The Language Teacher
04 - 2000
A Month in the Life of TLT
A "Chapter in Your Life" Special Report
joyce cunningham & miyao mariko
Have you ever wondered about all the nameless worker bees toiling behind this and other sections of your monthly Language Teacher columns? What truly goes on in the "hive" each month, and who is the queen. . .er king bee?
Well, the King bee (Malcolm Swanson) in all his wisdom has decided that we should all line up at attention at the door of the hive and hum. . .er describe our columns to you, our readers. Command performance? Right, Sire Malcolm! This month's profile, then, will acquaint you a little with these behind-the-scenes activities. You may even feel like joining us on the staff, and we would welcome you warmly.
So, let's get on with it! Amy Hawley and Sugino Toshiko, editors of the column JALT News, are buzzing so loudly and enthusiastically that we'd better start with them. JALT News summarizes important news happening at the National level. Between flights to the main flower garden located in the Central Office, Amy paused to say that she wants to increase readers' awareness of what officers are doing at the National Level. She stated that she has come up with a lot of good ideas from reading all the reports, and that some chapters have even voluntarily started sending them honey. . .er minutes, as well as exciting information about the events happening in their chapters. Amy believes that this is a great chance to meet a lot of interesting people in a variety of areas in JALT, and she is really enjoying working on this column.
Wearing two hats, Daniel McIntyre decided to become editor of the occasional columns Education Innovations and Creative Course Design partly to compensate for his chequered past, and to contribute to humankind. He took time off from cleaning out his cell in the hive (his wife is about to arrive back from her business trip to the Philippines) to report in for duty. In the column Educational Innovations, papers are welcomed which inform readers about developments in the organization of foreign language education at all levels and in neighbouring countries as well, where conditions confronting teachers and learners may be similar. Descriptions and evaluations of interesting/insightful developments at the institutional level, whether departmental, faculty, or whole institution are sought, as opposed to individual teacher-focussed developments in classroom teaching. Contributors are invited to write about interesting innovations related to new curricula/courses, extracurricular activities, or institutional organization. In his second column, Creative Course Design, Daniel wants to inform readers of the variety of new, stimulating courses being taught in the context of Japanese institutions. He is also soliciting descriptions of creative designs and syllabuses being used successfully on subjects the teaching community are already familiar with. It is Daniel's hope that the readers will share insights and be aware of the possible benefits that will inevitably come their way.
In another part of the TLT hive, Katharine Isbell and Oda Masaki ceased their diligence to tell us a little about their column Book Reviews. Katharine and Masaki's column provides information to TLT readers on useful teaching materials, in order to help them decide which materials are worth spending their hard-earned money on. They both stated that reviewing a book for the TLT is an excellent, thought-provoking writing activity, and hope more reviewers will volunteer after reading this. And contributors take heart! They are willing to work extensively with the reviewer. I see commander-in-chief Malcolm fairly beaming in their direction at all the hard work and energy they have put into this column.
Net Nuggets has editor Larry Davies scurrying about the hive in an effort to keep up with all the rapid changes on the Internet. For most readers, it may be difficult sometimes to keep abreast of the latest technical and pedagogical developments in using the Internet for language teaching, but Larry is there to inform us. He invites interesting submissions on useful sites from teachers at all levels. In addition, this helpful column directs teachers to language learning resources available on the Internet for a general language learning and teaching audience, and we thank Larry for helping out those of us who are less in the know.
In the SIG corner of the TLT hive, you can usually find Robert Long, JALT2000 Conference Programme Co-Chair, and editor of the Special Interest Group News column. He'll be labouring away to forage out articles from our various JALT SIGs to better inform readers of issues and problems in research and professional ideas. Robert admires and is inspired by the dedication of the many people involved in the SIGs and cannot help but have more interest in his own career, especially when he encounters the commitment these same people have month after month.
Sandra Smith, Oishi Harumi and Scott Gardner are editors of the column My Share, a forum for teachers to describe classroom lesson plans that have worked well. My Share, editors insist, is much more than a simple exchange of "hints for harried teachers." It demonstrates some quite thoughtful applications of the very theories and proposals found in the feature article section at the front of the journal. The editors hope to solicit more contributions from teachers of young people for, they say, even games for the smallest children, as long as they are original, are grounded in research and can benefit language educators and learners. Good work, Sandra, Scott and Harumi!
Not only is Brian Cullen one of the hardworking proofreaders for the TLT but he and Saito Makiko are also editors of the Bulletin Board column which posts announcements of upcoming JALT events, conferences, call for papers and so on. Sporting a delightful Irish accent when reached by phone at his cell, Brian supports supreme commander Malcolm in his effort towards more personalization for the TLT and less focus on the "academic" standards of research journals. Brian thinks that the TLT is a great forum that needs to reach out to the teachers' base that exists in Japan and prove each month that it is relevant to their professional lives. He marvels at all the work carried on in the TLT community over email (accepting submissions, editing, proofreading, and sending the finished product off to the printers) without ever coming face to face, and he is proud to be part of that special team spirit.
Bettina Begole and Natsue Duggan run the Job Information Center/Positions column, but they are quick to point out that the column, which provides information on jobs, is only the tip of the iceberg and the smallest part of what they do. We will see Bettina again in the JIC room on the conference site of JALT2000 in Shizuoka on November 3-5. In the JIC room, you can find information on available positions. Interested people can come to look for new employment, submit their C.V.s and sometimes, be interviewed on the spot by perspective employers. In addition, Bettina maintains a monthly email update for all those who wish to receive further information on employment developments. In the TLT JIC column, Bettina and her partner try to screen ads which may discriminate against age, gender, and nationality. They would like to receive ads that include more job openings for nonnative professional language teachers of English. They want to encourage institutions to submit ads for teachers of Chinese, French, German, Spanish and other languages.
