A summer trip to Japan gave two Carrollwood Day School teachers more than photographs and souvenirs. It gave them new ways to think about creativity, community and the value of being comfortable with the unfamiliar.
For Ashley Veselis, a middle school visual arts teacher, that discomfort arrived during her first visit to an art classroom at Kansai International Academy in Kobe. She began asking the teacher questions, only to realize he spoke only Japanese.
Veselis sat down and observed. By the end of the week, what initially felt unfamiliar had begun to look recognizable.
“We both follow the IB curriculum,” Veselis said. Even without understanding every word, she recognized classroom practices and expectations much like her own.
Kansai is a bilingual school where half the classes are taught in Japanese and half in English. Students might leave an English-language math class and enter an art class taught entirely in Japanese, switching languages and addressing the teacher as “sensei.”
The secondary students generally remain in one homeroom while teachers move between classrooms. They leave for classes such as art, music and physical education or to conduct experiments in a science laboratory.
There were other adjustments. Each morning, students, teachers and administrators changed from outdoor footwear into indoor “school shoes,” storing their other shoes in cubbies. At a group dinner, Veselis instinctively moved to put her arms around the others for a photograph, then realized her Japanese hosts did not greet one another with the same casual physical contact.
Veselis traveled with Amy Callahan, Carrollwood Day School’s middle school music teacher and Veselis’ department head and mentor. The two applied for a Round Square faculty exchange in the summer of 2025 and later learned they had been selected.
They spent six weeks in Japan beginning around Memorial Day. Their first week was at Kansai, where they observed classes, met educators and presented to faculty. After three weeks of independent travel, they completed two weeks of professional development through Montserrat College of Art, studying calligraphy, fabric art, manga and mokuhanga woodblock printing.
Veselis also chronicled the experience in a Carrollwood Day School blog post titled “Faculty Exchange Brings Global Learning to Carrollwood Day School: Reflections on My Summer in Japan.”
Inside Kansai’s arts classrooms, Veselis was struck by the patience students showed themselves and one another. During a theater exercise, students had to improvise a scene in English, with each line beginning with the next letter of the alphabet. When someone struggled, classmates waited without ridicule and offered suggestions when the teacher invited them to help.
In art class, Veselis watched a student repeatedly back up a video tutorial and try a drawing again.
That persistence is something she wants to strengthen in her own classroom. Veselis wants students to replace “This is hard. I don’t want to do this” with “This is hard. I know I can do this. I just need to keep going.”
Callahan found her expectations shifting, too. Although she anticipated connecting primarily with Japanese music educators, her secondary-school counterpart was from Brazil and an elementary music teacher was from Ghana. Students were learning traditional Japanese instruments, but the teachers discussing the music came from several cultural backgrounds.
“I really had more of a world music connection,” Callahan said. “It was a unique experience that was very multicultural.”
Callahan also noticed that the students were expected to consider how their behavior affected those around them. She watched seventh-graders independently use a band saw while carefully following every safety rule. In music and other classes, students listened quietly without the frequent side conversations she sometimes sees among American middle schoolers.
“It’s community first versus individual first,” Callahan said.
She did not view one classroom culture as entirely better than the other. While the Japanese students appeared more mindful of the group, Callahan said their reserved nature sometimes made their individuality more difficult to see. Carrollwood students, by comparison, readily display creativity and outgoing personalities but are still learning how to express themselves without disrupting others.
The emphasis on community extended beyond the school. Veselis and Callahan saw young children walk long distances and navigate crowded trains without adults. When the teachers became lost or confused during their travels, strangers often did more than point them in the right direction.
“They literally went out of their way to walk us somewhere, make sure we got there, make sure that we knew what we were doing next,” Callahan said.
Both teachers returned to Carrollwood thinking about how independence, consideration and persistence work together. Callahan now compares music practice with athletics: Students who attend soccer practice several times a week can also find 15 minutes to practice an instrument four days a week.
“It’s about consistency,” she said.
For Veselis, persistence remains a choice students must make.
“You can do it,” she said, “but it is a choice you have to make.”