Susan Dillinger, a Title 1 reading teacher at Onaga Grade School, developed lesson plans for middle school teachers on China’s Terracotta Warriors and Japan’s Samurai.

Linda Dills, who teaches technology at Chaparral High School in Anthony, has students do projects about East Asian topics in her computer and web design classes.

And Michele Radio’s gifted students at Blue Valley North High School, many of them interested in careers in international relations, discuss the difference between Japanese and American business practices.

Dillinger, Dills, and Radio share not only an interest in Asia but an experience: They attended seminars given by the Kansas Consortium for Teaching about Asia (KCTA). The twice-yearly seminars administered by the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Kansas are designed to give teachers the knowledge and resources to educate Kansas students about a region that is vitally important to their future and to our state’s.

The 30-hour, nine-session seminars require a major commitment of time and energy from the 20 or so K-16 educators who participate. The teachers are required to follow through, to take back to their schools and demonstrably share what they’ve learned with students and colleagues.

“It’s the premier professional development course about East Asia for teachers in this area. … It’s a course that keeps on giving,” said Nancy Hope, associate director of Kansas Consortium for Teaching about Asia.

“It demands participation. It takes a special teacher to be able to do this,” Hope said. “We encourage more than one teacher from a school to participate, to support each other in the effort.”

Through the seminar’s lectures, readings, videos, and other resources, teachers learn information that dovetails with what the state’s 6th through 12th-grade social science standards say students should learn. Teachers who complete the program, which started in Kansas in 2001 and is part of a longer-running national effort, institute lesson plans on East Asian topics – Japan, China, and Korea in particular.

“The participants are asked back the following spring to report on the implementation of their lesson plans. They tell their fellow class members what worked, and what didn’t. They share what their students have done,” Hope said. They also report on one way they shared their knowledge with people outside their classroom. That can be with their colleagues or in other school districts, by posting student work in the library, or by having their students talk in other classrooms about East Asia.

Sharing knowledge of not only Asia, but also the world at large is something the participants and the organizers believe is essential.

“For our prosperity and our security, all students need to know about the rest of the world. Trade with Asia surpassed that with Europe in 1979, and it has never looked back,” Hope said. “With two-thirds of the world's purchasing power and 97 percent of the world's consumers outside the United States, wages in export-related jobs, are estimated to pay 13 to 18 percent more on average. It’s quite lucrative to a state for people to look beyond its borders.”

“Furthermore, as a nation we are experiencing the influx of new cultures,” Hope continued. “It makes us stronger to understand these cultures. It’s a resource for us.”

“It’s very important that we have some introduction to other cultures, because they’re certainly not getting it in the school hallways,” said Dills, whose district is mostly lacking in diversity. “Because of the Internet, because of technology, we deal more with other countries. The students need to respect other cultures that are very different. … Hopefully I can create a little respect for other cultures different than their own.”

In a more diverse, suburban district like Blue Valley, Radio said, the seminar brought additional benefits. “I learned more about East Asian culture. I talked to East Asian kids about things they didn’t know about their culture. … I have been bolder in trying to get my Asian kids to embrace their culture, to learn about their roots.”

Dillinger is convinced that important topics – and knowledge of Asia and the world at large is one she believes in – are best taught in a variety of subjects. “Integrate everything, pull it all together,” she said. “What you’re teaching in social studies, kids are reading about it in English. … I believe then the students learn so much more and are so much more excited.

More pragmatically, Radio said, international knowledge should be taught across the curriculum because an “international studies” elective just can’t be crammed into the busy schedules of high-achieving students already taking four years of English, accelerated math, advanced placement classes, and electives such as band or art.

The KCTA seminars are free to participants, thanks to funding from the Freeman Foundation of New York and Stowe, Vermont. If they choose, teachers can pay to receive two hours of graduate credit from KU. The Freeman Foundation provides stipends for teachers and their schools to buy materials, and gives each teacher books about Asia.

“I’m appreciative of the people willing to fund this,” Radio said. “They are doing something so positive for education. … I think it’s very patriotic. I’m really touched that someone is so far thinking and that they care so much.”

Seminars have been held in Lawrence, Manhattan, the Kansas City area and, in 2005, are planned for the Wichita area. Participants come from a variety of disciplines.

“We are willing to work with teachers in a variety of subject areas and grade levels,” Hope said. “We can work with them so that the seminar will benefit their classroom and the lesson plans they create are useful in their classroom. It’s not a one-size fits all program.”

“If they’re a language arts teacher and they teach some haiku, then it would be beneficial to them. If they’re a gifted teacher and they’re teaching about China’s Terracotta Warriors, then it would apply to them,” Hope said.

“The thing that is so impressive is that the seminar is so well organized,” Radio, the Blue Valley North teacher, said of the program she went through in spring 2003. “Each one of the classes offered valuable information and materials. It was very user friendly for teachers who needed to learn quickly about East Asia.”

The program’s breadth also impressed her. “The East Asian program is so good because you have to start young,” she said. “It’s really useful in that it starts in the elementary years.”

“The important thing to emphasize is that it’s part of a continuum,” Hope said. “It’s a more intensive part of the outreach efforts of KU’s Center for East Asian Studies.”

Those outreach efforts include resources available to any educator, not just ones taking the KCTA seminar. Outreach coordinator Randi Hacker consults with teachers about topics involving East Asia, does workshops for teachers, as well as storytelling sessions for younger students. The Center even has a listserv with lesson plans and suggestions about how to teach about Asia. Hacker can be reached at (785) 864-3832 or rhacker@ku.edu.

The KCTA, for its part, maintains a web site, www.kcta.ku.edu, that links to numerous resources for teachers and lesson plans from past participants (such as “Understanding Tiananmen Square” and “Comparative Study of Cinderella Stories”).

“The books, the materials they’ve given us are so valuable,” said Dillinger. “The opportunities just continue to present themselves.”

Those opportunities include trips for alums to such places nationally as the Field Museum in Chicago and the Missouri Botanic