Oh yes, and let us not forget Tom Merner, in charge of publicizing monthly meetings and other related events such as mini-conferences, book fairs, chapter retreats, and so on in the Chapter Meetings column. These timely announcements help to attract attendees to our chapter gatherings and increase interest among non-JALT members in participating in chapter events. Born and raised in Japan, Tom is completely bilingual, and for this reason is committed to increasing the amount of Japanese in the announcements, as it may be the first contact some Chapter people have with local members from their area. However, he confesses that the column is still far from achieving this goal. Tom feels that this first bit of Japanese directs the attention of first-timers and may trigger in them sufficient interest and courage to even attend a meeting. Tom hates long announcements that cause him to burn the midnight oil, especially after deadlines. He reminds overly enthusiastic programme chairs (those with a tendency to drone on) that the maximum length for chapter announcements is sixty words.
Diane Pelyk and Nagano Yoshiko edit the Chapter Reports column and wait each month for showerings of nectar from the chapters, telling the rest of our readers what is happening in each local area. They invite reports in either Japanese or English. Conference Calendar, edited by Lynne Roecklein and Kakutani Tomoko, keeps everyone informed of conferences around the world and their calls for submissions. And Recently Received, compiled by Angela Ota, offers would-be-reviewers choices of course books, supplementary texts, or teacher's references to try out and evaluate for the Book Reviews column.
But wait a minute, Mariko, we haven't mentioned our own column yet, A Chapter in Your Life. Two years ago, Andy Barfield came up with the great title and since that time, special mention goes to Ruth McCreery of The Word Works who has been marvellous at making borders and increasing the visual appeal. In the beginning, it certainly wasn't easy to find willing "victims," as we had no proven track record and were unknown, but lately, chapters and SIGs are approaching us with ideas and stories. We've had lots of adventures and in the process, we've learned heaps. I was even called a pedantic bug bear at one point while I was learning to edit. Our column has grown from a focus on the chapters, the grassroots of JALT, to include special SIG reports and now and then, submissions of a special nature. We now invite all chapters and SIGs, big and small, to write 800-word reports about their memorable activities, venues, members, challenges they have met and so on. It is a good way for all to share their creative solutions and build bridges in order to network with each other. I also hasten to say that I have the greatest partner in the world. Just when I'm on the point of going cross-eyed from working with our contributors to edit and polish their reports, Mariko quietly, capably takes over and does all the formatting and finishing touches that TLT demands. It's not such a scramble anymore, thank goodness, and we look forward to the variation each month brings us.
Deep in the hive, you'll find another group quietly working away under the paternal gaze of our Assistant Editor, Paul Lewis. These people patiently and professionally proof our work each month, ensuring that TLT is able to maintain the high standards it does. It is from this pool of proofing staff that we draw our new column editors. At the end of the editing chain, the ever alert Aleda Krause is ready and waiting to pounce on anything we've overlooked, before sending it off to Ruth and her Word Works team. (See The Word Works story for more on what they do.)
And finally, it would "bee" very unfair of us not to mention Malcolm Swanson; a scholar, techie, gentleman and our noble TLT leader who has just taken over the responsibility of directing the hive. Head bee-nimble minded, full of vision and plans-we support you Malcolm and applaud the many ideas you want to implement in the months to come. May our magazine prosper under your guidance. And last, but not least, our thanks to all the "workers" for their dedication, drive, and determination to put out interesting and varied columns while balancing the needs of school, family, and friends. Oh yes and naruhodo, we salute you, our readers, and thank you for your support, positive feedback, and assistance.
A Word about The Word Works
After all the work everyone else has put into TLT, it's hard to imagine what could be left for us, your friendly neighborhood Word Works, to do. But there's always more than enough to keep us hopping.
In principle, our contribution is to develop a basic template for the magazine -- a design that works, given the nature of TLT and the budget available -- and then format the articles, which arrive at the end of the month for the front half and on the fifth for the back, and pour them into the layout template. When everything is roughly in the layout, we generate the pdf files from which the proofreaders now work and zip them off by email. (Considering that until we started working on TLT, the layout was physically cut and pasted, by the way, I think we're pretty amazingly high tech.)
By then, it's the tenth of the month. A few days later, with the keen-eyed proofreaders' comments in hand, we start correcting the errors that managed to slip past the first set of proofreaders. We also start tweaking the layout, to make it smoother, more consistent, and, somehow or other, divisible by four when the advertising pages are added.
When that magic number has been achieved, we generate pdfs again and throw them at the editor. If the editorial arithmetic agrees with ours and no one discovers a missing article or other cause for hysteria, then we tidy up the layout yet again, produce the table of contents, stare at it a little more, then, usually on the seventeenth, print and call the takkyubin man, before the bloom goes off.
Executing the design, and making continuing refinements in it, is satisfying, but it's the points where things go wrong that make working on TLT exciting. The occasional virus arriving with a TLT file, styles conflicts that trash PageMaker, an article that has mysteriously lost all spaces between words, a photograph with ink across a Very Important Person's face: TLT gives us endless opportunities to demonstrate our coping skills.
A certain amount of creative satisfaction, the occasional adrenaline hit of crisis successfully contained: that would be enough to make working on TLT gratifying. But we also gain from being part of a dedicated team contributing so much energy to sustaining and improving the magazine-not for fame or fortune, but to help other language teachers. Editors, proofreaders, contributors: you are all amazing.
Ruth McCreery
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