In the fall of 1993, I took over as the Japanese language teacher at Silver Creek High School in San Jose, California. Between then and when I left at the end of the spring semester of 2001, the program grew from sixty-four students to well over two hundred, with a standalone fourth-year class and almost a hundred and fifty sign-ups for Japanese 1 for the fall of last year. This paper covers several components that I feel contributed to the success of the program and which may guide the thinking of other teachers who are seeking to bring a less-commonly taught language to more students.

Point of Departure

An inviting and challenging educational environment is a product of a myriad of tangible and intangible factors, over many of which a teacher has absolutely no control. Many teachers, however, fail to work with available opportunities, limiting both student interest in the program and the fun that comes from adding the unusual to one's professional experience.

The first of these is something language teachers ask of their students: try what you can and see what works. Essentially, a teacher has to be willing to try a project and learn from it whether it succeeds or flops.

Activities Outside of the Classroom

Thinking back to our own high school experiences, we tend to remember not the day-to-day lessons of a given class, but the activities that sprang forth from a dedicated teacher's energy. Students appreciate a teacher who goes to the trouble of providing something unusual, even if very few students choose to participate. Simply knowing that a teacher put something together for the student and his or her classmates is of value. A sampling of activities of the Silver Creek Japanese Program follows.

The Japanese Language Cheering Section for the Homecoming Game

A week before each fall's homecoming football game, I would announce that we would be meeting to make banners at lunch and after school. I would gather pieces of butcher paper and markers, and students would write and draw whatever they wished (within reason). This included messages one might expect, such as "Go Raiders!" and "Let's win!". As it was Japanese and no one else would be able to read it anyway, students also wrote such things as, "Where's the bathroom?", "You look like a goat," and "I'll bet you can't read this." They thought this was funny, and the exercise prompted students who normally could not be bothered to turn in homework to come to me asking for such important terms as "goat".

During the game, we also chanted the days of the week and engaged in a round of banzais following touchdowns. Sometimes one student would yell out such stock beginning level material as "Is this a dictionary?", answered by the entire group shouting, "No, it's not a dictionary, it's a textbook!" This would be followed by wild cheering from everyone in the group, which impressed the other fans mightily, even though they had not understood what we said.

One of my colleagues thought this was a rather colossal waste of time. However, it is an essential piece of the success we had, not because it was a great language lesson, but because it was an activity that helped build group consciousness. Put simply, when students feel like they belong to something, they will take more of an interest in what the associated teacher is trying to teach them.

Sushi Day

Each fall we did a fundraiser to subsidize such things as Sushi Day. I would order up several plates of rolled sushi from a local Japanese restaurant, a teacher with a free period before lunch would pick them up, and students would line up at the door at lunchtime to get their two or three pieces free each time they went through the line. This was a fairly simple activity, but still served the function of allowing students to tell each other about something we were doing in the program. It does not take many of such moments before students start saying, "I want to be in that class!"

T-Shirts

We would also have a contest in which students submitted designs for the year's t-shirt. On a given day, students would vote, and the student with the winning design would get a free shirt. We made a point of getting colorful, high quality shirts, as these turned out to be valuable PR devices in addition to adding to that all-important sense of belonging to something special.

Hosting and Being Hosted

We eventually managed to develop a relationship with a school in Okayama (San Jose's sister city). Through this connection our students would host a group of their students each March and they would provide homestays for a group from my program that would go to Japan during spring break. Getting approval for, organizing, and leading a group overseas is obviously a far more complex endeavor than ordering sushi, and I had to start months in advance to get all the pieces in place.

There was probably no better activity for getting students interested in their language learning than bringing native speakers to the school to spend time with our students. The stories and reports of those who made the trip to Japan also made for good classroom discussions and good stories in the school newspaper. I will return to the value of getting one's program's story told later.

Pace of Instruction

Fun activities are wonderful experiences, but they cannot create success if the students do not feel they are truly learning something. A critical element of earning students' respect is moving at a pace that requires them to pay attention to what is happening in class. I was told by some that going faster would lessen the number of students interested in Japanese, but I believe that the challenge actually attracted students.

Essentially, when a course moves slowly, students do not feel they need to study for it outside of class because they know they can do well enough by just showing up and paying minimal attention. When the pace requires them to do work at home, however, they realize that their the good grades they earn truly mean something. Teenagers are much smarter than many teachers assume, and they know how to manipulate the adults in the front of their classes. Not letting a student get away with moves to slow things down or lessen work produces whining, but it also produces respect.

