2020

I. Chapter President: Heather McCulloch

OVERVIEW

My local duties as chapter president were to help coordinate chapter roles, maintain group communication, and help out each officer whenever needed. JALT-wide duties were to attend Executive Board Meetings (EBMs) in Tsukuba in February and online in June. Also connected with JALT-wide duties were to communicate urgent matters to our community whenever necessary and encourage our members to vote during the AGM in order to meet quorum for validation of meeting. I regularly stay up-to-date with all JALT news through the EBM Net.

LOOKING AHEAD

This year has been challenging for all of us and as I look ahead, I am not sure what to expect.  Do you keep planning online meetings or will we return to in person meetings?  At this point, no one has the answers.  We do know that we will continue to be online for the beginning of 2021, thus, we should continue as we have been for the foreseeable future.  There are several thing that I would like for us to consider.

1. In 2020, Ray and I planned all Gunma JALT meetings since we do not have an active program chair.  In 2021, I would like for all officers to do this together.  If each officer could submit a name of a speaker/topic that they would enjoy hearing, this would make the process much smoother.  By doing this, each officer will have at least one speaker or topic that interests them.

2. We need an editor if we would like to return Speakeasy to publication.  I you or anyone that you know would like this position, please let me know.

3. I would like to consider and discuss the possibilities of having meeting at different times and different days.  

4. I would like to hear everyone’s opinion on ways we can further improve Gunma JALT.

5. As we have held the majority of our meetings online this year, I have noticed some shortcomings of our chapter’s constitution.  We should consider updates that would bring it inline with online.

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II. Treasurer: Sylvain Bergeron

Beginning November 2019 until October 2020, the Gunma JALT Treasurer’s duties and responsibilities have included the following:

• In coordination with Membership Chair, noted regular attendance at Gunma JALT monthly meetings

• Prepared honorarium and receipts for invited speakers

• Maintained inventory of Gunma JALT Treasury stationary and placed orders for new stock via JALT Central Office (JCO) when necessary

• Collected receipts at the monthly meetings from Gunma JALT officers i.e., Social Chair, Program Chair

• Compiled and submitted a monthly revenue/expense report to JCO accounting section (due on 10th of each month)

• Maintained regular contact with JCO accounting section, c/o Ms. Hideko Hayakawa and pair-treasurer, c/o Ms. Cheryl Kirchhoff (Nagano JALT)

• Balanced the deposits and withdrawals from Gunma JALT’s Shinsei Bank account

• Prepared a sufficient amount of funds prior to each meeting or special event

• Compiled, tabulated and prepared the yearly “2019-2020 End of Fiscal Year Budget Report” (online and hard copy) in coordination with Gunma JALT Chapter President and Publicity Chair (May 2020)

• Gunma JALT successfully passed the “2019-2020 End of Fiscal Year Examination Report” conducted by JCO 

• Online payment of honoraria: As a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic, made contact with invited speakers prior to online events to obtain bank account details for online bank transfers via Gunma JALT’s Shinsei Bank account

III. Objectives for Academic/Fiscal Year 2023:

Continue to bring about improvements to better coordinate and administer payment of honoraria to invited speakers via Gunma JALT’s Shinsei Bank account’s online bank transfer system.   

IV. Program Chair: Raymond Hoogenboom & Heather McCulloch

While we had our share of negatives throughout this year, our program had a few positives.  We were able to bring in a few people from distant lands, such as Kyoto.  Under normal circumstances, inviting speakers outside of the Kanto area would be too difficult.  While we are restricted to having meetings online, we should take advantage of the opportunity to hear from speakers both domestic and abroad.

JALT GUNMA CHAPTER PROGRAMS (2021)

• 2020/January 26th at Gunma Prefectural Women’s University

“Senior Theses Presentations” by Mikako Masuda

“Presentation Essentials: Approaches and Strategies” by Mark Yoshida [ATTENDANCE: 19]

• 2020/August 2nd Online

“Advising in Language Learning: What, Why, and How”  by Phillip A. Bennett and Curtis Edlin  [Attendance: 17]

• 2020/September 20th Online

“Word Recognition Development of English Learners in Japan” by David Coulson   [ATTENDANCE: 11]

• 2020/October 18th Online

“Key Concepts in the Neuroscience of Language Learning” by Curtis Kelly

“Teaching During the Pandemic: Advice from the Brain” by Curtis Kelly and Amanda Gillis-Furutaka  [ATTENDANCE: 20]

• 2020/November 15th Online

“Language Teacher Well-Being in the Time of COVID-19”  by Chiyuki Yanase and Wendy Gough   [ATTENDANCE: ?]

