Nozomi Imai
“I discovered my career with ALLEX!”
Nozomi Imai, Lecturer in Japanese, Vanderbilt University
Host University: Linfield College, Oregon
Program: Two-year degree-seeking Teaching Associate Program
Degree: Second Bachelors in International Relations
Language: Japanese
Journey before ALLEX
Before I joined ALLEX, I was living in Japan. I had just graduated from college with a Bachelors in English Communications. Honestly, I could not really decide what to do after graduating from college. I was not ready to start working or even think about job hunting. So, my goals and objectives for joining ALLEX were pretty vague. However, I did know that I wanted to challenge myself and experience new things. In particular, I wanted to see whether I could get a degree abroad. I did not want to be just an exchange student. I wanted to actually get a degree. ALLEX made that financially possible for me. I also worked the summer before the training started at various part-time jobs to save up money.
Summer Teacher Training
When I arrived at the training program, everything was completely new. I had zero experience teaching, especially teaching Japanese. I was not sure if I could really teach college students after just two months of training. However, the training really prepared us. We learned not only theory but we also got to practice a lot. In fact, we started practicing right after we started the program. It was intense but organized really well.
In particular, I was amazed by how language teaching happens in this program. It was completely different from anything that I had experienced before as an English student in Japan. I still remember the first class I observed during the training program. There was absolutely no used in English in the class, even though the learners were supposed to be complete beginners at Japanese. But it somehow worked! The teachers created a context where the students could use the language. The teachers also modeled the language and built up slowly little by little. By the end of the fifty-minute class, the students could actually use eight or nine expressions. I mean, the students could not only say the expressions but the students could really use the expressions to communicate with each other and with the teacher. When I saw this, I was so excited. The teaching was totally different from anything I expected. I remember thinking, “Wow!” Even though I had not been thinking about teaching Japanese as my career, at that moment I got really excited about the program and about the idea of teaching Japanese.
How I Discovered My Future with ALLEX
I feel that I gained so much through my experience at ALLEX. Part of that was finding a career. Before participating, I was not sure what I wanted to do. I had not considered teaching Japanese as a career. Of course, I knew that participating in ALLEX meant that I had to teach Japanese. But I never imagined I would get interested in making that my career. I thought it was just a way to get to the States and get a degree without paying tuition. Instead, I found what I wanted to do through this program. Plus, the program trained and prepared me for that career. I really got into teaching Japanese. After experiencing ALLEX, my goals became clear. I found what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. This spring, I graduated with my Masters in Japanese Pedagogy. In the fall, I will start working as a Japanese lecturer at Vanderbilt University.
However, finding a career was just half of the value of ALLEX. The other half was meeting many people who are so important in my life right now. In particular, I am grateful for meeting the master teachers in the training program. They were the ones who made me want to teach Japanese. Meeting them really changed how I thought about teaching. They motivated me to become a teacher. And now I am actually back in the ALLEX summer training program but as a teacher! It is great to be back.
To people considering the program, I really want to say that ALLEX is not only about how it connects to your career. I think some people might wonder whether this program really leads to the next career step. I would say that aside from any career benefits, the experience itself is really, really valuable for your life. Even if you are not sure whether the program leads to a successful career, I would say it is definitely worth trying. You can gain so much through the experience of being at a host university and teaching language classes. It really teaches you a lot about who you are and how you see yourself. The ALLEX experience itself – and especially the people you meet along the way – are absolutely invaluable.