Japanese Section 5
Collaboration and Partnerships (printable version)
Students majoring in French, German, Japanese or Spanish must:
complete all of the following field experiences courses (60 contact hours):
FETE 201 Field Experience I (1 credit hour)
Prospective teachers will participate in a service-learning experience in a diverse community and examine their beliefs and attitudes about working with others who are different from themselves.
FETE 302 Field Experience II: Secondary (1 credit hour)
Field placement in a middle level or high school. Focus is on reflective teaching and assessment decisions.
FETE 402 Field Experience III: Secondary (1 credit hour)
Field placement in a middle level or high school with a diverse student population. Emphasis is on developing literacy in diverse populations and adapting instruction to individual student needs.
AND
complete and document 40 additional hours of level- and subject-matter appropriate pre-student teaching experiences.
When requested, the methods professor takes an active role in advising students on their selection of FETE and pre-student teaching placements.
b.1.Collaboration and partnerships within the university
Although the methods professor is a tenured, full professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Bilingual Studies (College of Arts and Sciences), approximately half of her time is paid by the Office of Academic Services (College of Education) and is devoted to supervising foreign language student teachers and to supporting special projects (i.e. revisions of the student teaching handbook, revisions of student teacher evaluation forms, portfolio development workshops). Because of her close connections to the College of Education Office of Academic Services, the methods professor and, as a result, the foreign language methods students and student teachers, routinely participate in pilot projects, including our current Teacher Quality grant. This level of commitment from, and collaboration between, both colleges appears to be quite unusual among our peer institutions and is one of the major strengths of our foreign language teacher certification program.
b.2. Collaboration and partnerships with K-12 schools
As noted in the EMU College of Education web page,
“Programs in Teacher Education maintain close ties with schools and community agencies through a variety of partnerships. These partnerships foster an active exchange of ideas, ensuring that real-life uses of knowledge are emphasized in schools. As students and faculty work in partnership with these groups, both the agencies and the EMU programs are renewed.”
The College of Education has established consociate schools in the following districts: Farmington Hills, Willow Run, Ypsilanti, and Belleville.
The foreign language teacher certification program maintains official partnerships through the College of Education in those consociate districts and also has unofficial partnerships with the following schools and districts where we place student teachers each year: Ann Arbor Public Schools, Dexter Public Schools, Garden City Public Schools, Livonia Public Schools, Northville Public Schools, Plymouth-Canton Public Schools, and Van Buren (Belleville) Public Schools. These partnerships are due in large part to the number of foreign language teachers who have been certified through EMU, who teach in those school districts, and who maintain contact with and request student teachers specifically from our program.
c. Collaboration and partnerships with community organizations
As shown on the attached curriculum vitae, Dr. Tabuse is the President of the National Council of Japanese Language Teachers (NCJLT), a nation-wide Japanese Language Teachers’ organization consisting with the P-16 level members.
Dr. Motoko Tabuse and Dr. Hitomi Oketani are the founders of the Japanese Teachers Association of Michigan (JTAM), which consists of Michigan K-12 Japanese language teachers and future teachers. With collaboration with other JTAM teachers, EMU students often visit member teachers’ classes (e.g., Garden City Schools) to observe the classes taught in Japanese.
JTAM also hosts the Annual Japan Bowl for Michigan Japanese students where 200 to 300 high school students participate and compete in their knowledge of Japanese language and culture. EMU Japanese language and culture teaching major students have been actively involved in assisting Japan Bowl activities.
Japanese faculty members
are advisors of the EMU Japanese Student’s Association, which consists of
EMU students from
The Japanese section coordinates with the Consulate General of Japan (Ms. Anita Savio, Education specialist and Mr. Ohshima) to obtain scholarship information for Japanese language and culture teaching major students where students can go to a Japanese institution to learn the language and culture.
The Japanese section also collaborates with the Japanese Business Society of Detroit (JBSD) to assist them at the Annual Japan Festival in October by sending graduate to talk about the importance of learning Japanese language at any level. An EMU graduate was requested by JBSD to deliver a speech in Japanese at the 2002 Japan Festival in Northville. Other EMU Japanese students assisted in calligraphy, origami activities at the festival.
d. Collaboration and partnerships with other post-secondary institutions
The foreign language teacher education faculty have collaborated with faculty from the University of Michigan - Dearborn, Michigan State University, the Michigan Department of Education and the Michigan Foreign Language Association in a three-year Foreign Language Assistance Project grant, Mich-I-Lifts (Michigan Improving Language Instruction for Teachers and Students). The Mich-I-Lifts project was designed to help teachers learn about and integrate standards-based teaching in their classrooms, to improve their language proficiency, and to develop their technology skills. Faculty at all three institutions share lectures, activities, and materials created as part of the Mich-I-Lifts project in their undergraduate methods classes and with their student teachers.
Collaborating with MFLA, Dr. Motoko Tabuse has been offering presentations and workshops for Japanese language teachers in Michigan and Ohio at the MFLA annual conferences.
Japanese language and culture teaching major students are encouraged to participate in study abroad programs such as the Japan Center for Michigan Universities and Kansai Gaidai University. Professors at Kansai Gaidai University are the authors of the textbook called Genki—the textbook used in lower level Japanese courses at EMU. Japanese faculty members collaborate with professors at Kansai Gaidai so that Japanese language and culture teaching majors can observe their classes at Kansai Gaidai University.
EMU faculty members have also been collaborating with Lansing Community College to send Japanese language and culture
teaching major students to
Through JTAM activities, Japanese language and culture teaching major students learn Japanese language programs at other post-secondary institutions.
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