It seems that we had no sooner put away our programs from ACTFL and settled in for a little year-end relaxation than plans for the ATJ seminar at the AAS annual meeting had to be finalized. This year’s ATJ seminar is to be held Thursday, March 4, at the Town and Country Resort and Convention Center in San Diego. The official conference website can be found at http://www.japaneseteaching.org/ATJseminar/2004/. We encourage you to also attend the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) conference, which will take place at the same venue March 4-7. You can register for the AAS at the organization’s website.
I played a small part in reading proposals for papers and can attest to the quantity and quality of submissions again this year. We thank the Seminar Committee for the time and effort they dedicated to preparing what looks like a superb agenda. I hope to see many of you at this, our largest event of the year. The keynote address will be by Prof. Susumu Kuno of Harvard University—we all look forward to hearing remarks from the founder of Japanese theoretical linguistics in the U.S.
The ATJ will again have a booth in the AAS exhibit hall (#194). Many of you stopped by last year, and we welcome all of you to say hello, pick up a copy of the Newsletter, renew memberships, ask for directions, track down other members, etc.
The ATJ now boasts five Special Interest Groups (SIG’s), all of which are scheduled to meet in San Diego: Professional Development, Classical, Study Abroad for Advanced Skills, Heritage, and Community College. If you want more information about a particular SIG or want to contact the SIG leader, please check the ATJ web page (www.colorado.edu/ealld/atj/) or email the ATJ office.
The annual membership meeting will be held, as is customary, at 1:00 on Saturday—this year in Pacific Salon 1. The results of the ATJ election will be announced at that meeting. There is still time to vote—you have until Feb. 20 to mail your ballot.
We are also very pleased to welcome Prof. Kazumi Tanaka, the President of the Japanese Teachers Association of Europe, who has agreed to give a short address to the membership on Saturday. This is the first time that a representative from the JTE has attended the ATJ seminar. We hope that this is just the first of a long series of exchanges. Please come and join me in welcoming Prof. Tanaka to our meeting.
Patricia J. Wetzel
From the President-Elect
ちょっとおそいですが、まずは、
申年の新春、おめでとうございます。
おたがいに古きを忘れて新し
いことを新しい年にやりましょ
冬ながら空より花の散り
くるは雲のあなたは春に
やあらむ （古今集：清原深養父）
still winter lingers
but from the heavens fall these
blossoms of purest
white it seems that spring must wait
on the far side of those clouds
(Kokinshu: Kiyohara no Fukayabu
[trans. Rodd ])
First let me thank you for giving me the unique opportunity to serve you and lead the ATJ with two other officers at the most important juncture of Japanese education in the U.S. I am committed to make our organization an influential one that can actively change the course and content of Japanese (and hopefully, other) language education in the world by promoting and accommodating basic research in literature, linguistics, applied linguistics (especially second language acquisition theory), and socio-cultural studies, and also to connect ourselves with K-16 (Kindergarten through college) levels of Japanese education and with Japanese education in the world.
I would like to remind you that since last March when I was elected the ATJ President-Elect, the ATJ started a fully triumvirate system at the Officers' level. We have now three officers, that is, President, President-Elect and Past President. The three of us have been directly or indirectly (electronically, that is) contacting and cooperating very closely with each other. I will become the President on March 6 when the Board Meeting is held during the AAS/ATJ Meeting in San Diego. The current President, Patricia Wetzel, will be the Past President, Professor Laurel Rodd, who served as the President since 1996, will finish her tenure as the President, and a new President-Elect will join us.
It is my great pleasure to briefly touch upon the rich legacy which Professor Rodd will leave behind her. I have been personally amazed at her single-minded and intelligent devotion to our profession, in spite of the fact that her field is classical Japanese literature. (No bias intended!) Her major contributions included synthesis of Japanese education from K-16. She has been instrumental in creating the Alliance of Associations of Teachers of Japanese, developing Summer Institutes for non-native-speaking teachers, in the effort to apply the National Standards in classrooms, and in the publication of Japanese-specific National Standards and a Framework for Post-Basic Japanese Language Curricula (Draft). She made it possible to connect ATJ and NCJLT (National Council of Japanese Language Teachers) by creating the Alliance, whose Executive Director Susan Schmidt has been instrumental in fund-raising for the Bridging Project for study of Japanese in Japan and for professional development for current teachers of Japanese. She has also been making great efforts to make our profession visible in organizations such as the Joint National Committee for Languages (JNCL) and the National Council for Languages and International Studies (NCLIS), and NCOLCTL (National Council Of Less Commonly Taught Languages). We thank you very much, Laurel! We still need her help as an experienced former President in what I think is one of the two most important agenda items for our profession, that is, funding for the Japanese Advanced Placement (AP) program, which the College Board decided to add last December, along with Mandarin Chinese, Russian, and Italian. (See the Dec. 6, 2003, issue of the New York Times.) The other agenda item is the one Prof. Yasu-hiko Tohsaku has been working so hard on, that is, producing high quality pre-college teachers who will go through National Board Certification process based on the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS). We will make our utmost corroborative efforts for the ultimate success of these two projects.
I thank you in advance very much for responding to our survey, which we will carefully read and discuss at the coming March Board Meeting to improve our organization and its activities.
One more important matter: Please take a look at this Newsletter's announcement of the schedules of exciting sessions at the ATJ/AAS Meeting and come and join us!!
それではサンディエゴ
ATJ大会で会いしましょう。お元気で！牧野 成一 (ATJ 次期会長）
Seiichi Makino