順天中学校・高等学校

6/6/2015

Saturday June 6, the 1^st grade class of Senior High School that is this year’s new SGH class had  the Trade Simulation  activity for their SGH workshop.  The workshop was provided by DEAR (Development Education Association and Resources Center.)

In the workshop students were encouraged “to freely speak out, not to be too critical to each other and to actively participate.”   Through the simulation activity, students experienced injustice and unfairness existing in the real world.

At the beginning of the workshop held in the Art room, students were divided into groups and played “Cooperation Game.”  The purpose of the game was to see how well students help each other and how such quality cooperation would help the groups to achieve their common goals.  Students learned how important it is to work together.  The learning from today’s school work was an important essential concept when working to achieve Junten’s SGH goals. 

After the Cooperation Game, students tried “Trade Simulation” activity.   In the activity, unbalanced trade scenarios were used for the students to experience the issues existing in the real world economic activities.  In the simulated scenarios, each group acted as a country having the president, a minister of foreign affairs, industry and information.  The rest of the group members acted as civilians.  The president and the ministers worked to promote and sustain the goods the country produces to gain more profits, so the acting president and ministers negotiated with other countries to meet their financial needs. 

The president of the country that earned the most profit said, “we were very lucky from the start, because we had a plenty of resources and we had enough information.”   The president of the country that earned the least profit said, “we had insufficient resources and were placed in an unfair position from the start.”  

Students learned a lot from this activity. Here are some comments from the students: “I would like to explore more about what is really going on in the world”, “I learned how important it is to help each other” and “I have gained more interests in trading.”

Feedback from The Class Teachers:

“Students have actively and cooperatively engaged in the school workshops this year. This year marks the SGH second year for the students and they have become more cooperative and curious in the SGH activities than the first year. Students in the class today were interested in trading and  they even knew special trading terms.  In response, we teachers now feel more responsible about keeping their motivation high.  We think that we need to incorporate more SGH related subjects and topics in regular classes.”