A three-week trip to Japan was a thrilling experience that left Casper teacher Elizabeth DeWitt with several ideas to use in her own classroom, she said.

A visit to one Japanese high school also was a relief.

"I felt really comforted by the fact that they were text messaging, and one was sleeping," she said, drawing laughs from the Casper Rotary Club at its meeting Monday. Her husband is a member of the club.

DeWitt teaches social studies at Kelly Walsh High School. She traveled in November and December as part of the Japan Fulbright Memorial Fund Teacher Program.

The program aims to increase understanding between people of Japan and the United States, DeWitt said. Teachers who travel there are asked to share their experiences with students and the community back home.

The countries' school systems are very different, she said, as different as the cultures themselves.

Japanese students wear uniforms. Moving from eighth to ninth grade is a competitive process, where students apply for admission to the best high schools. This is also the point where many students drop out, DeWitt said, to enter a trade or a family business.

Japanese children seem to behave better, but the discipline comes with a price, DeWitt said.

She observed classes with classroom monitors and learned that when a teacher has to be gone, there are no substitute teachers. The classroom monitor - a student - is in charge. Students serve each other lunch and are responsible for cleaning the classrooms and the school grounds.

She appreciated the student uniforms. She tells her own students to dress for school as if they were going to a job interview, especially when she takes them on trips to Washington, D.C.

"A lot of our kids don't wear appropriate dress to school," DeWitt said.

There are some parts of Japanese culture she wouldn't bring home, though.

There is a high suicide rate, she said, partly a result of the stress parents and educators put on students to pass high-stakes tests.

She also learned that the Japanese system historically has put priority on rote learning and memorization, rather than independent thought, though that's starting to change. Still, most students look forward to a career as a salaried worker for a company, rather than as an entrepreneur or in a creative profession.

In the future, she'd like to see more options for students in the United States to study for trades and learn in different environments, rather than expecting everyone to have "the same kind of blanket education."

And she'd like to see her own students collaborating more in groups, rather than going through school not knowing their classmates well. She wants to establish a classroom environment where students are allowed to talk to each other and work together, even as she's teaching, like Japanese teachers allow.

"We can learn from each other," DeWitt said, "and take away strengths and weaknesses."

Reach Barbara Nordby at (307) 266-0633 or at barbara.nordby@casperstartribune.net.