Despite 70% of them being beginners, they delivered incredible speeches after just 2 hours—Bravo! Kids are truly geniuses. 👦

Oita-born violinist Sumire Hirotsuru and Mari Hirotsuru co-founded the volunteer education organization Summer in JAPAN in 2012. This year, SIJ once again provided English lessons to 100 elementary and middle school students in Oita City.

Each year, students from prestigious universities like Harvard are invited as instructors to lead various programs in Oita City during the two-week summer session. One of these programs is the SWIM English lessons, held twice (7/20 and 8/10). Harvard students, along with bilingual university students from around the world, lead the sessions.

For the second session on August 10th, six Harvard students, one Tufts student, and Mari Hirotsuru took the lead, supported by 14 assistants from APU, AIU, and Oita University Medical School.

Sumire Hirotsuru’s 20-minute presentation sparked numerous questions from the children ✨🎤 ① 100 Students & 21 Instructors 🌻 Everyone is a genius 👏 ② Teacher Hannah ③ Teacher Gabriel ④ Teacher Aiko ⑤ Teacher Mandy ⑥ Teachers Ben & Sumire ⑦ Teacher Josephine ⑧ Time to present on stage 🎤 ⑨ It was perfect 😍 ⑩ See you next year at SIJ 2024!

12 Years of Trust and Achievement, SIJ Summer School

@sij_summerinjapan

I am proud that they were able to fluently introduce themselves, present their writing in front of more than 100 people, and most importantly, seek help from their instructors on their own. This is a great achievement in such a short span of time. – Ryan