NICE Group Ventures To NYC To Celebrate Japanese New Year

Newtown High School students and Newtown International Center for Education (NICE) team members traveled to New York City on Sunday, January 29, to attend a New Year’s celebration at the Japan Society.

As posted on the Newtown High School blog, http://dumais.us/newtown/blog/, more than 380 people attended the event.

The local students who attended the New Year’s celebration were Emily Berube, Lee Cummings, Tom Floros, Casey Flynn, Kevin Gorman, Jerri Lee, Alyssa Moreira, Kyra Middeleer, Brianne Moulder, Anna Pasacreta, Sarah Potter, Jenn Radatovich, Ellie Ress, Don Sun, and Jillian Vazquez. The NICE team members who attended were Tim Dejulio, Jeremy O’Connell, Amy Repay, Liz Ward de Leon, and Jason Hiruo.

During the event students volunteered at different stations, which included kite making, calligraphy, and Japanese storytelling. According to the blog, the participating NHS students were teamed up with Japanese American students from Keio Academy of New York

“The importance of being able to experience cultural initiatives firsthand, and value the importance of these initiatives, demonstrates the progress being made in globalizing our students for the 21st Century,” said NHS physical education teacher Jeremy O’Connell following the event.

According to NHS teacher and NICE team member Liz Ward de Leon, the trip was orchestrated by NHS social studies teacher Amy Repay.

“The students enjoyed meeting with Japanese counterparts to work together on teaching the public about the Japanese New Year,” said Ms Ward de Leon. “The event was run by Japan Society and was a smashing success, teaching students of all ages cultural crafts and practices.”

Ms Ward de Leon said the best part of the trip was watching everyone have fun “without realizing that they were truly engaging in another culture with new friends.”

Tom Floros, one of the students who attended the event, also said it was a fun and interesting experience.

“The teenagers from Japan were very nice and they also were very personable as we learned more about their culture,” said Tom. “I was surprised to see them all in there school uniforms and I was also surprised that everyone I met knew very fluent English. This to me was very impressive because they were bilingual, which is becoming increasingly important in the working world because the world is becoming smaller and all countries become more reliant on each other.”