Kansas Year of the Dragon

Lawrence, Kan.—Technically it’s the Year of the Rooster, but for Free State High School students in Lawrence, Kan, it’s also the Year of the Dragon. Students in grades 10th through 12th raised more than $600 for tsunami relief efforts. Instead of receiving money for the Chinese New Year which is traditional, students at Free State gave money away to the Red Cross Tsunami Relief Fund.

February 9th, the first day of the Chinese New Year, marked the kick-off date for “Build the Dragon Competition for Tsunami Relief.” Conceptualized by Debra Denson, gifted education facilitator at Free State High School, and her East Asian Studies students, “Build the Dragon” encouraged students to donate money to the tsunami victims. Students competed to build the longest dragon by purchasing scales, 1 scale for 25 cents or 4 scales and a fortune cookie for $1, during lunch. These scales, color-coded for different grade levels, were placed on the 50-foot white paper dragon Denson’s class had designed. Denson and her students beat their goal of 2,000 scales by more than 500, and Teena Johnson’s students, the class that sold the most scales (444), won a Lantern Festival Party.

Students in Denson’s East Asian Studies course worked hard to educate students about the tsunami disaster. To grab students’ attention, one of Denson’s students created a video from tsunami footage gathered on the internet, and this film was played at the table where the scales were sold. Along with announcing the daily leaders for the competition, Denson’s students also kept the school up to date on the latest tsunami news using the school PA system.

“Build the Dragon” originated from the curriculum Denson had designed for the new East Asia Studies course at Free State High School. When designing the curriculum, Denson incorporated a service component which would increase global awareness. When the tsunami hit parts of Asia, students immediately chose this as their service project and the entire school supported their efforts. Denson said, “At first [this component was designed] to give my class a sense of serving the global community, but as I watched the school pull together, I realized that it had become a unifying opportunity for the school.”

Denson’s East Asian Studies class is a direct outgrowth from her participation in the East Asian Institute for Teachers (EAIT). Run by the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Kansas, EAIT is a 30-hour class that teaches educators in Kansas and Western Missouri how to incorporate East Asia into their classes across all curriculum areas. Not only did Denson incorporate what she learned from EAIT into the course, she also included information she learned from her subsidized travels abroad to China and Japan with fellow EAIT alums.

Denson’s East Asian Studies students plan to continue serving the global community. Currently they are working on a project to send school supplies to a rural village school in Hanjiaping, China.