Tomoko's Page

My teaching career has started at Washington University in St. Louis while taking graduate courses there. I earned MA in Education with concentration in Curriculum and Instruction in Japanese language pedagogy from St. Louis University. Since 1995, I have been teaching Japanese language at Department of East Asian Languages, Literatures and Cultures in the University of Virginia, where preserved academic village created by Thomas Jefferson in 1819. Along the side of my colleagues, I have been working to improve and strengthen the Japanese program in the past two decades. I have taught all levels of courses from the 1st Year Japanese to the 4th Year Japanese courses including the Intensive Summer courses.

It has been my utmost pleasure to be able to see my students grow not only as a Japanese student but as a person over the course of months or years. A different group of students I have each year have inspired me to explore and improve what I can offer to them. One of my 2nd year Japanese students shared his reflection giving sincere thanks to his classmates at the last day of the class. He said that Japanese class was a place he wanted to come every day when he was so devastated by the loss of a close family member. Witnessing student’s ‘aha!’ moments has been the highlight of my professional career, however, being a part of the class seeing a student to be able to express such deep feeling in Japanese, it was beyond my words.

In the recent years, I have involved in very interesting project called J-GAP (Japanese Language Education Global Articulation Project), Prof. Yasu-Hiko Tohsaku (UC San Diego) as the Director. J-GAP consists various projects initiated in several countries including the United State and Virginia represented as a focus area of the J-GAP USA. The J-GAP USA team has contributed to design an articulation model for the K-16 Japanese teachers in the Mid-Atlantic area and has ignited a number of curriculum articulation projects among K-16 Japanese teachers. At the University, I am currently serving as the Director of Shea House (a language house) where multiple language programs offer a residential semi-immersion program to their selected language students. I am also a newly appointed Director of the Japanese Program in the department.

I like this quote by Martin Luther King: “You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” It resonates my view of foreign language learning that I often share with my students. It progresses in spiral rather than linear. It ignites possibilities and opportunities that offer another lens to see the world and self. I also think this somewhat mirror how my teaching career have evolved and I hope it to be in the future. At this point in my career, I have a growing interest in course design in the realm of Japanese pedagogy. I am also interested in investigating ways to support human dimensions through foreign language learning, such as reflective practice, self-directed learning, collaborative learning. It seems to me that PBLL would offer a venue to develop such elements, and I’m looking forward to learn more about that.

I am a native of Okinawa but a complete foreigner to Okinawan local languages and the Okinawan culture adopted in Hawaii.