Japan’s Culture Finds Its Way Into Sandy Hook

Music, Art And Social Studies Programs

By Shannon Hicks

For one evening last week, the entire Sandy Hook School building looked and sounded like it had been taken over by a group of young Japanese visitors. Girls were running around in saris, their hair held back with crossed chopsticks. Small phrases in the Japanese tongue were overheard coming out of the mouths of the young students. A tape of traditional Japanese music was being played in the background.

As a class, the fourth grade of SHS presented “The Arts of Japan,” an evening integrating Japanese culture, visual arts and musical performances on May 18. Parents and friends turned out by the dozen, with few seeming to notice, or care, that a strong thunderstorm had rolled through the area less than 45 minutes before the program was due to begin, and that was a good thing. Anyone who stayed home because of the weather missed a wonderful, enjoyable evening.

Sandy Hook School principal Donna Pagé welcomed parents, siblings and friends to the evening when she greeted each audience before performances in the school’s auditorium. She explained that the special event was “an evening of presenting art and music as it had been integrated into the social studies curriculum this year.”

In the auditorium, two musical performances were offered, each lasting approximately 20 minutes. Members of the fourth grade chorus, under the direction of Phillip Beierle, performed songs in the Japanese language. Student musicians also accompanied a few of the songs on recorder, xylophone, and other instruments.

Students then took turns as announcers for the performances, introducing each song or dance. Mrs Austin and Mr Ballerini’s fourth grade classes offered the 7 pm performance, followed by the students of Mrs Handler and Mrs Toomey.

The groups performed the songs “Oshogastu (New Year’s Day),” “Okina Taiko (The Big Drum),” “Haru ga Kita (Spring Has Come)” and “Sakura.”

Between the song performances, students also performed traditional Japanese ribbon dances, which had been taught to them by Pam Lupo and Jan Hout.

While some of the parents and friends attending the evening were being entertained in the auditorium, others had the opportunity to visit the school’s media center, where an ongoing slide presentation called “The Geography of Japan” was being offered by library media specialist Sylvia Yasner. There was also a large display of the school’s resources and student reports for perusal, organized by teacher George Stockwell.

On the opposite end of the school, parents were also being kept busy in Leslie Gunn’s art room. Students were working on demonstrations of origami, or the art of paper folding; Japanese calligraphy, the art of beautiful writing; and showing off clay techniques in creating rice bowls and tea cups.

Around the room, and in fact throughout the school’s hallways, were projects the students had completed during the recent months. There were posters, drawings, clay sculpture. One hallway bulletin board was filled with costumed characters for Noh Theatre, or “The Art of Movement,” where plays, short stories, legends and historical events are acted out in puppetry or mask form. Students had created their masks after having their own face plastered over or from a papier maché mold.