あそびましょう！
Contact: president@jltasa.asn.au
あけおめ！Spending Christmas and New Year in Japan was the perfect way to close and start a year. In addition to much eating, drinking, walking + shopping, I spent some time reflecting on 2023, including JLTASA’s accomplishments from 2023. It would be remiss of me to even begin talking about 2024 until we pay homage to what we achieved over the past 12 months:
A testament to being named a ‘finalist’ for Educators SA’s ‘Most Innovative Association Award’, last year saw a few firsts, such as the ‘In Conversation’ Bounenkai/AGM, where we heard from local Japanese/British/Adelaide author Katherine Tamiko and spent the evening in deep conversation all about Japanese food and culture. A memorable experience indeed!
We also trialled an Immersion PL (though thwarted a few times by strike action), and hope to roll this out in a larger capacity year-on-year to further support teachers feeling confident in their language ability.
After encountering a few too many roadblocks in our attempts to offer a thorough schools’ ‘Ghibli Fest’, we collaborated with JAFA for a mini-version of a movie program for schools at the Mercury Cinema in early December.
Lastly, our new Virtual Middle School Escape Room was taken up by an estimated 2000 students, a mammoth milestone indeed. My hands have almost recovered from all the cutting, trimming, and sorting, ready for this year’s!
And so now we turn our attention to the Year of the Dragon. This year we focus on play for our 2024 Annual Conference. Why play? Japanese teachers are renown for devising fun and exciting ways to teach and engage students, to develop deep passion for the country, language and culture for all in their community. The pressure to constantly “sell” the importance and relevance of language (and culture) learning is relentless, but boy can we and do we have some fun along the way! Let’s spend some time in May sharing how we can foster this fun, joyful experience of language and culture learning, to continue to instil a love of Japan and Japanese amongst our communities.
I look forward to seeing you at events throughout the year.
ことしもよろしくおねがいします。
Tom Dawson
President
２０２４年１月２５日
SA Affiliations: MLTASA and Educators SA
International Affiliations: We have an affiliation with The Japan Foundation, Sydney.
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