Volume 24 Issue 3
Winter 2017

Learning Learning
Developing Learner & Educator Identities at PANSIG 2017
Farrah Hasnain tKn^lN
Hamamatsu Senior High School

This was my first time presenting at a
JALT conference, and the second JALTconference that I had ever attended. Asan ALT, I wanted to contribute to this year’s
PanSIG conference at Akita International
University by presenting my research on howeffective team-teaching is in Japanese highschools. As a learner myself, I wanted to attend
as many presentations and panels as I could tobroaden my perspective on how other teachersand students have progressed in their learning
experiences over time. To me, the theme,“expand your interests,” meant taking theinitiative to share my own research interests
with a wider audience.
My first JALT conference was JALT2016 inNagoya. Luckily, I live in Hamamatsu, so it wasclose and inexpensive for me to attend. I wasonly there as an attendee, but I felt very
welcomed by the Learner Development SIG
and was encouraged by members of the LD SIG
and the Shizuoka JALT chapter to do researchand expand my knowledge on teaching English
as an ALT in the JET Program.
I started doing research on the effectiveness ofteam-teaching after attending JALT2016. The
programs chair of my chapter invited me to do apresentation at our local JALT chapter meetingon the current state of ALTs in Japan. At first, I
dabbled with many concepts such as lesson
planning strategies and pedagogy. In the end, I
decided to center my research on teacher
training from the ALT’s and JTE’s perspective
because I felt that it would be a good
opportunity to give a voice to the types ofinstructors who usually could not present at
JALT conferences for various reasons, including
finances, overlapping work schedules, and theirunfamiliarity with JALT. I wanted to share what

DEVELOPING IDENTITIESkind of English education students in Japan
would have before they graduate high school
and create a dialogue with other educators about
what we can do to improve the students’English acquisition.
Since I joined JALT last spring, I have seen
many presentations by non-Japanese teachers
about how they perceive their agency inJapanese workplaces. The two presentations
that really stood out to me in my local chapter
were by Diane Nagatomo and Laura Kusaka. InOctober 2016, Nagatomo presented on how
female native English instructors developed
their identities after moving to Japan. InFebruary, Kusaka presented on the idea of
Nihonjinron (a body of discourse which claims
that the Japanese race, language, geography,
culture, and psychology is entirely unique) andshared quotes from her interviews withJapanese-American
university
Englishinstructors in Japan over the course of threeyears. After seeing their presentations, I decided
to go towards an ethnographic route andpersonally interview and survey ALTs and JTEs
nationwide for this presentation. To me,statistics are important, but interviews can help
directly address and clearly illustrate the issues
that are implied in the collected data. Over 7months, I surveyed 128 ALTs and 14 JTEs, andinterviewed 31 ALTs (4 former) and 8 JTEs (1former) in-person and over Skype. As I started
making the presentation, I began to thinkcritically about how ALTs and JTEs are being
trained to team-teach, and expanded myinterests in team-teaching: how satisfied bothparties actually are with their teacher training
and how aware other educators are about what’s
going on in the classroom before their students
enter university or vocational school.

GRANT AWARDEE ESSAY |32

Learning Learning
One of the local chapter members encouraged
me to present at PanSIG and share this researchwith a wider audience. Before presenting atPanSIG, I was able to present at two local
chapter meetings in Hamamatsu and Shizuoka
and perfect my presentation in time for thisconference. Unfortunately, I had no access tofunding, so I was not sure if I could even afford
to attend another JALT conference. However,thanks to the LD PanSIG Grant, I was able tofly to Akita and share my presentation withmany people. Despite having taught in Japan forthree years, I was not a university professor, nor
had I published my research; so, at first I felt
more like a practitioner, someone who practices
teaching, than a researcher, who observes andanalyzes what is put into action.
Before I presented at PanSIG, I saw otherpresentations by AIU students and mentors.
After I attended the opening ceremony, I
watched the AIU students present Pecha
Kucha-style presentations on exploring theiridentities in English. Some that stood out to meinclude a Zainichi Japanese student whonavigated Japanese, Chinese and Korean
perceptions of the Senkaku Islands dispute, anda Japanese AIU student who joined a group ofChristian migrants and wandered through Spainwith them. These students intersected the themeof this year’s PanSIG and the missions ofseveral of the SIGs by connecting their English
learning experiences with their expanding
intercultural awareness.
At the LD SIG Forum, I also attended several
poster presentations on how the members of
the LD SIG themselves created opportunities
for their students to think reflectively on theirlearner development. These presentations not
only expanded my interest in reflective activities
for my students, but they also inspired me tobecome more conscious of my own
development as a teacher. The LD Forum had arotation of about four different poster

