Mrs. Masayo Nakamura

Murray High School and Calloway County High School
Murray, Kentucky

Mrs. Masayo Nakamura was born and raised in Japan. She has been influenced by a rich variety of Japanese language teaching opportunities, and has been able to benefit greatly from them in developing her own teaching skills and strategies over more than 16 years of teaching.

After obtaining a BA in history in Japan, she first became aware of her passion for teaching her native language through a brief period as a Japanese instructor at a language school. Shortly after that, she traveled to Malaysia, where she had the opportunity to design and implement the first Japanese language program at a secondary school in Kedah. She was also a member of an authoring group for a Japanese textbook for Malaysian secondary schools.

Upon returning to Japan, she taught at a number of different places such as the Industrial Technical Youth Development Association, the Tokyo Medical and Dental University, the International Training Service Language Center, and the Japanese Language Research Institute (国立国語研究所).

In 1996, she moved with her family to the United States. She enrolled in the graduate linguistics program at the University of Florida and obtained her MA degree in 2004. From there, she followed her husband to Murray State University (MSU) in Murray, Kentucky, where he had been offered a faculty position in the Department of Biology, and began teaching an undergraduate course on the culture of Japan.

Shortly afterward, she received an invitation to teach part-time in a pilot Japanese language program in a local high school. The impact of her teaching became evident quickly, and she was offered a fulltime three-year opportunity to establish Japanese language programs at two local high schools under an expanded pilot program called Project 50-50, which was established with partial support from United States Japan Foundation and Japan Foundation grant awards.

During this period, her students finished consistently at the top of the Kentucky language festival competitions.  By her fourth year of teaching, she had developed Japanese language programs sufficiently robust to be self-sustaining. As a result, she is now teaching Japanese fulltime to students in grades 9-12 in Calloway County High school and Murray High school, completely supported by the two school districts. The programs she started have four levels of Japanese language as well as Advanced Placement (AP) Japanese and Japanese Proficiency Test preparation, providing her students with many exciting learning opportunities.

Mrs. Nakamura set up numerous interactive opportunities for her students such as a program of high school exchange students from Japan, and video chats and pen pal arrangements with schools in Japan. She also provided individualized instruction to a number of her students when they encountered challenging situations. In short, she went more than the extra mile to make sure that her students have every opportunity to succeed.

During her teaching in Kentucky schools, Mrs. Nakamura also advanced professionally. She became fully certified as an Oral Proficiency Interview Tester of Japanese for the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). She became qualified for teaching AP Japanese courses. More significantly, she became the first teacher in Kentucky to become officially certified to teach Japanese.

Since Mrs. Nakamura has created active Japanese programs in local school districts where there were none previously, the impact on the community has been phenomenal. MSU recognized the high quality of her students as they graduated from high school and the Modern Language Department established Kentucky’s first Japanese major and minor programs. Based on these programs, MSU plans to start a Japanese language teacher certification program as well.

Through the success of Project 50-50, she has inspired another school district to establish its own Japanese language program. The success of her students at state language competitions has raised the bar for Kentucky. In short, she has had a major impact on Japanese language teaching in Kentucky.

Mrs. Nakamura is appreciative of the project funding from the Heinz Award and is excited about the extra opportunities it will bring to her students and to the local area. She has divided her award project into two separate components. In one component, part of the funds will be leveraged with matching funds from Murray State University to involve her students with university students in collaborative activities such as the renovation of a local Japanese garden and the establishment of a community Japanese festival. The other component will be focused on the schools where she teaches, and will include purchasing additional technology and cultural items, hosting guest speakers, and conducting service learning projects in the local schools and community.