JET Alumnus Returns to Her Former Posting Affected by Earthquake
Tanya Gardecky met with Mayor Akira Sato of Shiogama.
A Canadian teacher, who from 2009 to 2010 worked in northwestern Japan, had an opportunity to revisit her former schools and students in the region which was severely affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11.
Tanya Gardecky currently is a teacher living in Aurora, Ontario. For one year ending in August of last year, she was teaching English in Shiogama, a city in Japan’s Miyagi Prefecture, as a participant on the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme. This past August, she returned to Japan at the invitation of the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to revisit Shiogama to see for herself how the earthquake and tsunami affected life there, Ms. Gardecky was also able to see some of the results from the reconstruction efforts currently underway.
A local store still closed due to damage.
Normal routines had returned to the schools.
She met with some Canadian journalists shortly after returning to Canada, describing in detail what she saw and felt. Ms. Gardecky’s blog recounting her experiences, which can be viewed here: http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/ShiogamaJET/
The CBC.CA report on Ms. Gardecky can be viewed here: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2011/09/09/japan-teachers-jet-return-quake.html
