Agena Sensei was born in Japan, and grew up in the U.S and Japan. Upon graduating from high school in Japan, she went to college in Pennsylvania, majoring in Elementary Education and minoring in Music. While still in Pennsylvania, she taught 1st and 3rd grade. She was a 4th grade classroom teacher at a Japanese Immersion School in Portland, Oregon, before moving to Hawaii in 1996. She has been teaching standards-based Japanese language as part of the school curriculum at Aina Haina School since 1996. She is very enthusiastic about teaching and playing an active part of young students' cultural and language experience.
She has been conducting numerous presentation and workshop in an effort to promote the second language education on the mainland, Hawaii, and Japan. She has been featured in several newspaper articles, and has served as one of the judges for the annual KZOO Japanese Speech Contest for high school students in Hawaii.
She received the Hawaii Association of Language Teachers 2002 Excellence in Teaching Award and 2016 SWCOLT Excellence in Classroom Teaching Award. She was also featured in the MidWeek East Oahu Voice. Click here for the article.
Her interests include playing/teaching the piano, sewing, Zumba, and cooking. She has two children.