Establishing Professional Contacts & Expanding Resources

Since I would like to help children at a Japanese preschool or an international school in the future, I tried to find web community for Japanese preschool teachers. I found one called “youchien no sensei"(Preschool teachers). This is a private community managed by Lina, a preschool teacher in Japan, and to be accessed by only mixi(It is like facebook for Japanese people) members. This website is not so formal but I expect I will hear honest opinions and daily classroom issues at preschools in Japan. I posted a greeting and explained why I joined them. This is the address for the page. (http://mixi.jp/view_community.pl?id=197768) I believe that I will get to know more people there.


I could not find the second contact, so I am thinking about using World Forum Foundation Radio(http://www.worldforumfoundation.org/wf/radio.php) too.

Sincce I have read an article from them, I chose National Institute for Early Education Research( http://nieer.org ) for my resource. The website looks useful to gain the knowledge about current developments in the early education field because its articles are based on research. I subscribed to the newsletters.

I am also interested in The Montessori Method. So, I went to Japanese Association Montessori(http://montessori-jp.org/index.html). Even though this website does not carry much information, I found The Association Montessori Internationale(http://www.montessori-ami.org/) from their link and this one is very activate and looks useful.