Ogawa Receives National Award For Teaching 9-11

Masato Ogawa, a 2001 COE alumnus, was named one of four national winners of the Teaching 9-11 Best Practices Award by the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and Dickinson College in Pennsylvania.

Ogawa, who teaches social studies and Japanese at Ontario High School in Ontario, Ore., won the award for his unit of instruction titled, “Should government go beyond the normal limits of its authority during wartime?” He received a $1,000 prize and was invited to participate in a panel on “Teaching 9-11" at the Smithsonian National Museum of History in Washington, D.C., on September 9.

Ogawa, a native Japanese citizen who came to America to do post-graduate work in social science education at the University of Georgia, earned a master’s in 1998 and an Ed.D. in 2001.

Ogawa said he chose to teach at Ontario High School because the community was culturally very diverse, with a large Mexican-American population, and one of the largest settlements of Japanese-Americans outside of a major city.

“The community also has a fairly large Basque-American population as well as native American,” he said. “Our school represents a wide variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds, educational levels and economic conditions.”

Ogawa said he plans to continue teaching and working with diverse populations of students and teachers but would also like to continue his research in social studies education with international/global perspectives, multicultural education, textbook analysis, global education and teaching and learning history.

Friday, September 17, 2004

WRITER: Michael Childs, 706/542-5889, mchilds@coe.uga.edu
CONTACT: Masato Ogawa, mogawa@fmtc.com