSW Department of Education and Training since 1998. Currently promoting projects involving Asian languages as an expert in developing educational materials for Japanese as a foreign language. Co-authored Japanese textbook series Mirai and iiTomo (Pearson Education). Became involved in education for Japanese as a Heritage Language in recent years and is deeply engaged in developing educational materials in this field.

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