Membership Meeting Notes
ATJ's annual general membership meeting was held in Chicago on Saturday, March 24. The approximately 150 members in attendance heard reports on the Association's activities for the past year, witnessed the counting of ballots to elect five new members of the Board, and were awarded dozens of door prizes donated by publishers and other organizations. In a special report, Joan Ericson, a retiring member of the Board and professor at Colorado College, described her work as guest editor of a special issue of Education About Asia, a magazine published by the Association for Asian Studies that targets classroom teachers. The magazine focuses on the classroom teaching of Asian culture, history, and languages at all levels of instruction, and often contains materials that can be directly used by teachers as well as advice and information on resources. The special issue on teaching Asian literature which Joan is editing will be published later this year. Several thousand copies will be available for distribution to classroom teachers (courtesy of a grant from the US-Japan Foundation). Teachers who are interested in obtaining a copy of the magazine or in subscribing should contact the AAS at www.aasianst.org.
ATJ thanks the generous donors of door prizes for the annual meeting: Bess Press, Japan Book Center, The Japan Forum, JP Trading, Kodansha International, Kinokuniya Bookstores, Kuroshio Publishers, and Stone Bridge Press.
2001 Seminar in Chicago
ATJ's annual Seminar, held in Chicago on March 22, was a resounding success. A record number of presenters discussed, demonstrated, and disseminated their work to more than two hundred attendees. A full day of concurrent sessions on pedagogy, literature, linguistics, and second language acquisition ended with a plenary session at which Thomas Rimer of the University of Pittsburgh spoke on "The Marriage of True Minds Reflections on Teaching Japanese Language and Literature." Summaries of many of the presentations are collected in this issue of the newsletter. In addition, the full texts of the two panels organized around special themes "Japanese as a Heritage Language" and "Teaching Japanese in the Internet Era" will be posted here on the ATJ website. Please check here.
Free Subscription to Classroom Materials Newsletter
The Japanese Language Teachers Network (JLTN) Quarterly, which had been published since 1985 by the University of Illinois's Center for the Improvement of the Teaching of Japanese (CITJ), is now being published by the Alliance of Associations of Teachers of Japanese (AATJ). A free subscription to this publication is being offered to ATJ members. For the past five years, the Quarterly has offered "shareware" classroom materials which teachers are free to copy and use in their classrooms. Most of the materials are designed for use in high-school-level classes, but they are easily adjusted for lower or higher levels as well. They feature cultural content as well as language, with units on subjects ranging from sumo wrestling to shopping in Japanese department stores. Many units also offer practice for American students learning to explain their own culture in Japanese. All of the units are classroom-tested before publication. Teachers who have been subscribers to the Quarterly will continue to receive it. Other ATJ members can request to be placed on the subscription list by sending an e-mail message to atj@colorado.edu. Sample issues can also be requested. The February features self-introductions and making presentations on the school day. If you are not already a subscriber, take advantage of this new, free resource!
Textbook Discussion Board
An on-line resource for teachers has been developed by the Alliance of Associations of Teachers of Japanese. The Japanese Textbook Discussion Board at www.japaneseteaching.org/projects/textbook/index.htm is designed to provide information on Japanese language textbooks that are available for K-16 classrooms and a forum in which teachers can comment on the books and share information on how they use them. This site consists of six different sections: Home, List, How, Distributors, Links, and History. Home is the home page of the site, and How is a guidance page for sending comments on textbooks. The List page is where approximately 35 different textbooks are listed in four different levels (Elementary, Secondary, University/College and General/Adults). The title, author, target level, publisher, and year of publication are given for each textbook, along with a brief description of the book. In most cases, prices of the textbooks, workbooks and/or tapes/CDs are listed, as well as the number of pages. There is a list of more than 40 publishers and distributors on the Distributors page; most of them have web addresses. On the Links page, there are currently six links, including ones to the Japan Foundation and the Association of Teachers of Japanese. The History page shows when and what features have been changed or added to this site. Keiko Schneider set up and is maintaining the site for the Alliance. Please visit the site and share your comments and questions with other teachers.
Endowment Contributions
The Association is grateful to the following members for their recent contributions to the Endowment: Midori S. Burton, Mari Noda, Lawrence Rogers, Cheryl Rodd, Hiroko Sherry, Particia Thornton, and Ikuko Yoshida. The Endowment fund will be invested and used to ensure that the Association can continue to serve members of the Japanese education community. Thanks for your support!