Our staff is made up of enthusiastic native speakers, language experts, and those who have learned Japanese as a second language — just like you! All of our staff are here to help you have fun while learning.
The dean is the on-site director of the Language Village. The credit facilitator is in charge of running the high school credit program.
Kaylene hideko Ruwart
Kaylene hideko Ruwart is co-dean of Mori no Ike (first half), the Japanese Language Village. hideko started learning Japanese in the late 90s armed with a dictionary, highlighters, and a whole lot of Sailor Moon songs. A few years and one summer homestay later, she was a credit villager at Mori no Ike and never quite went home. The next year, she did Credit Abroad, and the year after that, she started on staff as a Junior Counselor. Through the years, she has been a counselor, credit teacher, credit facilitator, and assistant dean, as well as the unofficial Official Graphic Designer for Mori (and creator of mascot Kouta).
Outside of the Concordia Language Villages, she works for college readiness programs AVID and TRIO Upward Bound and occasionally does graphic design and illustration work. Whether at school or at camp, making connections with students and setting them up for success is what keeps her going. When not working, she’s usually found reading sci fi-fantasy novels, writing one, or drinking tea.
Meredith Koyomi Hanson
Meredith Koyomi Hanson is co-dean of Mori no Ike (first half), the Japanese Language Village. When Koyomi was 17, she decided to learn Japanese by going to Mori no Ike as a credit villager. She and Hideko were cabinmates that summer! The next year, she was too old to go back as a villager, so she worked at Lac du Bois-Hackensack until her Japanese got better, and she has been back and forth across the Villages ever since. Her CLV adventures include time at El Lago del Bosque-Cass Lake, 24 hours as one of Les Voyageurs (hopefully more someday!), teaching dozens of professional development workshops to staff from nearly every CLV language, helping name the buildings at Mori no Ike-Patmos, being interim dean of Mori no Ike in 2016, learning and remembering over a dozen International Day dances, and spending many, many summers as Mori no Ike’s credit facilitator and curriculum developer.
During the school year, she teaches English, ESL, and Japanese at a boarding school in the Northeast. In grad school, she did research with villagers at Mori no Ike and found that the identities we all develop around our village names help us feel more comfortable speaking another language. And more importantly, as our camp selves, we can take the chance to be more adventurous, more thoughtful, and more courageous versions of ourselves.
Jack Tamaki Shimizu
Jack Tamaki Shimizu is dean of Mori no Ike (second half). 2023 is Tamaki’s 14th year on staff at Mori no Ike, and he has also held leadership positions as Two-Week Curriculum Facilitator and Credit Facilitator. This is also his 4th year as dean. Tamaki also previously attended Concordia Language Village’s Japanese program as a two-week villager, credit villager and credit abroad villager in Japan.
In his home state of Virginia, Tamaki earned his Bachelor’s degree from the College of William & Mary with dual majors in Psychology and East Asian Studies. During his undergraduate studies, Tamaki also studied abroad at Keio University in Tokyo, Japan. He went on to earn a Master’s in Japanese Language and Linguistics from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, with a focus on pedagogy and sociolinguistics. During both his undergraduate and graduate years, Tamaki spent many semesters in his universities’ Japanese classrooms as a teaching assistant and later as an independent instructor of his own Japanese courses.
