“Revisiting teacher roles and instruction of view of diversification of Japanese Language Education”

The Canadian Association of Japanese Language Educators (CAJLE) conference was held on August 20-21 at the SFU campus in downtown Vancouver. The conference had over 200 participants and the members of CAJLE came from seven different countries. Most participants arrived from universities from outside of Canada. A few high schools Japanese language teachers also attended. Professor Aoki, a professor of graduate school of letters at Osaka University was the keynote speaker.

Wendy Carr from UBC organized a panel of speakers to wrap up the conference. Four panel members presented on different topics, for fifteen minutes they spoke and then there was a question session. Professor Aoki presented on, “Tandem Learning.”….Keiko Hattori from Kinki Daigaku in Wakayama presented on: “Multilingualism and multicultural teaching materials”. Kathy Shannon from New Westminster Secondary School spoke on “Teaching in B.C. high schools, and engaging students in learning a new language.” Colleen Lee-Hayes from Pine Tree Secondary School in Coquitlam, spoke on using Twitter and #langchat : “Your Always-There Professional learning platform.” Check her blog at leesensensei.edublogs.org and her entire presentation can be found online at http://bit.ly/CAJLE2015Twitter.

It was a successful CAJLE conference and the university professors appreciated hearing from the high school teachers in B.C. There were over 75 presenters at the conference and 115 attendees from Japan (36), USA (19), Taiwan (5), China (1), UK (1), and Australia (1).  There were also 20 poster presentations which are common for international conferences.

Don’t forget that new teachers can receive info from Nihongobc on Googlegroups, and it is a also a platform for teachers of Japanese to share information.

Next year CAJLE 2016 will be held in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

The First Nations Education Steering Committee (FNESC) releases its new resource: Indian Residential Schools & Reconciliation. This resource was developed in response to the call by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada for age-appropriate education materials about Indian Residential Schools. These teacher resource guides provide activities and supports for dealing sensitively with the topic of residential schools. More details are found by following the link below.

http://www.fnesc.ca/learningfirstpeoples/indian-residential-schools-and-reconciliation/

August 15th is National Acadian Day. Choosing this day was one of the highlights of the first National Acadian Convention in Memramcook, New Brunswick in 1881. There were several suggestions, but the debate mainly focused on Saint-Jean-Baptiste, French Canada's national holiday, which is celebrated on June 24, and Our Lady of Assumption, celebrated on August 15.

Learn more about this important cultural day in Canada's history, by clicking here.

Apprenez davantage de cette fête importante de notre histoire, cliquez ici.