Diplomacy program teaches Burchell student knowledge, perspective

JAPAN — Education isn’t always as straightforward as going to class, doing homework, and completing tests, whether on the local or international level.

Burchell High School junior Autumn “Auto” Garrett didn’t quite grasp her school’s investment in her until her favorite English teacher, Paul Morley, broached the idea of her going to Japan for a month with the Student Diplomacy Corps in a program titled, “Beyond the Storm: Sustainable Energy and Recovery.”

“I knew she had an interest in Japanese culture, which is not uncommon, but she seemed to take an interest in the language and the more subtle aspects of Japanese culture,” Morley said, of Garrett. “I thought, ‘this is a kid who could really thrive in this environment.”’

On the SDC website, a question is posed in the preface to the description of the general application process: “Are you a poet, athlete, ecologist, artist, musician, activist, author or civic leader who contributes deeply to your school and community?”

In Morley’s eyes, the answer was a resounding “yes” for his poetry student, Auto, so he asked her after school one day if she was interested in the program.

“We had about 30 seconds before we had to catch the bus, and Paul comes up to me and asks, ‘Autumn you wanna go to Japan?’” Garrett said, recalling the proposition. “I was like, ‘Yeah!’ (That’s my) No. 1 place to go, I’ve always wanted to go there.”

But there had to be a catch, Auto thought. Hesitating, she asked how much the program would cost.

“Free, we’ll cover it,” she remembered Morley saying.

Auto was sold. Morley nominated her as per the SDC application process, Auto submitted a written application and was subsequently interviewed long-distance by corps staff in New York, and finally, SDC co-founder and co-director Chris Frantz got in touch with Auto and her family directly.

“What we try to do is identify schools, communities, or youth-serving organizations that work with wonderful, talented young men and women who have not necessarily had many opportunities to travel overseas,” Frantz said over the phone.

In speaking with Morley, Frantz said Auto seemed like “a really perfect candidate for our Japan program,” and soon he became convinced.

“It really sounded like A, there was a wonderful school and community standing behind this young woman, and B, there was a young woman who was really worthy of the investment,” Frantz said.

So, Auto received $4,000 from the SDC to cover things like international airfare, health insurance, room and board and program fees for a month spent in various parts of Japan, learning about nuclear energy and doing relief work.

Frantz said the corps sent 123 people to 11 countries around the world this summer, and on average, the scholarships they provided covered 85 percent of students’ trip costs.

“That enables us to work with really talented, deserving kids, regardless of their ability to pay,” Frantz said.

Despite the sizeable sum of financial support, however, Auto said she still needed to raise $2,500 for airfare from Alaska to Los Angeles and back, for travel documents, for spending money, and any necessary immunizations she might need.

What happened next was more than Auto believed could, she said.

Morley and Burchell principal Adam Mokelke set up a bank account dedicated to Auto’s trip, Morley said, and advertised their student’s need district-wide. Then they contacted the Mat-Su Schools Foundation, who began collecting tax-deductible donations on Auto's behalf, and soon, the verdict was in: Auto was going to Japan.

But as she made her travel preparations, Auto kept wondering what she was doing, “Preparing for a trip / That I wouldn’t let myself be / Optimistic about,” she wrote in her post-trip project.

After she returned to Alaska, “true to her normal form,” Morley said, Auto wrote a nine-page poem detailing the trip to meet the SDC’s post-trip requirements for a summative project.

“I spent months / Doubting myself / Telling myself that / It wouldn’t happen / That something would go wrong / (And oh, did they go wrong),” she wrote.

First it was “procrastinating” on the application essay, Auto wrote; then it was the $2,500 she didn’t think she could raise; then it was her passport that arrived just four days before her first flight; then it was the flight that the travel agent forgot to book.

“…when everything else went wrong / I knew that I’d been right / To keep myself from hoping / But then / Everything worked out,” Auto wrote.

Still, as Auto rose off the ground in an airplane from Anchorage, she “…wanted to cry / Because no one else gave up / But me.”

