Hi Yoshi! You graduated in Summer 2020 during a very strange year! And started teaching in the middle of a very strange year! Can you tell us about your first teaching job after graduation?

Hello 🙂 Long time no see.

It was indeed a strange year to finish school and start working! Fortunately, I got a teaching job at a public middle school in Eugene and at university in Seattle. Since I wanted to apply what I have studied during LTS program (SOOOOOOO many things), I took both jobs. However, I realized that one job was in Eugene and the other in Seattle. As you can imagine, it was very tough because I had to fly to Seattle every Tuesday and Thursday like every other CEO at Amazon, Google …

 

What was it like to teach in these strange conditions? What were some of the advantages and challenges? How was it similar or different from teaching in-person and remotely at the university?

It was definitely a tough year for me (I guess for everyone?). At the same time, I believe we can grow the most in the face of hardship. Here, I want to share some of my experiences and my thoughts.

Advantages:

・I first need to confess that I actually did not fly to Seattle every week. Because it was online 🙂 I find this (online learning) a huge advantage for language teaching. I believe it is very important  for us to provide opportunities to use the target language. However, in many places / schools, there are few people who can teach / speak the language. With online, it is not the case. In addition to the fact that I was able to teach students in Seattle, I summoned Japanese speakers living in Japan to my classes (real language speaking opportunities outside the classroom) 🙂

・I was able to explore so many new things (especially online teaching)! If it had not been online teaching, I would not have tried using online resources this much since I was not a big fan of language learning apps and websites before the pandemic. Don’t get me wrong. I am very young (Digital native), but I just didn’t enjoy them when I was a student (I am still (and always) a little younger than Emma Watson!!). Anyway, during this journey, I played around with using Google document assignments, Flipgrid, interactive videos, and so on!

・Since it was online, I was more available to my students. For example, some of my university students have a Japanese study group. They hold this on zoom at night. I could drop in to the group for like 10 minutes and answer their questions. Since it is very easy to go to their meeting (You just open your laptop), I managed to help more.

・We became eco-friendly. I did not print any handouts this year (although I personally prefer studying with paper)!

 

Disadvantages:

・The hardest thing was that I could not see and hear my students (at middle school). It was very tough because you don’t know whether they understood you or not. In addition, students can’t use their non-verbal communication (since their camera is off), which is important in language classes. I definitely believe we need to create a students’ mandatory camera policy.

・It was difficult to establish a good rapport with my students online. I can’t explain exactly why, but it was different from in-person classes.

・It was very difficult for students to focus on online classes (on their iPad / computer screens). I do not blame my students since we have so many distractions at home. I myself was busy all day scrolling through all 679 channels on my cable. Moreover, the class always had this man named “Yoshi” who looked a lot like Brad Pitt, so you know… which was a huge distraction for us too. Anyway, thus, I tried to have many small activities where students need to do something during the class.

・It seems it is hard for students to ask and answer questions on zoom. Since the covid situation got better, I was able to teach them at school in-person. I found out that many students raised their hands whenever I asked them questions.

 

Do you have any particular memories or stories to share about your experience?

Yes!! I do have many wonderful memories during this year. 🙂 Since I have a softball practice in 10 minutes, I will share one project here. (If you want to know more about my experiences, please join the softball team. You can meet LTS professors, other LTS graduates, and great people too.)

As I mentioned above, I took advantage of online learning and connecting my middle school students with Japanese students living in Japan. It was a more than one month project. Students introduced their food culture and towns to each other. Since Japan and America have 16-hour time difference, we used Flipgrid (which is basically a video version of Instagram). In order to benefit both students in Japan and America, our project was conducted in 50 % English and 50 % Japanese. From the survey I collected at the end of this project, I found out that our international exchange activity helped many students get motivated during this difficult time.

 

And your adventures are not over! Tell us about your plans for the next year. You will be the global Japanese teacher indeed.

Yes, I decided to take a teaching job at university in Saint Petersburg in Russia. Please look forward to my next post from Russia. 🙂 My next post might be wearing a jacket.

じゃあまた(See you soon)!