Date & time: Friday, December 16th, 2022 13:30 ～15:30
Venue: Nagareyama City Lifelong Learning Center “L’s”, Large Meeting Room
Participants: 4 people from Abiko (Kitajima, Hesaki, Murakoshi, Nakamura), 3 from Kashiwa, 4 from Nagareyama, 2 from Noda and 3 from Matsudo
The 2nd Liaison Council of FY2022 was held and activity reports were shared. (No.22-14)
Mr. Komiya of Nagareyama International Relations Association, leader of this Liaison Council, made an opening speech and following the self-introductions of the participants, they exchanged opinions about the two themes which had been given beforehand. The themes were as follows.
① Japanese language education for foreign children, and support for them in starting school and going on to high school
➁ Elections of officers of each association
As for the support for foreign students going on to high school, depending on the cities (or the boards of education), their activities were diversified. The following is some of the comments and reports made by the attendants.
High-school education is not obligatory and cities and their board of education don’t concern with it.
There are special selections for foreign students in some Chiba Prefectural high schools.
One association dispatches Japanese language teachers to “night schools” (private evening classes) and support the students until they enter high school.
Regarding elections of association officers, candidates recommended by each section or the election committee are required to be approved by the board of directors. Officers are not paid. Most of the attendants agreed that secretariats should be enhanced rather than having paid officers.
Next, each association reported their events which gathered people such as international festivals and speech contests. Other activities such as communication with sister cities, cross-cultural communication courses, etc. were also reported. Matsudo holds a course “World Tour” which includes walking tours and cooking classes. In the walking tours they went to Nagareyama, Asukayama and other places. It seemed each association was getting back to their original activities in the third year of COVID-19.
Then, they exchanged opinions about the necessity to construct a broad cooperation system in Toukatsu District for the multi-language support at disasters.
Next, Matsudo made an introduction of CIR (Coordinator for International Relations). It is part of JET (The Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme), an program equivalent to ALT (Assistant Language Teacher).
There was an opinion that coordinators/teachers of those activities can be employed if the cities bear the manpower cost with the national subsidies. Also, they discussed the possible issues that may occur if they start employing them.
Noda International Relations Association is the next leader of the Liaison Council.
(Translated by NAKJIMA Katsumi)