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JLEU40MARCH, 2017: BREEZE ISSUE #113
A FREE MONTHLY E-NEWSLETTER FOR FRIENDS OF JAPAN & TEACHERS OFJAPANESE

JAPANESE LANGUAGE EDUCATION UPDATE 40:
CLTA ADVOCACY WORKSHOP REPORTby Amanda Rollins, Japanese Language Program Coordinator
17 Japanese teachers from all over California came together last month to talk about Japanese
language program advocacy at a workshop titled, “Your Principal/Dean Will Adore You and YourJapanese Program.” The workshop was held during the California Language Teachers’
Association (CLTA) Annual Conference 2017 in Monterey, CA. Some of the workshopparticipants had never attended CLTA’s conference before, and their registration was financially
supported through a JFLA Project Grant administered by the California Association of Japanese
Language Teachers (CAJLT).
The two workshop presenters, Amanda Rollins(JFLA) and Nick Sturtevant (Silver Creek HighSchool), asked the participants to list theactivities they are currently doing to get theirprincipal or dean to love their program. Hereare just some of the answers:
School-wide Little Tokyo trip with History class
My high school students teach about Japan inelementary schools
Japanese Game Show
Karaoke FestivalInvite parents as a guest
Giving chocolate to admin, secretaries, etc on Valentine’s Day“J-ART”: Japanese students display Japan-related art at a community exhibition
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These are all excellent ways to spread awareness about a Japanese language program! For
more examples of advocacy, visit Real Advocacy Stories.
ACTFL Teacher of the Year (2012) Yo Azama
stopped by the workshop as a guest speakerto talk about successful examples of his
program advocacy. He urged the participants
to invite their principal or dean to every eventin order to give them a chance to proudly show
off their school’s Japanese program via socialmedia. He also addressed participants’concerns about burning out, and how starting aparent committee or delegating tasks tostudents can be a way to take pressure off theteacher.
CLTA Outstanding Teacher of the Year (2016) Tomokazu Morikawa also dropped by to discuss
how his program advocacy uses word-of-mouth as a powerful attraction. If the students arehaving fun and learning important life lessons in class, Morikawa said, they will tell their
younger siblings and friends. He encouraged the participants to continue attend teacher
conferences and grow as professionals.
For advocacy to be effective, it needs to have a clear objective and audience. Every participant
wrote an Action Plan to visualize a 5-year plan and break it down into smaller goals.
For example, one participant wanted toaddress an interesting challenge at her school:
heritage Japanese students are being
incorrectly placed into lower-level Japaneseclasses because students, parents, and school
counselors do not fully understand thedisadvantages of such placement. She decidedto create a “parent advocacy committee” tohelp her write an informative brochure which
will spread awareness about theconsequences of trying to get an “easy A.”
Another participant is facing a different
challenge: she has to travel between two schools every day, so she doesn’t have many
opportunities to spend much time planning and implementing student recruitment activities.
She shared her idea of creating a recruitment video for incoming new students, and thepresenters were happy to show her two examples available at Real Advocacy Stories. Her
action plan included asking a tech-savvy student to create a similar video for extra credit.
By being excellent Japanese teachers and by telling the world about it, we can ensure robust
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and popular programs at our schools. Let’s keep up the good work, teachers!

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