Lockport Township High School unique in its Japanese language program

Lockport — Students at Lockport Township High School have a unique educational opportunity only offered at a handful of high schools in Illinois: the ability to study Japanese.

Lockport is the only high school in Will County to offer a Japanese course as part of its world language curriculum, although it has been home to the program for 20 years.

This is thanks largely to the work of one teacher, Karla Button, an LTHS alum who started the program in 2001 and has continued to grow and expand it ever since.

“When I first started, I had my certification to teach Spanish and an endorsement in Japanese, which was all they offered then,” Button said. “After a year, I asked the school if I could start a Japanese program, and they said OK if there was interest. I started with Japanese I the first year, and it has grown slowly from there.”

Students in the LTHS Japanese program have the advantage of having the same teacher for four years if they choose to stay with the language, which allows Button flexibility in how she teaches.

“We progress at a different rate than French or Spanish. It takes longer for English speakers to pick up because it comes with an entirely different writing system.”

—  Karla Button, Japanese language teacher in Lockport School District 205

Freshmen and sophomores take Japanese I and II like most language curriculums. Juniors in Japanese III and seniors in Japanese AP Language and Culture are in a combined class for two years, using an alternating curriculum, essentially making advanced Japanese a two-year course that ends in taking the AP test as a senior.

“We progress at a different rate than French or Spanish,” Button said. “It takes longer for English speakers to pick up because it comes with an entirely different writing system.”

In fact, Japanese has three separate writing systems comprising different character styles, all of which she teaches to her students.

“We start with the characters and some basic sayings and greetings and build from there,” she said, noting that a part of learning the language also is learning pieces of the Japanese culture and manners around greetings and interactions.

Cultural bonds

Students in Buttons' classes last school year had an opportunity to put those lessons to practical use as the school took part in an exchange program that saw 31 students from the Yamate Gakuin School in Japan attend Lockport High School for two weeks in April.

The students stayed with the families of Lockport students and took part in activities with them.

After the visit, 15 of the Lockport students, accompanied by Button and Superintendent Robert McBride, traveled to Yokohama, Japan, for a two-week stay in July and August.

“It was so meaningful for everyone,” Button said. “I have previously brought students to Japan with tour companies, which is very valuable; however, this actually gave students a way to form a deeper bond with the Japanese students and their culture.”

During their time in Japan, the students not only socialized with their host families and Japanese classmates, but they also had the opportunity to visit several significant tourist locations in the region, including the Hakone Shrine, the city of Asakusa, the Owakudani volcanic valley in Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park and Tokyo DisneySea theme park.

Button noted that she herself took part in an exchange program as a student in college, which she said “changed her life.”

“I double majored in education and Japanese and had the opportunity to do a homestay program,” she said. “It changed my life. I fell in love with the Japanese culture and my Japanese host family.”

Button said the students improved their language skills significantly and bonded with their host families during their stay.

“There were a lot of tears flowing at the airport when we left,” she said. “Words cannot express what it felt like. That human connection is an incredible experience for the students to get.”

In a presentation to the board after their trip, several of the students talked about their experiences, saying the trip helped them to open up and try new things as well as improved their knowledge of the culture and introduced them to new friends.

“It was an outstanding experience for the students and the chaperones,” McBride said of the exchange trip. “It was so well organized, and there’s no better way to understand a culture than to live in their home for two weeks. You have to be mature, learn the culture and learn some independence, which is very important for high schoolers.”

While the students were with their families, the chaperones from nine participating American and Canadian schools worked together with teachers from the Yamate school to discuss their students' progress and compare notes on their programs.

I signed up to take Japanese with my friends because we liked reading manga. Then I fell in love with it. Karla’s passion was contagious.”

—  Alyssa Mann, LTHS alum and Japanese teacher in Minnesota

Although the 2024 exchange was a first for Lockport, Button said she has plans to participate with students again in the 2025-26 school year.

In addition to the study exchange, Button also has partaken in the JLEAP program, which sends student-teachers from Japan to the U.S.

In 2022 and 2023, she hosted an assistant teacher, Eimei Onoda, who worked with her students on their language skills and provided additional cultural insights.

Button said she will be applying for the program again in 2025.

She also has had her students communicate with Japanese students as pen pals and on social media for many years to give them more real-world practice with the language.

Passion for the program

While Button’s students enjoy the program and many students around the country have an interest in Japanese due to the ever-growing popularity of manga and anime (Japanese comic books and cartoons), programs like the one at LTHS remain rare, something Button said has a lot to do with a lack of teachers certified to teach the language.

However, thanks to Button and Lockport School District 205, there is at least one more high school offering Japanese to its students.

Alyssa Mann graduated from Lockport in 2014 and is now a Japanese teacher in Shakopee, Minnesota.

“I signed up to take Japanese with my friends because we liked reading manga,” Mann said. “Then I fell in love with it. Karla’s passion was contagious.”

While Mann initially pursued a career in translation, she didn’t enjoy it and eventually decided to get her teaching license.

“Not a lot of schools have it because you have to put in so much work,” Mann said. “It intimidates some kids, and they’re very picky about licensing in some states. New jobs in the field don’t pop up very often. Most of them are continuing existing programs.”

Mann is in her third year of teaching at Shakopee High School and took up the job after the previous teacher left.

“You need to have a lot of buy-in for it,” Mann said. “With Karla, it was always enjoyable. I don’t think anyone disliked being in her class. You can tell she really cares about each of her students and gets to know them. When I told her I was going into education, she was ecstatic.”

Button encouraged Mann to pursue her Japanese studies after graduating from LTHS, along with two of her classmates, one of whom now lives in Japan and the other who works in the U.S. with a Japanese-based company. All three of the alumni took part in the JET program, which allowed them to travel to Japan and teach English.

Mann said several of her current students also are interested in the JET program, and she has 10 students coming from Japan in an exchange with her high school. Mann said she is hoping to take a group of students to Japan next summer.

“Karla is just wonderful,” Mann said. “She’s been giving me advice on how to grow our program here. It’s been really fun. I don’t know if I’d have ever gone into teaching if it wasn’t for her. She’s the kind of teacher I think everybody wants to be. She’s a sweet human being, and you can tell she loves her job.”