Teaching Children Special Interest Group - AGM Report 2005-2006 Academic Year

JALT 2006, Kitakyushu
Friday, November 3, 2006

Agenda

I Old Business

A Officer Reports

B Other

II New Business

A New Officers

B Local Programs

C Mascot Issue

D TLC Online - how many?

III Forever Business

A Constitution

B Other

Present: Aleda Krause, Naoko McClellan, Lesley Ito, Mayuka Habbick, Yukie Kawaguchi, Andrew Zitzmann, Melinda Kawahara, Chris Hunt, Yuco Kikuchi, Mary Burkitt, Janet Ossorio and three unidentified people.

I Old Business

A Officer Reports

• Naoko McClellan introduced herself. With Alison Miyake having stepped down as SIG coordinator in July, Naoko had been elected by the remaining SIG officers at the time as the new coordinator. This decision was made easier for the officers due to Alison Miyake being the one to nominate her to the position.
• Aleda Krause, as acting treasurer, stated that the SIG accounts had been unfrozen and had cleared the 2005-2006 financial year audit, however as she had not yet received all the accounting books from the out going treasurer, she would not be able to give a true treasurer's report, but promised to do so as soon as she was able.
• Mary Burkitt, as membership chair, stated that we currently have 161 members and about 8-10 subscribers.
• Linda Wittig, as publicity chair, was absent. It should be noted however that Linda had already given her notice to step down as Publicity Chair from the National Conference and had already mentioned her support of the incoming Publicity Chair Andrew Zitzmann.
• Chris Hunt, as publications chair, having previously stated he would be stepping down after the winter 2007 issue (his 25th!) confirmed his committment to do so. Chris also expressed his feelings that the SIG needs a team to take care of the web site. He noted that the Japanese part of the web site needs to be updated. Chris also talked about the online survey regarding wether to move the SIG Newsletter TLC online as opposed to keeping it in print. The responses seemed to suggest he said, that most members prefered a hard copy version, although they seemed happy to have one online issue out of the 4 a year we issue.

B Other:

• As a point of clarification, Naoko asked about sales of TLCs. Mary explained that we were selling old issues at the conference for Y300 and the summer issue for Y500; She also pointed out that Cynthia Keith had set up a website (www.jaltsigpublications.com) for Jalt SIG publications and already had a number of issues online and available for sale. Mary noted that this website was being transfered from Cynthia to JALT National and that JALT National was looking for a new vendor to take over the running of the site, but until that happend that Cynthia would be taking care of the sales. Also all extra copies of the newsletter were being shipped back to Cynthia's office at the end of the conference.

II New Business

A New Officers

• With Tom Merner having stepped down mid year as Programme Chair, the SIG was in great need of finding a new one. The Jalt Junior programme was scheduled by Aleda Krause.
• Lesley Ito had been reccommended to the SIG Officer board as a strong possibility for the position of Programme Chair and when asked, willingly accepted the position and spent the months leading up to the AGM preparing to take on the position. As the new program chair, Lesley talked about a grassroots program and liaising with other groups. To increase the SIG's profile in the community she suggested the printing of flyers and sending them out. She has experience starting groups from scratch. Lesley mentioned that she wants to get more members in an effort to expand the sig and get SIG subscribers to become JALT members as being the primary focus of her involvement. Specifically, through the setting up of a strong programme she would target people to become subscribers and then get them to join JALT as opposed to joining JALT first, since some people aren't open to that.
• Chris Hunt said we need a strategy.
• Lesley said she felt that one of the first initiatives would be to make an effort to communicate more on main TC SIG list with our members, giving them more information about what the SIG is doing.

The meeting was temporarly suspended at 5:50 pm as the building was due to close the AGM continued later at the SIG Dinner.

First order of business at the dinner was to vote on the Officer positions:

• SIG Coordinator: Naoko McClellan
• Treasurer: Aleda Krause
• Publicity: Andrew Zitzmann
• Programme: Lesley Ito
• Publications: Cynthia Keith
• Membership: Mary Burkitt

The vote was a simple show of hands 14 for none against and 1 abstaining (Chris Hunt)

Following the vote the meeting broke out to allow for general networking and exchange of ideas. The AGM was rescheduled to continue the following morning at 8:40 am.

AGM meeting reopened Saturday, November 4th, 8:40 am.

Present: Naoko McClellan, Yukie Kawaguchi, Mayuka Habbick, Yuco Kikuchi, Melinda Kawahara, Cynthia Keith, Lesley Ito, Andrew Zitzmann, Mary Burkitt, David Lisgo, Chris Hunt, Janet Ossorio, Takako Matoba ? others.

TLC issues (old issues):

• Aleda suggested putting the tables of contents online and linking articles to it. She noted that author agreement would be needed for this.
• A suggestion was made to approach Paul Collett to handle the set up which would be password protected; using member names and their JALT/ SIG member number as the password. This would create a situation where members would only have access to the online data if they were current members of the sig. A membership lapse would result in the person no longer having access to the site.

Other:

• Chris proposed we look at where we want to be in five years and we brainstormed some ideas:
  • 400 members/subscribers in the sig - defined targets - elementary and kindergarten teachers
  • paper TLC - 6 issues per year, available in bookshops and schools; two teams, one elementary and one non-elementary
  • web team - sections for different teachers
  • all online
  • mini conference - 10 per year around Japan, in conjunction with a chapter teacher training - official certificate program
  • mini JALT membership

As the scheduled 2 day of JALT Junior was due to begin, the AGM for 2006 was drawn to a close.

Report submitted by Mary Burkitt