Mr. Tomokazu Morikawa
Teacher of Japanese Language and Culture
George Washington High School
San Francisco, California
Mr. Tomokazu Morikawa is an enthusiastically committed Japanese language educator. Mr. Morikawa has created entire curricula with thematic and interdisciplinary approaches that promote teaching Japanese cultures in Japanese. He has developed international expedition programs for his students and has established sister school relationships with public high schools in Osaka in the past. Presently he has established sister school relationships with high schools in Miyazaki, Tochigi, Sendai and collaboration projects with Fukui prefecture.
His project-based units have contributed innovative ways of teaching a foreign language to students within the SFUSD. For example, Tomokazu has worked with local Japanese travel agencies and the San Francisco Travel Bureau to create mini tour itineraries and guidebooks in Japanese for tourists from Japan. His students arranged walking tours for Japanese tourists during the summer, allowing students to discover different values and perspectives between Japanese cultures and their own.
Since early 1990’s he has taken his students on summer trips to Japan, visiting sister schools, collaborating in a variety of projects and activities with all sister schools. Since the Great East Earthquake in 2011, he takes his students to visit Tohoku. In the summer of 2012 they visited Kita-Ibaraki, volunteering in beach cleanup and other locally based community activities. They have visited their sister school in Miyagi where he and his students have presented approximately 13,000 dollars in relief funds that his students raised. His students have initiated various projects to support high school students in Tohoku, creating video message boards, Facebook page and community based projects in San Francisco and in Tohoku. In the summer of 2014 he will be taking students to Japan, visiting Miyagi and again promoting communities that bridge the gap.
About twenty years ago, Tomokazu started his teaching career with the San Francisco Unified School District, creating an innovative and rewarding new curriculum in an academically low performing school within the district. His challenge as a new teacher was to create interdisciplinary units associated with learning Japanese Language and cultures for a 110- minute block schedule. He is a native speaker of Japanese, educated in Japan as well as in the United States. Mr. Morikawa has received Outstanding Teacher of the Year award by Asian Week Foundation for his community outreach programs for his students. He has served as vice president for the California Association of Japanese Language Teachers (CAJLT), currently a board member of the Northern California Japanese Teacher’s Association (NCJTA) and the Japanese American Association of Northern California (JAANC). He has developed curricula, lesson units and projects for SFUSD, the College Board, and the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. He has also given numerous workshops and presentations locally and regionally. He is currently a moderator for the AP teacher online community for Japanese language and culture.