The Alliance of Associations of Teachers of Japanese is pleased to announce a six-week language and pedagogy institute for non-native-speaking K-12 teachers of Japanese. Funding from the United States-Japan Foundation will allow the Alliance to award fellowships to ten teachers for this exciting program.
Participants will receive five weeks (June 8-July 11, 2001) of language instruction at the renowned Middlebury College Summer Language School, whose immersion environment and language pledge requirement ensure that students learn the greatest possible amount in a short time. The sixth week of the institute (July 12-18, 2001) will be a seminar especially designed for teachers, centering on topics related to the new teacher standards that are being developed by the National Board for Professional Teacher Standards (NBPTS). Experts in standards-based classroom practice and classroom use of technology, materials and portfolio development, and advocacy for foreign language instruction at the K-12 level will conduct the pedagogy portion of the institute. Teacher-participants will also have opportunities to observe Language School classes at various levels and to work on portfolios toward eventual NBPTS certification. Middlebury will award transferable credits both for language study and for the pedagogy training portion of the institute. Fellowships will cover tuition, housing and meals at Middlebury, round-trip transportation to the program, fees for Language School entry and exit tests, and the costs of materials.
Priority will be given to applicants who meet the following criteria:
Each accepted participant will be asked to contribute $500 toward the cost of the program, to be raised from his/her school district or by other means. Participants will also be expected to share what they learn in the program with other teachers during the year following the institute, by publishing reports, presenting at local or regional conferences, or in other ways.
Participants may choose to attend (at their own expense) a four-day ACTFL OPI training institute that will take place at Middlebury July 19-22, 2001, just after the Institute ends. For more information, see the ACTFL web site at www.actfl.org.
Institute application forms and information may be downloaded here as an html or pdf file or requested by mail, fax, or e-mail from the Alliance office. Applications must be postmarked by January 12, 2001. Recipients will be notified on February 25, 2001.
Applications will be evaluated by members of the Institute's Advisory Committee: Laurel Rasplica Rodd (University of Colorado at Boulder), Chair; Hiroko Kataoka (California State University at Long Beach), Pedagogy Institute Director; Ryuko Kubota (University of North Carolina); Jennifer Pedersen (Omaha Public Schools); Patricia Thornton (University of Minnesota College of Education); and Masakazu Watabe (Brigham Young University, former director of the Middlebury Japanese Language School).
In addition to this form, please complete the official application for admission to the Middlebury College Language Schools, which can be downloaded here in PDF format. To download the Language School's application forms you will need Adobe's Acrobat
Reader which may be downloaded free of charge from the Adobe Web site. Once you have downloaded and saved the application form you will need to print the
form. Select File/Print and "Shrink to Fit" to ensure that your printer will include the entire
document. Some items on the Middlebury application duplicate information requested on this Institute application; you need fill out only those sections on the Language Schools application that are marked with an asterisk. Mail the form to:
Japanese Language School
Middlebury College
Middlebury, VT 05753-6002