This year has quickly come to an end already.

The year 2023 was a year of great learning experience for me.

First, in March, we planned and provided a faculty development session at the Institute of Liberal Arts. I facilitated a workshop on the theme of "Having a Dialogue while Respecting Diversity." Although there was a sense of discomfort and discomfort in the room (which is also expected in this type of work), and there were some quite difficult discussions during the session, I believe that I had a very meaningful time with the warm support from my colleagues.

I have worked as a reviewer for the Institutional Review Board for human subject research at Tokyo Tech.  I am also in charge of compiling the review documents in this committee. This is a work with a great deal of responsibility (and time!). 

From March to April, I was involved in creating materials related to diversity with the great amount of support from the administrative staff. Thank you to everyone in the Public Relations Division and Planning Division for your support in timely manner.

From June to August, I taught the graduate school course ``Essence of Humanities: American Studies'' again this year. The class had approximately 170 students, which gave us difficulty keeping up with the attendance and assignments, but I was able to finish it without any issues, thanks to the help of the TAs, liberal arts administration staff, and English administrative staff. The grading took a very long time, but the students had worked diligently on the reports, so I took my time reading each one of them. The course American Studies deals with topics that are not often discussed in Japan, such as race, ethnicity, and structural and institutional discrimination, and has a relatively heavy content that teaches you to confront your own unconscious biases and understand current phenomena through historical perspectives. Despite this, 170 students participated in class and submitted assignments each time, and each of them considered the topic of their choice and wrote a paper on it (in English). The majority of the content was very deep, and I feel like I was able to learn a lot from them.

In August, I presented papers at the Japanese Society for Educational Studies and the Japanese Society for Educational Psychology.

In particular, at the Society of Educational Psychology conference, I had the opportunity to speak about the practice of social emotional learning (SEL), which I would like to focus on in Japan in the future. I received interesting questions from graduate students, and as I talked with them about foreign language education and SEL, I received even more motivation to further continue my work in this field.

In September, I attended the first face-to-face meeting of the EGAP Japan Consortium sponsored by ETS which was held in Kyoto. I had a very meaningful time being able to meet face-to-face, exchange opinions about academic English education, and deepen mutual understanding on our missions for English teaching with everyone at ETS who always takes care of me and the teachers I had only met through Zoom.

Additionally, from September, I have been involved in planning and running workshops for faculty members. This is currently a work in progress, but we aim to create a safe and sound campus where students can learn actively and where they can play an active role.

In November, I participated in the World Educational Research Association meeting held in Singapore. As I presented two papers, I was able to exchange opinions and information with researchers who had similar interests, especially regarding the lack of diversity in early childhood education. It was a very educational time for me! 

I also participated in the university-wide faculty development and had the opportunity to meet faculty members in science and technology fields with whom I had not had the opportunity to talk face-to-face until now. I was very honored to be able to work with everyone at Tokyo Tech, who are seriously thinking about supporting education and students, through work, discussions, and discussions about AI and diversity. Thank you very much to everyone who planned and organized the event

At the end of December, I participated in an EGAP Japan Consortium meeting online. We exchanged opinions on English education curriculum and class management at other universities in Japan, and I could not help thinking that being exposed to diverse experiences, knowledge, and skills is truly important in academia and beyond. I sincerely appreciated this opportunity, and I thank everyone who ran and attended this meeting.

This has been my third year at Tokyo Tech, thanks to the warm support of my colleagues at Tokyo Tech and everyone outside the university and in the research field, I have been able to focus on teaching, administrative work, and research over the past year. I look forward to even more events next year, such as the merger with Tokyo Medical and Dental University. I would like to work even harder, and I humbly ask for your continuing support.

December has already arrived this year.

The 3rd quarter at Tokyo Tech ended. Although I was busy with grading while traveling and participating in Faculty Development in the following weeks, I was able to start reach the 4th quarter.

In the 4th quarter, I will be teaching: 

Liberal Arts Final Report (GSEP Class)

TOEFL Preparation Seminar 8

Oral Expressions in English 4

For the first time in our TOEFL preparation seminar, I will be using ETS's Criterion writing program. I hope that my students will improve their English writing skills and find writing enjoyable through their use of the program.

It's been a long time since I've reunited with the GSEP students I worked with in the Visionary Project class two years ago. I'm pretty much looking forward to working with a amazing group of bright students again.