Ms. Sarah Campbell
English Teacher
Ketchikan High School
Ketchikan, Alaska
Sarah Campbell is an English teacher at Ketchikan High School located in southeast Alaska. She teaches a sophomore level World Literature course, as well as a variety of thematic-based, junior/senior courses which include Speech, Short Stories, Literature into Film, and Asian Literature.
In 2005, Sarah’s long time interest in Japan prompted her to apply for an East Asian literature seminar at Indiana University. That experience launched an enduring professional commitment to teaching and learning about East Asia. As a result of this one-week summer workshop, Sarah created a new offering on Asian literature at her high school and has been teaching that class ever since. Since 2005, she has participated in seventeen Asia-focused summer institutes, online courses, and study tours to China and Japan through the auspices of the Program for Teaching East Asia (TEA) at the University of Colorado, the East Asia Resource Center at the University of Washington, Korean Academy for Educators through UCLA, the Five College Center for East Asian Studies, and the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia (NCTA) centers around the country. She has studied in China, Taiwan, and Japan through study tours generously funded by the Freeman Foundation and US-Japan Foundation.
In 2013 Sarah was selected to travel to Japan as part of the Five College Center for East Asian Studies peace education program. While in Fukuoka, she had the honor of meeting Sasaki Masahiro, the older brother of Sasaki Sadako who is remembered through the story of the thousand paper cranes. As Masahiro spoke of his sister’s life and her death, he said that “we need to open our hearts in order to achieve peace; we need to create hearts of sympathy and compassion in our children because this is the best way to communicate.” He also stressed that “Sadako was not a victim; she was a young woman of peace.” Masahiro’s message and desire for peace reshaped Sarah’s understanding of human compassion, forgiveness, and love; which prompted Sarah to create an instructional unit, now available on iBooks, in which students examine monuments as well as visual and written testimonies of Hibakusha to consider how cities, survivors, and future generations remember difficult histories like Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Next fall, Mrs. Campbell will extend this unit by asking students to create and run a school-wide assembly in which they explore “What Peace Means to Me.” Elgin Heinz funds will be instrumental in helping the next generation explore examples of peace; thereby bringing great honor to the spirit of those impacted by nuclear war.
Mrs. Campbell has also developed curriculum on modern Japanese literature which is nationally available through the Five Colleges, TEA, and NCTA web sites. She has published strategies for teaching Korean literature in Education About Asia, and this past fall she was invited to share her expertise with fellow educators through a video demonstration entitled “Learning to ‘Read’ Japanese Paintings: Using Art as an Entry Point for Japanese Literature,” which is available through NCTA’s Class Apps video series of “best practices” in Asian studies.
Sarah notes, “The past twelve years have been filled with extraordinary East Asian experiences that would not have been possible without the commitment of foundations such as the Freeman and US-Japan Foundations and the guidance of program directors and colleagues. Receiving the Elgin Heinz award is not only a great honor but also one more opportunity for me to enrich the teaching of Japan in the small southeast Alaskan community where I attended and now teach high school.” The generous project funds will be used to to support an after-school Japanese Club for high school students, create a “What Peace Means to Me” assembly, purchase K-6 Japanese Children’s literature that will help teachers in the Ketchikan Gateway Borough School District integrate Japanese culture and language into their elementary curriculums, and finally, provide scholarships to help supplement student travel to Japan.