Ms. Masumi Reade

Japanese Language Teacher
The Woodlands High School
The Woodlands, Texas

Since 1993, Ms. Masumi Reade has been a teacher of Japanese at The Woodlands High School in The Woodlands, Texas – Conroe Independent School District where she stared the course. Starting with just 19 students in an introductory elective class, her program now requires two full time positions. At The Woodlands High School, five classes are offered to approximately 100 students ranging from Level I to Level V (AP). A second instructor offers Japanese in a new school – The Woodlands College Park High School.

Since 1995 Masumi has taken her students to Japan every summer through exchange programs she established with Inage High School in Chiba, Ino Shogyo High School in Kochi, and Ritsumeikan High School in Kyoto. In addition her school hosts twenty students from Inage High School every August, 15-20 students from Ritsumeikan High School every other March and students from Ino Shogyo High School and Hirakata Tsuda High School in Osaka have also been regular visitors.

In June 2007, Masumi’s students participated in the Yosakoi Soran Dance Festival in Sapporo. Learning the Yosakoi Soran Dance has since become an important regular activity of Masumi’s Japanese Club at The Woodlands High School. Her club receives invitations to perform the dance such as: for certain events at The Woodlands High School, at Houston’s Japan Festival, The Children’s Festival in The Woodlands, the International Winter on Waterway Festival in The Woodlands and foreign language and culture days held in local schools. Masumi believes her dance group offers her a chance to expose Japanese culture to people in her community and a chance to showcase her students who are studying Japanese.

Masumi’s students regularly participate in Texas’s Japanese Language Speech Contest, and have won the top 3-4 places every year since 1997.

Her students have also competed in The Japan Bowl (a quiz bowl about Japanese language and culture) since a regional competition began in Texas in 1998. In 2003, 2004, and 2005, her students won in the Regional’s in Level II and IV which allowed them to participate in the national competition in Washington D.C and in n 2004 her Level II students came away with first place in the National Japan Bowl. In 2006 the Texas regional competition was discontinued allowing her students to participate directly in the national competition. In 2009 Level III students won the third place and Level IV students won the fifth place nationally.

Masumi is a founding member of JTAT (Japanese Teachers Association of Texas), serving as its president for the first three years, then secretary for the following three years. Currently she is serving as treasurer for JTAT.

Masumi participated in the National Working Group, a joint project of Association of Teachers of Japanese (ATJ) and NCJLT in an effort to determine National Standards for Japanese. She also served on NCJLT Board as editor for their newsletter/magazine Oshirase from 1998 to 2000. She has served as a board member of ATJ from 2007 to 2009.

In 2005 she was the recipient of NCJLT’s Teacher of the Year Award.

Masumi always had a strong interest in developing an AP level course and exam for Japanese and was therefore delighted when she was given the opportunity to serve as AP Japanese Culture and Language Task Force in 2004-2005. She continued on as an AP Japanese Development Committee member until 2008.

Masumi continues her contribution by giving various workshops for teachers of AP Japanese and as a reader of the AP exam after it started in 2007. She has been an instructor for AP Summer Institute offered at Rice University, Houston, TX, Bellevue School District in WA, and Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, TX. She has also given One Day Workshops for AP Japanese at the AP National Conferences held in Seattle and Washington, D.C. In addition, she taught an online course for advanced level Japanese teachers in the fall semester of 2009 through JOINT (Japanese Online Instructional Network for Teachers).

In 2010 she presented a paper on “Shadowing Project” at the International Conference on Japanese Language Education (ICJLE) at National Chengchui University, Taipei, Taiwan.

Masumi graduated from Sophia University, Tokyo, with BA in linguistics. It was during her year in Australia as a Rotary exchange student that she first started thinking about becoming a Japanese teacher.

She is excited that the grant from the Elgin Heinz award will enable her to secure performances of Japanese musicians/performers at her school and in The Woodlands. She would like to once again take advantage of the opportunity to showcase Japan in her community, furthering understanding, friendship and interest.