, other peace loving educators and schoolchildren. This held peace concerts and peace symposia to learn about peace and raise money, and encouraged students to fold and send paper cranes to the children in the US.
The peace statue project wasn't without difficulties. The Kids Committee had wanted to locate the statue on public land in Los Alamos but, after a heated debate including bitter comments about Pearl Harbor, the Los Alamos county council rejected the plan. The Albuquerque Museum, however, warmly offered to become the site for the statue and organized a whole month of peace activities for this in August 1995 (see pgs. 12-13).
My school, Tokyo Metropolitan Hoya Senior High School, stresses students' individuality and doesn't have the notorious school regulations of most high schools in Japan. In our school festival, for example, more than 20 classes actively performed plays such as "Sarafina", "Dead Poets Society" and "The Sound of Music."
In my 1995 twelfth grade elective English Conversation Class, my Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) Michael Madison and I decided to design a six-part eight-hour English unit on the theme of peace and the US children's peace statue project.
First our students watched a video from the US in which the American children on the Kids Committee appealed confidently to the Los Alamos County Council for public land on which to build their Children's Peace Statue. This was really inspiring and surprising, since we never hear of little kids making appeals to local councils in Japan. We hoped our students would be stimulated by this, and they watched it earnestly in spite of the difficult English.
Next, we had our students write "peace messages" to the US Kids Committee. I took these to New Mexico in August, 1995 and presented them at the Peace Statue dedication ceremony. I also brought along peace messages and thousand-origami-crane bunches that teachers had asked me to take from other schools in Japan.
When I returned from the US, I showed students my video of the dedication ceremony. The English was difficult, but with interpreting and a handout, they were able to understand eve
rything. The fact that I appeared in the video added to their interest.
Next, we asked our students "What would you like to say about peace?" and had them prepare speeches. Some students wrote directly in English, but most wrote their ideas first in Japanese, then translated them into English. We helped them prepare their speeches by circulating around the class, conferencing with students and correcting only global errors.
Next, we asked students to give their speeches in front of the class and videotaped these to add some excitement. The first performances weren't very good, since we didn't make them memorise their talks. So, we decided to have them do the speeches again. This time, we asked them not to look down at their scripts all the time, but to glance at their scripts, then speak looking at the camera. We were surprised and moved when 3 girls voluntaril target=0y sang "We Are the World." It was the first time any of my students had sung voluntarily. A big applause ended the class.
For the final activity, we had a class discussion about the students' speeches and their ideas of peace. We wondered how much they'd understand only by listening to their classmates' speeches, so we prepared handouts of all the speeches and asked students to prepare questions about each one. Sitting in a circle, they asked at least 3 questions after thinking for a few minutes. We taught expressions such as "You said... in your speech, but what do you mean by that?" and "It's true.... but I think...". One girl asked a boy, "You said peace is love, but what do you think love is?" The boy hugged the boy next to him and said "This is love, love is touch." The theme "peace" seemed difficult to discuss, but I was glad they did their best.
Themes such as "peace" might seem difficult for beginner and intermediate English students to deal with, but my students showed great interest, probably because they understood that peace is a most im