Two years ago, it looked like the pandemic was winding down. Only one or two cases were being reported in Aichi each day in the fall of 2021, and some of my friends were even hoping to visit their families overseas for Christmas. Nagoya JALT planned for Mari Nakamura and I to be the main speakers for a day of presentations for young learners. However, the Omicron strain of the coronavirus came to Japan and put a stop to everyone's plans. The presentations had to be moved online. We had over 100 participants on Zoom, but still hoped someday we could have the event face-to-face as originally planned.

Finally, that day arrived!

It was wonderful to see so many of my teacher friends after so many years!

I shared one of the presentations I gave in Okinawa last October about getting young learners to express their opinions in English.

Mari's presentation was about giving young learners a sense of well-being in the English classroom.

There were other short presentations by other teachers about improving learner attitudes by changing the types of class activities and also task-based learning.

Mari is one of my oldest friends and a teacher that I really respect. It was so nice to catch up with her and take her out for a hitsumabushi lunch before she took the shinkansen back to Kobe.

I'd like to thank JALT Nagoya, the Teaching Young Learners SIG, and National Geographic Learning for supportint this event!