DEVELOPING IDENTITIESVolume 24 Issue 3
Winter 2017presentations. The methods that these
instructors used were especially helpful for
visual and auditory learners. Tree diagrams,interviews with native speakers, eikaiwa teaching
methods, and other reflective activities werepresented. Through these poster presentations, I
learned how to adapt these worksheets for myown students. One of the featured presentations
included a language learning tree diagram, which
was part of a collaboration between Mathew
Porter and an ALT. Seeing this collaboration
between ALTs and instructors in higher
education made me consider doing my own
projects in the future. After the LD SIG Forum,
I went to a poster presentation by Debra Occhi
about one of my favorite Sanrio characters,
Aggressive Retsuko. She’s an atypical Sanrio
character who is a clerical worker. She dealswith micro-aggressions in every episode, andDebra parallels the character’s experience with
common workplace issues in Japan. For
example, in one episode, she compared theMinistry of Health, Labor, and Welfare’sinitiatives for combating power harassment withthe character pressured to work overtime.
In the middle of the day, I did my presentation.
As it was my first JALT conference
presentation, I was very nervous. The time slots
between presentations were also very quick; wehad to set up our equipment as soon as the lastpresenter finished. The presenter before me
happened to be Melodie Cook, who presented
on adopted children Japan and the issues they
face in the foster care system. Her theme wasunique and informative. As I watched hersharing her own personal encounter with raising
adoptive children with traumatized pasts, I felt
in awe of the idea of presenting a topic that wasvery intimate with her identity as a mother and amentor. I’m also interested in research that
relates to me but is outside of TESOL, such as
immigration and the Asian diaspora. Seeing
presentations like Melodie’s helped meunderstand that as learners, our identities andGRANT AWARDEE ESSAY |33

Learning Learningpersonal experiences can highly influence thetype of research area we would want to pursue.
There were more audience members in mypresentation than when I had given it twice
before. One member was from my chapter, andtwo were the presenters whom I had seen rightbefore. The rest were unfamiliar, but I felt
honored that I recognized some of my audience.
I clicked through each slide and put myaudience in the shoes of the modern highschool ALT and JTE. Time flew by quickly; itfelt surreal once I finished speaking. At the endof my presentation, the audience members gaveme such positive feedback and I ended up
making a few connections. One was acontributing writer for the Japan Times, whosearticle I referenced in my presentation. I wasimpressed at how responsive my audience andother attendees were at my presentation. It
made me feel validated, and this experience
encouraged me and made me realize that I canplay the role as a practitioner and a researcher at
the same time as I actively teach as an ALT.
I was unable to attend the banquet because I
didn’t pre-register; instead, I spontaneously
joined some members from the Speech, Drama,& Debate SIG next to whom I had sat on thebus from AIU. We had deep conversations
about learning how to teach. “Teaching is aperformance”, one of them said, “Whenteachers perform, they practice good teachingstrategies instead of only observing them.” This

Volume 24 Issue 3
Winter 2017
person especially stood out to me. Like me, she
was a woman of color who was fairly young.
She and many of the other attendees were very
diverse and I felt more at home at thisconference. If I hadn’t attended, I would nothave known how diverse JALT is.
On the second day, I felt more relaxed. I
switched out my suit for jeans like some of theother attendees and checked out some morepresentations before flying back to Shizuoka.
This conference had such an amicableatmosphere. Even in the waiting area, it was soeasy for me to naturally have conversations withnew people. I also noticed that a few people
recognized my name and asked me about mypresentation. Attending this conference as afirst-time presenter was really worthwhile.
It was truly an honor to attend this year’s
PanSIG conference. I intend on attending (andmaybe even presenting again!) at next year’s
PanSIG. This conference embodied the themeof expanding interests as I interacted with manyfolks from different SIGs and bonded with ones
from my own. Attending the conference
allowed me to expand my practice, myexperience, and my own identity as a teacher. It
also helped me interact and connect with alarger community of diverse learner-educators,
providing a strong foundation from which I cantruly “expand my interests”.

Farrah Hasnain is an ALT with the JET Program at Hamamatsu Higashi Senior High School.
She is from Washington, DC. Her research interests include English education in Japanese highschools and ethnography of immigrant and minority communities in Japan and the US.
Author correspondence: farrahhas@gmail.com

DEVELOPING IDENTITIESGRANT AWARDEE ESSAY |34