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12.10.04 Heather Johnson, center, pictured with some of her students. Erskine College alumna teaching in Japan Heather Johnson is following her chosen career path of teaching – she just never imagined where she might be accomplishing it. A 1994 Erskine College graduate, Johnson completed her English degree and began the pursuit of her profession. While at Erskine, she was active in the Erskine Players and Student Government Association. She was corresponding secretary for SGA for two years. A native of North Augusta, Johnson went to Japan in 1999 as a member of the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) program. JET is a program sponsored by the Japanese government that employs roughly 6,000 assistant language teachers (ALT) a year from all over the world. Johnson said she had no choice about where she would work in Japan while she was in the JET program. She wound up living in Yamagata City, which has a population of about 250,000. Yamagata is the capital city of Yamagata Prefecture in northern Japan. It is about three hours north of Tokyo by bullet train, she said. "Since 'yama' means mountain and 'gata' means shape, the name is perfect because Yamagata is surrounded by mountains," Johnson said. "We get tons of snow in the winter, and the summers are super hot and humid. I took up snowboarding as a way to enjoy the cold instead of cursing it every day." As an ALT, Johnson worked for the Yamagata City Board of Education and through that board, she worked in a public junior high school doing team-teaching with Japanese English teachers. "Three years is the maximum for a JET contract and since I enjoyed Japan and teaching so much I stayed for the full three years," she said. Johnson said at the end of the three years, she decided she wasn't yet ready to return home. "I applied for and got a job working at a private high school in Yamagata," Johnson said. "At the private high school, my responsibilities increased. I was the main teacher and the Japanese English teacher was the assistant." She was responsible for planning lessons and led the English Club. At the end of her fourth year, Johnson planned to return home and go to graduate school to pursue her master's degree in education, but she received a job offer that "I couldn’t turn down." The Yamagata City Board of Education asked her to take a full-time teaching position at Yamagata Commercial High School. "I would be a real teacher, not an assistant," Johnson said. "The position was very rare because there were no foreign full-time English teachers in Yamagata Prefecture." She accepted the position and became the first and only foreign teacher in a public school in Yamagata. There are only about seven foreign teachers like Johnson in Japan. "I am responsible for all my own classes and I am on several teacher committees," she said. "And I am the English Club supervisor." Johnson is in her second year at Yamagata Commercial High School and she said she enjoys it immensely. She teaches mostly 10th graders and one 12th-grade class. "My oral communication class is basically English conversation," she said. "I feel that most of my students enjoy it because we listen to English music and play a lot of games." Johnson said that is a "big contrast" to their regular English class, where they study grammar and reading. "Overall the students are well behaved and keen to learn English," she said. Johnson keeps in touch with one of her English professors at Erskine, Dr. Bill Reames, who has taught at the college since 1973. Reames has fond memories of Johnson's stay in Due West. "Heather was a very good English major and theater person for us," Reames said. "I got to know her quite well in those two ways while she was on campus." He said she has kept him informed of her "many travels around much of the world" since she graduated. "In fact, she just sent a postcard recently which started off by saying, 'Guess where I am now? Bangkok,'" Reames said. "I received an e-mail from her several days later detailing her trip to Thailand and telling how much she enjoyed it." The professor said Johnson "comes from a wonderful family in North Augusta, and they have always been very supportive of her." Reames said he first met her family members when they came to Due West for Eugene O'Neill's "Ah Wilderness," in which Johnson played a role. "They are large in number and they spanned the generations — an impressive group to say the least," Reames said. "Knowing them, one can see from where Heather gets her down-to-earth warmth and graciousness which I think makes her a great favorite with her students in Japan. "Heather does not seem to lose anything in translation to her students or to her friends," he said. Johnson speaks highly of her education at Erskine. "Because Erskine was so small, I had opportunities there that I would not have had at other schools," she said. "I took advantage of those opportunities and I feel that by being involved in extracurricular activities, I grew personally and realized my potential."
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