Newsletter Story 5
“MA TESOL Award for Creative Excellence Winners: Adcharawan Buripakdi & Kazuhiro Shinada”
In the spring, the MA TESOL Program faculty selected Kazuhiro Shinada and Adcharawan Buripakdi as co-winners of the MA TESOL Program Award for Creative Excellence. This award is given each spring semester to the student or students who demonstrate a creative excellence in their course work projects or papers, including such criteria as creatively relating theory to practice, showing humor and a playfulness with language and ideas, demonstrating dedication to the TESOL profession, thoughtfully questioning accepted practices, and showing a curious exploratory spirit. The award includes a certificate and a $300.00 cash award (this year split two ways).
Kazuhiro Shinada won the award for his paper titled “Consequences of Culture: How Culture Determines Japanese Behavior.” After writing a draft of the paper for an MA TESOL course, Kazuhiro found he was still intrigued by the topic, and so he continued doing research for the paper long after the course had finished. This sort of curious exploratory spirit embodies the goals of the MA TESOL Award for Creative Excellence. Kazuhiro’s additional research led to three major revisions of his essay. It is interesting to note that the thesis of Kazuhiro’s essay also changed with each revision as his research helped him to develop a deeper understanding of Japanese culture.
Adcharawan Buripakdi also demonstrated creative excellence; however, her way of doing this was quite different from Kazuhiro’s. Adcharawan submitted a portfolio she created in her fall semester Introduction to TESOL course. In this portfolio, titled Adcharawan Buripakdi Tells The Story, Adcharawan included ten chapters, which together represented her teaching philosophy, personal experiences, and academic life and dreams. Written in the format of a handmade magazine, her chapters included such topics as I Am Thai, I Am a Teacher, My Teaching Philosophy, My Songs To You, I Am a Great Dreamer, and My Views. Her chapters included photos, magazine clippings, original poems and songs, short essays, and more.
If you are presently a student in our MA TESOL program and are interested in competing for this award by submitting your most creative work, you will have the chance during the next spring semester. Guidelines for submitting your creative work will be published in the next newsletter.