Welcome to Term 2 and the JLTAV Autumn Newsletter. I hope everyone had a great start to the new school year and a relaxing Easter holiday break.
At the end of Term 1, we held our Annual Conference at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre in South Wharf. The Annual General Meeting was held at the conclusion of Friday’s workshop program and I extend a very warm welcome to the new committee for 2023. The report on the Association’s activities for 2022 has been included in this newsletter. Details of the 2023 JLTAV committee can be found on the JLTAV website in the ‘About Us’ section.
As an Association, we are committed to supporting our colleagues and ensuring Japanese Language Education continues to flourish in Victoria. Throughout this year, we intend to organise a range of events for teachers and students including:
- Year 12 Morning (online resources)
- Model UN Conference in Japanese
- Junior Speech Competition
- Calligraphy Competition
- a range of professional learning sessions for primary and secondary teachers in addition to our annual conference
As we continue our plans for these events, we will share registration information via the JLTAV website, JLTAV membership email list, the Nihongo Victoria email group, the JLTAV and Japanese Language Teachers of Australia Facebook pages, and on the Department of Education and Training’s ARC platform.
I would like to acknowledge our corporate members of the JLTAV for 2023. Details of our corporate members can be found on the ‘Links’ section of the JLTAV website. We are pleased to be able to support our corporate members and include their advertisements in this newsletter.
Thank you to our colleagues who completed the JLTAV professional learning survey. We received 17 responses and some of the feedback included:
Are there any blockers for you attending online professional learning?
- It is difficult to get an approval because of the budget so can only attend 2-3 PD per year.
- It is hard if it is during the class time due to the cost of CRT.
- Juggling family lifestyle!
- Difficult to leave work for Japanese classes when other teachers don’t know Japanese.
Thank you to the students and schools who supported the competition to design the front cover of this year’s digital conference book. We received a large number of entries thereby making it difficult to select a winner. The winner was Iliana Alam from Nossal High School. We congratulate all students on the creativity shown in their entries for this competition.
I wish everyone all the best for Term 2.
Nathan Lane
President, JLTAV Inc. (Reg. No. A0024691U)