2024/1/20: Aurora – Japanese Language Scholarship Foundation’s 25th Anniversary Special Awards to be presented to 2023 scholarship recipient, All-USA High School Japanese Speech Contest winner
2023 JLSF Scholarship Recipient Margaret O’Connell (left top), 2023 All-USA High School Japanese Speech Contest winner Zhuoru Zhou (right top), Aurora 25th Anniversary Special International Awardee Kurashiki Kojoike High School student group.
Japanese Language Scholarship Foundation 25th Anniversary Special Award Presentation will be held on Saturday, January 20, 2024 at Japan House Los Angeles, 5th Floor Salon. Registration will begin at 9:30 am. Awards Ceremony will start at 10:00 am.
Awards Ceremony includes:
2023 JLSF Scholarship Recipient Margaret O’Connell, Teacher and Exchange Coordinator, Evanston Township High School (Evanston, IL)
2023 All-USA High School Japanese Speech Contest Winner Zhuoru Zhou Southridge High School (Beaverton, OR), 12th Grade
Aurora’s 25th Anniversary Special International Award
Kurashiki Kojoike High School Students Group, Kurashiki- city, Okayama- prefecture, Japan
International Ambassador Awards, 2023
Hiroshi & Taeko Sumiyama
Grace Shiba
Those who like to attend the award ceremony, please register RSVP
2023 JLSF Scholarship Recipient Margaret O’Connell, Japanese teacher at Evanston Township High School, Evanston, Illinois
O’Connell began her study of Japanese during her own time as a student at ETHS. After falling in love with the culture on a high school exchange trip at age 16, she continued to pursue her studies. Margaret spent one year of college in Tokyo at International Christian University and two years after college teaching English in a public high school in Chiba through the Wisconsin-Chiba program.
She holds a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Lawrence University and a Master of Arts in Teaching from National Louis University with endorsements in Japanese as well as English Language Arts and English as a Second Language.
She will use her scholarship to study marginalized communities in Japan in order to enrich her curriculum for a diverse group of high school learners of the Japanese language. As an officer of the Illinois Association of Teachers of Japanese (IATJ), Margaret plans to share her findings with her fellow officers and member teachers of the IATJ through webinars, conferences, and newsletters.
2023 All-USA High School Japanese Speech Contest Winner Zhuoru Zhou, Southridge High School, Beaverton, OR, 11th Grade
Speech Title: “Life Value that books brought to me”
My speech is about how books have changed my personal view of the world. Beginning in my childhood, my mother brought me many children’s books that have a very positive life view: the good guys will win over the bad.
But after immigrating to the U.S., I felt uneasy about the difference between myself and the other peers at school. In this sensitive period, I read Human Lost by Osamu Dazai.
This book changed my thought from everything that should be perfect to forgiving people to have differences. Everyone is an ordinary person who has their own weakness and imperfection, it became one of my own key life values.
Aurora’s 25th Anniversary Special International Award
Kurashiki Kojoike High School Students Group
Kurashiki- city, Okayama- prefecture, Japan
The award is given to Kurashiki Kojoike High School, which was selected from 135 participating schools in the “High School Student Volunteer Award” by the Lion Standing Against the Wind Foundation.
Eight people from Kurashiki will be attending, including seven high school students and one teacher.
