by Kelly Rogge
An international educator from Brazil recently spent a few days on the Kansas City Kansas Community College campus to discuss health and wellness programming.
Dr. Elizabeth Yamasaki visited KCKCC’s Campus Childcare Center Sept. 2, while she was on a 12-day trip to the United States. While at the college, she was accompanied by Bill Yeazel, former director of the KCKCC Performing Arts Center, who acted as her translator.
Yamasaki’s visit kicked off with a tour of the Campus Child Care Center building and introductions to the teaching staff. It continued with a tour of the outdoor gardens that the children and staff are growing in conjunction with the Kansas City Community Gardens School Yard Gardens Project.
She then observed mealtime as well as tooth brushing practices of all of the classrooms and helped several children learn proper techniques for brushing their teeth. After spending some time with the children, Yamasaki spent some time discussing best practices in children’s health, nutrition and physical fitness with Yeazel and Doris Holleman, director of the Campus Childcare Center.
Yamasaki also presented the center with several comic books that she had co-created focusing on health, nutrition, physical fitness and bullying.
“I think it was important to have Dr. Yamasaki visit so that there could be an exchange of ideas and knowledge about locations, student body composition, career and educational pathways and approaches to education in different parts of the world,” Holleman said. “It is also important to share current best practices in all of these areas as well as comparing institutional core values, vision and mission in order to discern similarities and differences and, if desired, gain ideas to take back to other institutions. We live in a global society and the sharing of ideas, concepts, and best practices is one method of bringing everyone together into one global community.”
The final day of her two-day visit to KCKCC, Yamasaki gave a talk at the Intercultural Center about practices in Brazil as well as her research.
“I felt that seeing and listening to Dr. Yamasaki tell us that we were high quality was very reassuring and validating,” Holleman said. “I will never forget when Bill Yeazel said that ‘I did not realize that the Campus Child Care Center was so progressive’ and Dr. Yamasaki said ‘The program is so elevated.’ My staff truly enjoyed seeing how much we all have in common and that an expert, unfamiliar with our culture, was willing to jump in and be a practitioner and demonstrate techniques and tools in regards to oral hygiene.”
Holleman said she took away the feeling that “the world is not as large as we think.”
“We truly are a global society,” she said. “Overall, the experience was truly validating and eye opening and I would like to have many more similar experiences in the future.”