In Los Angeles, her doubts continued as she waited to meet the other U.S. members in her group.

“I’d just spent hours flying alone / And suddenly / I was expected / To follow along / With a group of people / That I didn’t know?” Auto wrote. “What if they didn’t like me / Or I said something stupid / I had to spend a month with these people / I was going to screw this up.”

But meeting her group turned out to be the best thing about her whole trip, she said, mentioning their short stays in Tokyo at the beginning and end of the month as her “favorite part.”

“The whole point was to go and learn about nuclear energy, which I did, but I think I learned more about the people I was with, making connections, having friends,” Auto said in an interview.

Frantz said that Auto’s group probably had a higher percentage of international students than usual, with three of the nine coming from Spain, Mexico, and Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan’s major four.

“I was the only one from Alaska, Jorge was the only one from Spain, we had Brian from Mexico, and it was just really interesting to see the way everyone reacted, and, you know, acted around each other,” Auto said. “I’m so glad we have the Internet, because I still talk to everyone over Instagram, Facebook, email.”

Auto expressed some regret in the interview about not having “paid more attention” to the more formal aspects of her overseas education, saying, “I should have written it all down,” but she was particularly moved by the story of one famous Japanese lecturer and rancher, Fukushima native Masami Yoshizawa.

“The area he lives in is contaminated / And no longer suitable for daily living / His government told him to leave / To kill his animals / And pretend it never happened / But he didn’t,” Auto wrote.

According to the story written in January for the New York Times by Martin Fackler, “Defying Japan, Rancher Saves Fukushima’s Radioactive Cows,” Yoshizawa has provided a home for hundreds of cattle, abandoned by their keepers after the earthquake that damaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in 2011. He claims that the kill order on the cattle is an attempt by the Japanese government to “erase what happened here.”

“These cows are living testimony to the human folly here in Fukushima,” Yoshizawa said.

Auto said she was told the radiation from the Fukushima plant has “traveled about 15,000 miles outward” into the Pacific Ocean since the disaster.

“After we met him,” she wrote, of Yoshizawa, “I couldn’t stop thinking about the pictures we were shown / And I decided / That there was no way / I would ever condone nuclear energy / And I hope he wins this fight.”

“Some of the stuff they showed us was pretty nasty,” Auto said in the interview, referring to the effects of chemical waste on wildlife.

Auto said she would like to help in the continued worldwide search for and movement toward alternative energy sources, but right now, she just wants to travel the world. Her trip to Japan was the first out of Alaska for her, and the rest of her family hasn’t ever traveled that far.

“I’m the first person in my entire family to have gone anywhere outside the country besides Canada and Mexico,” Auto said.

In her poem, she wrote about a day on the beach in Kobe: her first time on white sands, and her first time swimming in the ocean.

Unfortunately, there was another first.

“I found out / That I burn like salt on ice / And it took about two weeks for the sunburn to go away,” she wrote.

Auto said she hopes to be a flight attendant at some point — and will hopefully visit her SDC friends in the Washington, D.C., area, and in Spain, Mexico and Hokkaido before that, in the next couple years, she said — but her current dream goals are to go into the U.S. Navy reserves, go to college for art and English degrees, and eventually teach creative writing.

“I’d love to teach at an alternative school like Burchell,” she said. “This is a really good environment for everyone.”

But Auto might not have had such dreams, if not for her school. Before she came to Burchell, she said, her attitude toward education was much different.

“I didn’t get good grades, I didn’t go to my classes, I didn’t do anything,” she said. “Then I came here and it’s like, ‘wow, I like learning.’”

Now, she said she jumps at the opportunity to achieve, and encourages others to do the same.

“I think if you have the chance to do something like what I did, like go with a group and go somewhere, even if you’re reluctant about it, do it,” she said.

As for what one learns on such a trip, perhaps it is the intangible the makes the greatest impact on a person.

“These memories / Of us laughing and being scared together / Will always remain,” Auto wrote.

For more information about the Student Diplomacy Corps, visit sdcorps.org.

Contact Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.