Karen Christiansen graduated from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta with a degree in French and very few specific plans of what to do with it. Her husband's teaching career soon took them both to a remote First Nations community in northern Alberta, where she suddenly became a teacher aide. A few transfers later, and after jobs such as teaching basic literacy to adults and teaching ESL to Lebanese immigrants, Japan came "calling". The sister town in Hokkaido was interested in an AET. Was there an English teacher interested in the opportunity? Karen, her husband and two pre-school children answered the call. They stayed they for four years, with Karen working as an AET, librarian, cooking teacher, crafts teacher, ...
Four years later, arriving in the small town of Creston, British Columbia ... how to find a job? There were already French teachers in place in the town's one high school. There was no ESL program, and apparently no need for one. The town had a sister town in Japan, but no Japanese class operating in the high school. Could that be a job opportunity? Could it benefit the students and the town as well?
In a school with no intention of offering of Japanese program, with a principal who had little knowledge of Japan or Japanese, Karen managed to gsellh the idea of offering a Japanese language instruction. It's not that anybody had anything against it; somebody just needed to propose the idea, show some ideas of how it could be done, convince the principal that it could be viable, recruit enough students for the first class (about 30), make sure the district administration created the position, APPLY for the position, HOPE to get hired, run the class in such a way that it required no special budget (because there isn't one) and then make sure the students are successful. No problem!
The presenter will share her experiences of convincing a secondary school administration in a small, western Canada town to include 3 levels of Japanese language in their course offerings. Pluses were a long-standing sister-city relationship with a Japanese town, an already- established Japanese friendship society, a "Japan-friendly" town administration. Minuses were zero funding, lack of support from other members of the languages department at the school, declining enrollment, school district with a large deficit, no Japanese language courses anywhere else in the school district.
Karen sensei's paper can be downloaded at http://christiansens.ca/karen/benkyoukai/start_from_scratch.doc or http://christiansens.ca/karen/benkyoukai/start_from_scratch.sxw
So read the paper above and go to TAPPED IN. There, you will be able to discuss this topic with Karen sensei and others from around the world. TAPPED IN is open to everybody and the presentation will be done in English.
This event is open to anybody who is interested in the topic. It will be at After School Online Room at http://ti2.sri.com
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