JACL Back to School Weekly Feature! Week 5!
For the next 6 weeks, on Thursday or Friday, we’ll send you a short email that highlights one part of our education program. The Weekly Feature runs in conjunction with our Centennial Education Fund campaign that celebrates 100 years of JACL’s education work.
Week 5 of 6: Interview with JACL's Education Leaders - An Insider's View of JACL's Education Program
In honor of the recently launched JACL Centennial Education Fund campaign that celebrates 100 years of telling JACL’s story, this Weekly Feature interviews the leaders of the JACL Education Program:
Matthew Weisbly, Education and Communications Coordinator
And Carol Kawamoto, National Education Committee (NEC) Chair
To support this work, please consider a donation to the Centennial Education Fund.
"The JACL Education Program’s primary goal is to tell our story about the incarceration by reaching teachers, students, and communities."
- Carol Kawamoto
"Our focus is to make the materials and story as accessible as possible whether it’s with the workshops, curriculum guides, or finding innovative ways to tell the story."
-Matt Weisbly
How did you get involved with JACL?
Carol: I attribute Nisei mentors who thought involving young Sansei, like my husband, David, and me, was important. I am a product of the DC Leadership Program in its early years and became San Diego JACL’s first female Chapter President. I chaired the NEC in the 90s and, full circle, again now.
Matt: I got involved because of my parents and grandparents in Arizona. I was usually the only Asian kid except at JACL events. I was mentored by Ted Namba and eventually served as the first Ted Namba fellow before becoming JACL’s Inouye Fellow and now in this new role.
Please Give us a high-level summary of JACL's Education Program.
Carol: The JACL Education Program’s primary goal is to tell our story about the incarceration by reaching teachers, students, and communities. The program was born in the 90s, after Redress, where we started with Teacher Training Workshops and found grants to launch this work. I remember when we started in Matt’s state of Arizona, it was Greg Marutani, Joe Allman, Ted Namba, and a few others. At that time, only a few teachers knew the story. We went to Arizona every year for 10 years until the chapter established its own program. Now, we’re proud of the progress we have made but have a long way to go.
Matt: Yes, our focus is to make the materials and story as accessible as possible whether it’s with the workshops, curriculum guides, or finding innovative ways to tell the story.
Carol: We’re hoping that the Our League of Dreams Film Project with Lane Nishikawa, and the clips from that, will allow us to create and develop relevant pieces that would impact classrooms.
Why is this an important program? Who or what does it impact?
Matt: This program is important because it is so often hidden. I had not heard about the incarceration until high school. It’s also important because it gives us a framework to include Muslim Americans post 9/11 and other groups into modern lessons. We want to impact everyone we can to share this story so that it doesn’t happen again. Collaborating with teachers lets us reach classrooms of students for multiple years.
Carol: In the 1990s, then National Director Herb Yamanishi envisioned the need for someone from JACL’s NEC to get appointed to the Instruction Materials Advisory Panel in California. He asked me to apply and I was accepted. I reviewed textbooks that were coming out for state adoption approval for three cycles of seven years each. After each adoption cycle, we would see more information on our story. When educational standards came out, there was a framework to get our story into them. In CA it was included in the 4th, 8th, 11th, and 12th grade standards. In grade school, we taught about the incarceration. Then, in high school, we taught about Constitutional injustice as well as the 442nd RCT. Now when students open their textbooks, they can see and learn more of our story.
Share a story about one person impacted by JACL's Education Program.
Carol: I always think about Greg Matutani who chaired the NEC before me until he passed in 2019. He was not an educator by profession but was so driven and deeply passionate about teaching about the Japanese American experience. He always said yes to teacher training workshops. Greg always said you have to look at the climate and time of people making decisions. Now as we continue his work, Greg is shining down and saying thank you!
Matt: It was back in 2015 in Arizona. During my senior year of high school, my history professor attended the workshop and it was so personal to have my own teacher want to learn about and teach my classmates about my family history. Actually, this is one of the reasons I got involved in education at JACL.
What do you envision for the Education Program?
Carol: The focus of the NEC committee is to outreach to make sure that our history, our story, is heard and that people know it. That teachers are educated on this topic. It would be nice to see more of this in the textbooks where our story and that of other groups are in there. It’s improved. We want to make the curricula relevant for the future.
Matt: We’ve come a long way in educating others. We want to expand on what we have - Power of Words, Curriculum Guides, teacher trainings. We just finished our first-ever virtual teacher training and it went really well with teachers from everywhere. Using new technologies and ideas is important so that people can easily digest it. People now like things in more bite-sized talks like TikTok or Instagram. I’m also excited for virtual reality exhibits like at JANM.
Finally, who are you looking to get involved and how?
Carol: We’re looking for educators to share their expertise on an advisory committee role. The NEC is currently structured as having one representative from each district. The Advisory Committee would allow us to expand and gain knowledge while not being too huge a time commitment.
Matt: I would like to get more people involved like members and those who want to help teach the history and teach these stories. Even without the committee, there are going to be more ways to get people involved. We’re looking at making a Speaker’s Bureau so people can share their family stories with their communities in the near future.
For more information or to get involved, please contact ckawamoto@jacl.org, mweisbly@jacl.org, or call the National Office at 415-921-5225.
This article was also published in the most recent issue of the Pacific Citizen.