• 2020/December TBA

JALT Gunma Summer Workshop

Because of the pandemic, we were unable to have a summer workshop this year.  Hopefully the break will renew interest in attending and preparing for a workshop next year.

V. Facilities Chair (No report): Lori Ann Desrosiers & Hideto Harashima 

VI. Recording Secretary (No report)

VII. Membership Chair: Duangsamorn Haruyama

Responsibilities

• Greeting visitors and members

The Membership Chair is the personal side of JALT. Often this is the first face that visitors and members sees when they enter the room. When someone is greeted with a big smile and a warm “hello,” they feel like coming to a JALT meeting is worth taking time out of what could have been a relaxing weekend.  

• Managing Monthly Membership

On the first Monday of each month, the most recent membership list is sent by email.  The Membership Chair sends this list to the President.  The President then updates the chapter mailing list accordingly and sends out notices and reminders of upcoming events based on the revised mailing lists.

• Sending Welcome & Renewal Notices & Thank You Emails

Once the Membership Chair reviews the most recent membership list, renewal notices to members whose memberships will expire in the next month are sent out, and welcome messages to members who have recently joined or rejoined are also sent.  If possible, personal information such as exact expiration date, SIG participation and chapter participation are included to make each member feel appreciated. Personalized welcome messages were not sent to first time visitors but should be considered in the future.

• Taking Attendance at Events and on Zoom

Attendance at monthly meetings has been quite good, with most meetings attracting between 11 and 26 members and visitors.

Membership Report

Total Gunma JALT members = 33 - 39 (33 - 39 last year)

Local Membership = 1

Total JALT members = 2665 (2,203 last year)

Focusing on this year, the number of Gunma JALT members been decreasing from 39 (January) to 34 (September). The main reasons that members do not renew the membership might caused by; the situation due to the covid-19, some members are already retired, or some are holding status until the next face to face meeting then would change to be the local membership type. 

VIII. Social Chair: Matt Potter

Due to the coronavirus pandemic and our inability to hold face-to-face meetings, there has only been one opportunity to use our brand new new coffee machine. I was also looking forward to acting as a greeter, taking attendance and generally getting to better know members at the meetings. Regarding the end of year nomikai, I had also hoped that we could hold this at a nice Italian restaurant that I know of not too far from Takaskai station. Depending on how things progress over the winter it might be good to consider doing this in the Spring, situation permitting. If the current situation continues then I would be happy to help out with or take over the social online get togethers that I think Ray has been arranging.

IX. Publicity Chair: Raymond Hoogenboom

As Publicity Chair, I maintained Gunma JALT's email contacts lists, both in our gmail account and on the Mailchimp application. To do this, I am in close contact with the Membership Chair (Duangsamorn), who sends me the official membership lists as well as the names and contact information of any "local member" sign-ups (which hasn't happened so much this year because of the pandemic).

For meeting notices, I mostly used the Mailchimp application, which is a marketing application, but works well for simple email notices. We (Stephen Howes, the prior Publicity Chair, and I) so far have only been using the free version of Mailchimp, which has gone well enough. However, I am wondering whether we should invest in a basic paid subscription in order to expand on design possibilities and avoid the glitchy aspects of the free version.

On Mailchimp, we can see whether people open their email. It may come as a surprise that over half of the emails are unopened. However, our mailing list is quite large (approximately 190 people), and some of the recipients are peripheral. That is, some may have come once 5 years ago, signed onto the mailing list, and never returned. I believe most of the active community are aware of the notices.

I also post our meeting on Facebook and onto the JALT Events Calendar. Ideally all notices and posts should be approximately 1 month ahead of the event, but this year some of my notifications and posts were only two or three weeks prior. I do not believe this had a negative effect. However, getting events posted on the JALT Events Calendar before the beginning of the month is helpful because then it gets onto the monthly Announcements from Publicity Director Bill Pellowe.

Roughly I work with two types of lists: Our membership list and the greater community list. For example, messages concerning voting matters would only be sent to voting JALT members, but meeting notices would be sent to the larger community.

Publicity Chair is a role I always enjoy, and I am willing to accept nomination for another year. However, if another person has a desire to take the role, I will be happy to fill any other role that needs help, while at the same time helping the potential newcomer into the Publicity role.  

X. Webmaster: Phillip Bennett

The webmaster updated the site once before each meeting in order to advertise it. The layout of the webpage for the meetings has slightly changed due to the meetings being held online via Zoom. I also began the process to migrate the old Google site to the new version of Google sites but ran into some issues in regard to linking to pages of past meetings and the overall design of the site. Also, it is possible to add a new section to the website of the past video recordings of the meetings. 

XI. Speakeasy

We are currently looking for an editor who would kindly give us their time so that we could bring Speakeasy back.