The VOICE of WAFLT
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Wisconsin Association of Teachers of Japanese President Magara Maeda UW-River Falls (715) 425-3121 magara.maeda@uwrf.edu
President Ex-officio Takako Nakakubo UW-Madison (608) 262-3473 tnakakubo@wisc.edu
President-Elect Patricia Breun Madison Country Day School pbreun@madisoncountryday.org
Secretary/Web Page Editor Shinji Takahashi UW-Milwaukee (414) 229-5650 takahash@uwm.edu
Activities Director Yuko Kojima-Wert UW-Milwaukee (414) 229-5650 kojima@uwm.edu
Treasurer Yu Kitamura Wisconsin Virtual School Kitamurayu2017@gmail.com
Membership Information: aatj.org/membership WiATJ website: wisconsinatj.wordpress.com WiATJ Facebook: facebook.com/wiatj
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e hope that everyone is having a great spring semester!
WAFLT Fall Conference 2022 The WAFLT Fall Conference will be held on November 3-5 this year. WiATJ is hosting a Share Fair during the conference. Please let the WiATJ president know if you are interested in presenting/sharing for the Share Fair. The WiATJ Business Meeting is scheduled immediately after the Share Fair (date/time is TBA). Please join us to connect, reconnect with fellow Japanese teachers and anyone who is interested in Japanese language education. Everyone is welcome! News Across Wisconsin Three Wisconsin high schools participated in the 2022 Virtual MN J-Quiz on February 12, 2022. This was the first time for these schools to join the Minnesota competition and we look forward to collaborating with the Minnesota Japanese language educators/J-Quiz organizing committee in the near future.
Members Activities Update Publication With leadership from Lauren Rosen, Magara Maeda, along with her Collaborative Language Program colleagues, contributed to a chapter in the book called “Handbook of Research on Effective Online Language Teaching in a Disruptive Environment.” The chapter title is “How Reflective Practice Informs Blended and Online Language Instruction.” For more information, please visit this link. 2022 Advanced Leadership Training C WiATJ president and vice president, Maeda sensei and Patty sensei, participated in the 2022 AATJ/JFLA Virtual Advanced Leadership Training. They are currently working on an action plan to empower/enrich the WiATJ community. C This is the first Advanced Leadership Training that is organized by the American Association of Teachers of Japanese (AATJ) and the Japan Foundation, Los Angeles (JFLA) involves a series of 2-day virtual
workshops: (1) November 6-7, 2021; (2) February 2022 (mid-term reporting of an action plan); and (3) July 2022 (final reporting of the action plan). Since 2008, AATJ/JFLA has conducted an annual Leadership Training in order to prepare teachers who advocate at the regional, state, and national levels for Japanese Language and Culture education. Due to the pandemic, leadership training has been offered virtually since 2020. For this first Advanced Leadership Training, selected individuals who, over the past five years, have either participated in the previous trainings or have been J-Leap program lead teachers were invited. The goal of the Advanced Leadership Training is two- fold—to enable participants to deepen and extend their work with fellow world language teachers and to foster a high level of leadership among leaders of Japanese language education in the U.S.
