— LLL SIG Officer Reports —

Membership Chair

Amanda Harlow

I'm very happy to report that LLLSIG membership has broken the 50 people barrier and is now heading onto....100? We have also instituted a chapter/area network so that LLLSIG members know who the other members are in their region and can thus plan LLLSIG events at JALT or ETJ meetings. In JALT chapters, university and college teachers and their concerns tend to dominate--so why not do a short presentation to your local chapter and share what you do with older learners, and of course spread the word that there is a SIG for teachers in this field.

Every month I try to keep up with the membership records from central office, sending welcoming e-mails to new members and reminding existing members to rejoin if their membership is due to expire. The free-SIG campaign is still on offer, so please remember to take advantage of this!

I hope this year to encourage more communication between members on the mailing list and Forum. It is hard when only a few of us have ever met face to face, but by getting teachers in the same area connected I hope that we can build a community.

Onwards to the 100 membership mark!

Treasurer

Julia Harper-Tanaka

I am very pleased to be LLL treasurer for another year. Having handled the finances for the 2005 Pan SIG conference as well as the regular SIG money matters last year, I now come to the job with more confidence and experience. This year, I will not only take care of the accounts, but will also help with the newsletter. I hope that through these two jobs, I can make a contribution to a steadily growing and increasingly active SIG.

Publicity Chair

Naoko Miki

Hi everyone, I am Naoko Miki. This is my second year working as the LLL SIG publicity chair. I feel that this is a stroke of good fortune, or perhaps even destiny! I was first chosen as publicity chair just one month after I had become a JALT member. Now, besides being publicity chair, I am also working as a co-editor of the newsletter. Last year, I focused mainly on publishing newsletters to help members to get to know each other and share information about teaching older learners. Thanks to the great help from other editors, officers, and members, we have published three online Newsletters and we have become an affiliate SIG. I am sure that 2006 is going to be another awesome year for all members! So, my hope for 2005-2006 is to increase awareness of LLL SIG, and get more members involved in our group. For this, I plan to better publicize our activities not only to non-members but also to publishers and the mass media. Please let me know if you have some ideas as to how to publicize our group to more individuals, groups, and schools. I would love to hear from you. Thank you.