Thembo attended the online meeting with high school students of Ishikawa Prefectural Kanazawa Izumigaoka Senior High School in July 2021. TUFS signed a cooperation agreement with the highschool in 2015. He gave advisory comments on the students' presentations, but he also was able to learn a lot from their presentations and was impressed by their educational system to encourage students on research and practicals than theories.
The following is his essay.
On June 16, 2021, the High School- University Collaboration Support Division-TUFS sent me an email requesting international students to apply and participate in the online presentation hosted by Kanazawa Izumigaoka Senior High School, Ishikawa Prefecture. In the presentation, the 3rd graders, who belonged to the supper global courses were to give a presentation on how to solve a global issue that they had been researching for a year. TUFS was inviting only three international students to apply and participate in the presentions by giving advisory comments on the student's three presentions.
when I saw the email, I picked interest and immediately applied to participate in this presentations. TUFS approved my application with the other three international students. In the presentation, we were divided into two groups, in each group 4 different presentions were made in English. Each session consisted of a 7-minute presentation and 13-minutes for questions and answers.
The student in my group had carried out research about four major topics. The first research was about the use of coloured solar panels in which they wanted to spread the use of dynamos that work with renewable energy. They had conducted an experiment to research how much the colour impairs the performance of solar panels. The students had conducted a questionnaire to find out how many people or companies wanted to introduce coloured solar panels. at the end of their research, they found out that many people and companies care more about its solar price or lifetime than colour.
Another group of students had also researched "A Happy Life for Overseas Students" they argued that "In Japan, a lot of high school students from abroad drop out of school. Among factors leading to this situation is their sense of alienation". In order to solve this, the students had made a booklet that explains school facilities and events in Japanese high schools as well as Japanese slang and pop culture to help foreign students to cope with life in Japan.
In the presentation, both four international students interacted with different groups which had presented different topics by giving advisory comments on both of their presentions and research case studies as well as the way forward. My participation in this presentation was so impressive as well as educative, It was so interesting to see how young high school students research a global problem and come up with a possible solution. This surprised me because my home country's education system doesn't emphasize much on research and practicals but theories. Since their book was important for many people, especially we are the exchange students who have to learn different Japanese cultures, I encouraged them to work on it as it will help many students in the future.