AATJ offers training and professional development to Japanese language teachers in a variety of forms: by sponsoring workshops and summer institutes, by awarding individual small grants, by sponsoring publications and materials, and by introducing available resources. Classroom materials developed by teachers participating in these activities are offered to others in the field via this website.

Please check back regularly for new additions to the site.

East Asian Bookshelf
The National East Asian Languages Resource Center (NEALRC) at the Ohio State University invites you to visit its "East Asian Bookshelf" website, which aims to promote teaching and learning materials in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean and to assist teachers to find quality language teaching materials available to purchase. This project is a collaborative effort of NEALRC, CLASS (Chinese Language Association of Secondary-elementary Schools), CLTA (Chinese Language Teachers Association), AATJ (American Association of Teachers of Japanese) and AATK (American Association of Teachers of Korean), with financial support from a Department of Education Title VI grant. Comments and suggestions will be warmly received, seriously considered, and deeply appreciated by the site's coordinator, Minru Li, who can be contacted by email at or by phone at 614-688-3080.

Journey to the Interior: Curriculum Project 2009
Thematic units were developed by participants in a one-month summer institute in Japan who retraced the haiku poet Basho's iconic 1689 pilgrimage route through northern Japan, as told in his classic work Oku no Hosomichi (Journey to the Interior), studied Basho's life and poetry, wrote their own poetry, experienced Japanese rural life, and developed materials for use in their classrooms. The two units collected here are (1) a standards-based introduction to Basho, haiku, and their Japanese context for intermediate to advanced students of Japanese, and (2) an interactive introduction to haiku using skits for beginning high school students.

Summer Language, Culture and Technology Institute, Urawa, Japan
A variety of multimedia resources designed for classroom use in grades K-12. Includes PowerPoint, digital video, interviews, still photography, and the resources of the Internet. These files are ready to be downloaded for use in classrooms.

Gakusei Seikatsu (Student Life in Japan) website
This multimedia website was first created by participants in AATJ's Summer 2006 Language, Culture, and Technology Institute in Urawa, Japan. It has been revised and updated and contains a variety of materials (music, films, interviews, and documents) on both elementary and high-school education in Japan.