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2012 J-LEAP REPORTJANUARY, 2013: BREEZE ISSUE #63
A FREE MONTHLY E-NEWSLETTER FOR FRIENDS OF JAPAN & TEACHERS OF JAPANESEMINAKO KADOI
Greenway High School & Washington High School
Phoenix, AZ
When you think of Arizona, what comes to your mind? For
me it would be the sun, the desert, and cactus. When I
arrived in Phoenix, I was just surprised at how unique thisplace was. You will notice that the entire city looks like a
big desert because almost every building is tan coloredand you can see cactus everywhere. Since this was myfirst time seeing a real live cactus in its naturalenvironment, CACTUS became my acronym of living in mynew home:
Communicating
Assisting
CooperatingThanking
Understanding andSmiling
These words describe my experience in team teaching as well as living abroad.
My name is Minako Kadoi, and I am a Japanese language teaching assistant with Olson Sensei at two highschools, Greenway High School (GW) and Washington High School (WHS) in Phoenix, Arizona. We have
five classes per day with about 140 students and we teach Japanese 1-2 and 3-4 at GW in the morning andtravel to WHS for afternoon classes: two classes of Japanese 1-2 and a combined class of Japanese 3-4,5-6, and 7-8.
The uniqueness of our district requires that all the students who are enrolled in any foreign language
courses take Performance Based Assessment (PBA) at the end of the year. Students who are taking
Japanese 1-2 and 3-4 are focused on improving speaking skills while those taking Japanese 5-6 & 7-8 arelearning Japanese with an emphasis on writing skills. Besides improving the four skills of Japanese andcultivating a broad view of culture and lifestyle, we encourage our students to seek their passion throughPrivacy - Terms

learning Japanese and/or about Japan. Therefore, we provide our students with various chances toexperience Japanese culture such as introducing pen pals, cooking Japanese cuisine, visiting Japanesegardens, going to Matsuri, and traveling to Japan.
Our current project is to implement Graded readers into classroom activities. Although we are still working
on improving materials, it is great to see how much our students are enjoying reading books. We justfinished reading 「絵姿奥さん」. At first I was very worried about using this book since this story requireda certain cultural and historical background to comprehend it. However, it was these elements thatstudents loved the most. To give you an example: We discussed what kind of clothing or hairstyles people
wore at that time. Our next book will be 「桃太郎」! I would like to implement Reader’s Theater with thisbook. I hope our students like it just as much as 「絵姿奥さん」.
Finally, I must say that I am very fortunate to be working with Olson Sensei, who is very passionate about
Education and Japan. She sees me as a teacher and gives me many opportunities to teach with her,participate in professional development workshops and school events. I was a chaperone at Homecoming,
a competitor in a speed-eating competition at an assembly, and an adviser at a school camp. I appreciatethese opportunities because I have the chance to see other students outside of Japanese classes in order
to introduce the beautiful and unique features of Japan to them! I am a novice Japanese teacher and needto gain more knowledge and experience to identify how students learn Japanese as a foreign language
and understand what they struggle with when learning Japanese. Olson Sensei shows me a lot of hertechniques to teach and build rapport with our students. The most basic and powerful way to makestudents enjoy our class is to show our passion and curiosity in what we are interested in. Therefore, wealways welcome our students to class with a big smiles!

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Breeze #64

2012 JET-MIP Report 7/8

2012 J-LEAP Report: Chieko Yamada

2012 J-LEAP Report: Minako Kadoi

2012 JET-MIP Essay: Maylin Chong2012 JET-MIP Essay: Rebecca Lee

2012 JET-MIP Essay: Ruby Cabuya

2012 JET-MIP Essay: Sam Gamble

Breeze #63

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