It is the beginning of spring and we have wrapped up JFLA/AATJ spring semester COVID-19 survey and will be finalizing the results so it will be available to be presented by the end of March. We received over 300 responses total for our survey from both K-12 and College/Universities. Thank you so much for taking the time to let us know how your classroom situation is during this difficult time. We will continue to work with AATJ for the Leadership Training and the various webinars that will provide beneficial information for Japanese language teachers.

In February, there was a collaborative webinar between ACTFL and AATJ called, "Engaging Our Learners: Lessons Learned While Teaching Japanese". It was a great way to familiarize with ACTFL President, Jessica Haxhi and 2021 ACTFL National Language Teacher of the Year, Elena Kamenetzky and how they conduct their Japanese classes. As Ms. Haxhi and Ms. Kamenetzky learned Japanese as a second language and became Japanese language teachers, they knew great ways to encourage and motivating students to continue trying in their courses. They mentioned the importance of authentic material and repetition, which is very important for retention and making connection with real life situations. In terms of repetition and finding ways to retain Japanese, we hope that one of our learning resources, E-learning portal “Minato”, can help students with that process. Other great ways to keep students engaged is have them experience real life situations through actual flyers and videos. That is one way to show students that there are ways they can connect their learning to actual real life scenarios. We hope that students want to continue learning Japanese and if you would like to speak to me about any tips or questions, feel free to reach out at [email protected]. これからもよろしくお願いします！