Earlier this month, Bloomington High School North Japanese teacher Michiko Owaki won the 2025 Association of Indiana Teachers of Japanese (AITJ) Rising Star Award. This award recognizes educators for their contributions to Japanese education in Indiana who have been teaching for five years or less. She was recognized for this award at the Indiana Foreign Language Teachers Association (IFLTA) conference on November 8, 2025. Owaki said in an interview with The North Star that she felt “honored and humbled” to receive the award. “I know that I work really hard, and the students like my class a lot.”

She continued to explain how with recent budget cuts, it felt especially important for the World Language department – specifically the Japanese program – to receive this recognition. Every year towards the end of the school year, Owaki asks for input from her students about the class and the curriculum.

“I’m really proud and happy that a lot of students like the community I created in my classroom, so that’s what I’m very proud of,” Owaki said.

Before being formally presented with the award, Owaki spoke about her research and observations about Comprehensible Input (CI) Based learning in a Japanese classroom. CI learning is based on listening, conversing, and using the language in real ways, instead of focusing solely on traditional grammar. This technique is often used in teaching European foreign languages, but not as often in others, such as Japanese. Owaki implemented this technique about a year ago after she researched it, and said she thinks her students are enjoying it.

“If the students really take into it, they become more fluent, more quickly,” Owaki said.

Owaki also started and ran the Homestay exchange program with Yamate Gakuin Senior High School in Yokohama, Japan. She started launching the program during 2022, with discussions with Principal Matthew Stark, and Yamate Gakuin. Stark agreed for the program to begin in 2023. This gave students the opportunity to host Japanese students for two weeks in April, and go visit Japan over the summer and stay with the same students.

“I established that program, mostly by myself, because there was no one else at this school,” Owaki said. “I’m really happy that I did. It was great for the school community too, even the students who are not taking Japanese, volunteered as the host families. And both my students in Japanese class and those host families—everyone loved it.”