Mr. Adam Podell

Japanese Language Teacher
South Lakes High School
Reston, Virginia

Mr. Adam Podell has been teaching Japanese for Fairfax County Public Schools, Fairfax, VA since 1998. He began his teaching career split between two different high schools within the district, but quickly built both programs into full-time positions. For the last ten years he has taught levels 1-5 at West Springfield High School. Beginning with the 2010-2011 school year he will be teaching at South Lakes High School in Reston, VA where he will be instituting an IB Japanese Program.

Podell’s love for the Japanese language and culture developed almost accidentally, but nothing has more significantly impacted his life. Shortly after graduating from James Madison University in 1991 with a BA in history, a friend who was teaching English on the JET Program invited him to visit Japan. During that ten day vacation he was offered an opportunity to teach English at an elementary school in a rural village in Fukushima Prefecture. Over the course of the next two years, Podell immersed himself in the Japanese language and culture and along the way discovered two important things about himself. The first was that he absolutely loved the Japanese language, particularly the intricacies of its structure and its sociolinguistics. The second was that although he enjoyed working with young people, he had little interest in teaching the English language.

Determined to master Japanese, Podell returned to the US and entered Cornell University’s Japanese FALCON Program in June of 1994. FALCON was a turning point in Podell’s career path and he counts himself extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to study under and TA for the director of FALCON, Professor Robert Sukle. “At that point, I knew I wanted a Japan related career, but I was not sure about which field. It was Sukle-sensei that helped me see that I could combine my love for working with young people with my passion for the Japanese language by becoming a Japanese teacher”. After FALCON, Podell returned to Japan for three more years before embarking on his Japanese teaching career.

Aside from daily classroom instruction, Podell has been involved in many activities that promote Japanese language and cultural education. He has served as director of the Virginia Governor’s Japanese Language Academy; a residential summer enrichment program run by the Virginia Board of Education. He is also past vice president of the Mid-Atlantic Association for Teachers of Japanese (MAATJ) during which time he helped successfully organize the Japan Bowl regional competition. At West Springfield High School he has sponsored a Japanese Club, a chapter of the Japanese National Honor Society, and has chaperoned summer travel and home-stay trips to Kagoshima, Japan. Since 2001, Podell has been co-sponsor of the Japanese Garden project at West Springfield, a 100% student designed, built, and maintained cross-curricular project with the Honors Biology classes.

Recently Mr. Podell has been investigating innovative ways to incorporate technology into his instruction, particularly for the study of kanji. He intends to use the project funds to purchase iPod Touches for his classroom. The iPod Touch devices will help his students learn Japanese through authentic interactive tasks that will allow for practice, remediation, and text collaboration.