STEPHANIE (RUSH) GLENN
CWA Class of 1986
US Japanese Teacher, Since 1994
Learning Japanese has been a huge part of my life ever since I was a third grader playing at Yasuko Wada's house eating Japanese nashi pears from her trees  and talking with lots of gestures and giggles with her mother who came from Japan speaking nearly no English. I started studying Japanese formally in 7th grade at Charles Wright and haven't ever stopped. Learning about a country so different in so many ways from my own has given me a greater appreciation of where I come from as well as a deeper understanding of how differently people can live. Thanks to my language studies at Charles Wright and at UW, I was able to study Tea Ceremony in Japan with Mrs. Yanagida in Kyoto who spoke no English; I was able to live with and learn so much from the Yamada family in Omihachiman for over two years; and I have been able to facilitate the continuing relationship between Charles Wright and Mukogawa School which Yasuko started almost 20 years ago.

Not only has my life been shaped so strongly by my own Japanese studies, I have been fortunate to watch many of my own students spend quality time in Japan as visitors, exchange students, and even in their careers. It is exciting to see relationships grow among people who live in many ways very differently. In our world, I believe it is increasingly important for young people to early on develop healthy curiosity about other cultures, seeking similarity and common ground even among people who seem to have pespectives, opinions, speech and lifestyles different from our own. Charles Wright's commitment to teaching foreign languages is an incredibly valuable part of its education. I say this as an alum, teacher, and now proud parent of a beginning schooler studying Spanish at Charles Wright!