A challenging pace also must be complemented with the students' belief that the teacher truly is doing everything she or he can to help the students. Good teachers make themselves available to their students and encourage (and sometimes require) them to come by for one-to-one help. It is also important to let even students who are acting badly know that you care that they succeed and are open to ideas they have on how they might learn better. However, when teachers are petty, moody, sarcastic, or even mean, resentment quickly takes the place of interest in the class, and developing a group identity becomes impossible.

Santa Monica

Challenging students to learn more also involves developing activities that allow top students to push themselves even farther. We took a group to Santa Monica in Los Angeles each December for the annual Noryoku Shiken, and had students pass both the Level 4 and Level 3 tests regularly. One student even took, and nearly passed, the Level 2! Students loved the trip because they got to stay in a hotel and together experience something very different from their normal high school routine. This trip also required tons of planning and plenty of money. Funding came from the students themselves, money set aside by the school to support such programs, and what we raised in the fundraiser.

Japan Bowl

The Japan Society of Washington, D.C., sponsors a competition each spring called Japan Bowl. Teams of students answer questions about Japanese language and culture, taking on schools from all over the country. Preparing students for this competition was time consuming, but also created a core set of students who went far beyond the material assigned to the classes. Getting them to encourage other students created yet another point of separation from most of their school experiences. Proudly, I can say Silver Creek had teams place in the top ten nationally every year we went.

Intensive projects like the Noryoku Shiken trip and the Japan Bowl require heaps of time. Once one has weathered the process the first year, though, it will always be easier.

Using Technology Meaningfully

The goal with technology is not to "wow" the kids, but to make what the teacher and students do more efficient and more interesting. The "wow" will come as a by-product. The term "technology" is used in a broad sense here. On the more technical end, we used e-mail and created digital video to communicate with students in Japan. I also created pages called the Writing Prompt Workshop students used for writing and conversation practice. On the simpler side, we used an overhead projector to have students wielding flyswatters battle to see who could more quickly identify (by swatting) the kanji term one of us would call out.

Using technology to enhance the students' learning experience is one of the two principal uses of technology for the language teacher. The other, obviously, is to lighten the workload of the teacher. Extra time must be created such that the teacher can spend more time thinking about such things as how to encourage those who are not keeping up with the class, how to bring new ideas to one's teaching, and how to get ahead on projects that are still some time away.

Categorizing material in order to simplify the learning process for students was a fundamental component of the success of the Japanese program at Silver Creek. Students in all languages spend time trying to figure out which terms and patterns are the ones on which they will be evaluated. Over time I assembled the easily edited files of vocabulary pages, kanji lists, and simplified explanations of sentence patterns I created into readers that students used as their primary study material. Many more students made better grades as a result of knowing exactly for what they were responsible and exactly where to go to review. One colleague felt that this was spoon-feeding the students, but the notably increased success validated the extra work. Our goal, after all, is not to belabor our students' faults; it is to find ways to help them develop the skills they need to experience success.

Support for Your Program

Garnering support (material, political, and otherwise) for a specialized program is mostly a function of the teacher's ability to get the message out about what the students are doing. It does not come naturally for most teachers, and perhaps particularly Japanese teachers, to "brag" about they do. However, getting others to see the interesting activities in which one's students are involved is the basis for getting more of what both the teachers and the students will need to make a program thrive.

This means telling many people about the program, not just the principal. The associate principals, the counselors, the heads of programs with discretionary funds (GATE, etc.), the journalism teacher, and public relations officers for the district all need to learn about the program in order to channel energy and interest to the teacher and his or her students. These people generally are too busy simply to happen across a program as part of their regular jobs. The teacher must go to the trouble of inviting people to visit the classroom and see special activities.

One must also have a clear idea of what support might be valuable for one's program. As with pursuing a grant, the teacher must be able to articulate what is needed and why, what the cost and/or time commitment is, and how success will be measured. There are plenty of local, regional, national, and international programs prepared to support a program that will use their help productively. Their perspective on any given request is likely to be, what is in it for them? If an organization helps your program, will you be able to provide them records that they can use for public relations purposes? Will you be able to send a note to all your students' parents letting them know that the organization has helped you and that you encourage them to support the organization? Be prepared to offer more than just the assurance that kids will benefit from what they provide. Successfully giving a supportive organization something it can use maximizes the chance that they will help again the next year.

Conclusion

The brief treatment of the ideas above leaves out many important pieces of the puzzle that is a successful program. Perhaps more important than any individual activity or methodology is the attitude of the teacher. Too often teachers expend what energy they have explaining how something cannot be done. This not only limits the interest for the students, it makes the professional experience for the teacher all the weaker. Teachers must seek what interests them and their students, and find ways to make it a part of the program. The result will be more involved students, more interesting classes, and (I believe) more happiness and satisfaction for teachers with their work.

I welcome comments, questions, and critique. Please contact me at rushton@hotmail.com.
Rushton Hurley