The Japanese Program at SJS

In the little over a year I have been here, I have not only had the opportunity to work at a school and with a staff that actually takes pride in the Japanese language, but with Mueller sensei, the most devoted, energetic, creative, and supportive boss I have worked with.  As I tell my SJS students, I have taught and learned from no better group of students. I have never been more proud, of not only our accomplishments as a community, but the support shown toward the Japanese language program. I have never been more proud than in seeing our Japanese program grow by leaps and bounds and get recognized statewide and nationally for our successes.

With this in mind, in my first year, we had a Japanese program staff of myself, two interns, and Ross sensei—we had five native or near-native Japanese speakers on our general staff.  In 2009/2010, students had 50 minutes a day of Japanese (total of 250 minutes a week).  Thinking about other schools who have marginalized Japanese/foreign language, I think this is a major accomplishment in itself.  We not only have all of our students taking and experiencing the Japanese language, in classes, they are leveled by proficiency-level (5 proficiency-levels total) rather than grade level.  Last year, we even had one class which had students from 5th through 12th grade.  Our program was remarkably strong considering the loss of so many Japanese programs around the state.

Having a “strong” program is not strong enough.  Over the summer and during the end of last year, we discussed how to further strengthen our Japanese program and better serve the students. Here are some changes we have implemented and accomplishments:

We added second hour of Japanese class a day for everyone (except 4th/5th grade).  The second hour of Japanese provides the students with an unprecedented opportunity to practice conversation and reading/writing, engage in project-based and experiential learning, and delve more deeply into the Japanese language.

With cooperation from the staff, we created an 8-year Japanese curriculum in which students are taken from zero-Japanese all the way to advanced/AP Japanese.  In order to do this and ensure smaller class-sizes, we added 5 levels of Japanese to this curriculum, including our first-ever dedicated AP Japanese class.

We have recruited four amazing interns/TA’s (Ben Brown, Mariko Tanaka, Maiko Ogura, and Casey Staac) and two teachers (myself and Ross-sensei.), bring our total number of Japanese speakers on staff to an amazing eight people.

We have established the first chapter of the Junior Japanese National Honor Society in the nation and have a amazingly strong high-school chapter.
100% of our Japanese program staff and Mueller-sensei are members of the ATJO (Association of Teachers of Japanese in Oregon), the NCJLT (National Council of Japanese Language Teachers), and COFLT (Confederation in Oregon for Language Teaching), while I serve on all three boards of directors and Ben Brown serves on that of COFLT.

In order to support this expanded Japanese staff, SJS applied successfully for a two-year renewable assistance grant from the Japan Foundation Los Angeles, for a total of $60000 plus $2000 worth of materials.  We have successfully received two more grants, one as a research grant from the Aurora Foundation for $3,000 and one from the Kaneko Foundation for International Research and Education for $1,500 to support our Japanese program.

Finally, with the support of the entire staff and volunteers, this August, we help the first-ever Aozora Gakkou Japanese Immersion Camp at school.  Fifty-one students (4th-12th grade) from SJS, the local community and from up to one-hundred miles away, experienced over 21 hours of intensive language classes, not to mention a myriad of activities ranging from mochi-making to manga-drawing, as well two field trips. This is Oregon’s first public, non-profit, all Japanese/grade-level immersion camp.  In doing this camp, we set out to first and foremost provide our students with a huge opportunity to improve their Japanese and experience the Japanese culture first-hand and have fun doing it.  Second, we wanted to work in building up positive relations with our local communities and networking schools with Japanese programs, as well as advocate for outside students who may not have much of a chance to experience the Japanese language and culture.  In its success, we have had articles in newpapers as local as The Sun, and as far away as the Oshirase Journal National Council of Japanese Language Teachers, as well as a workshop I will lead at the 2010 bi-state language conference in Washington.

With all that we as a Japanese and SJS staff, SJS board, students, and parents, have accomplished in a year, one would think that we could relax a little bit.  Nope.  As our students do, our Japanese program has unlimited potential, potential that we do not simply want to reach, but to surpass. We may have to be creative and work harder than some to achieve our goals, we have three things on our side: determination, pride in our SJS community, and imagination.  In conclusion, While we are still known by a few as the “JP” or “Japan Program”, we are now known across the state and nation as the Sheridan Japanese School, a true innovator and leader in education and an important advocate for Japanese language and culture education.