()
Yokosuka Navy Base, Japan Recently over 60 fifth grade students from Ikego Elementary School (IES) under Commander, Fleet Activities, Yokosuka, and (CFAY) visited Seragi Elderly Home in Ikego., Japan. This year marks the third trip in what has become an annual visit at IES, a traditional visit that is looked forward to each year by students of IES doing the visiting as well as the elderly residents of Seragi.
The visit occurred before the Christmas break for IES students on December 18, 2015. According to Shannon Marchetti, IES 5th grade teacher, the students sang Christmas carols as well as two Japanese songs they had studied in preparation for their visit. Marchetti remarked, “The visit to Seragi Nursing Home is a very memorable field trip for our students. Many of us have come to know how lonely residents of nursing homes can feel and how sometimes the smallest acts of kindness can make the biggest difference in someone’s day.”
Marchetti also stated the elderly residents joined in singing with the students on the classic and familiar “Silent Night.” One of the IES students in Marchetti’s 5th grade class, Tiga Martin, said of his experience, “It makes me feel good to know I did something nice. When one of the residents starting crying as we sang Silent Night, it made me tear up as well.”
The first organized schools for the children of U.S. military personnel serving in the Pacific were established in 1946 during post-World War II reconstruction. Throughout the decades, Dodd schools evolved to become a comprehensive and high-performing K-12 school system solely dedicated to educating the children of America's heroes. Today, DoDEA Pacific's 48schools serve nearly 23,000 military-connected children of U.S. Service members and civilian support personnel stationed throughout the Pacific theater. The DoDEA Pacific teaching, administrative and school support team includes more than 3,000 full-time professionals. The schools are geographically organized into four districts: Guam, Japan, Okinawa and South Korea. The Ikego Elementary School is one of the schools in the Yokosuka Complex of Schools in CFAY which include Nile C. Kinnick High School, Yokosuka Middle School, The Sullivans School and Ikego Elementary School.
