A Reflection on Empathy, Student-Centered Teaching, and Life-Long Learning

Posted: Sawako Tsutsumi on October 3, 2023

Editor's Note: This is the seventh in a series of blog posts in which teaching award winners will share their experiences, philosophies, and techniques.

Sawako Tsutsumi is a Lecturer of Japanese in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and a winner of the 2022 Teaching Excellence Award.

My career in education started quite a long time ago as a high school teacher in a small town in Japan, where I taught English as a foreign language. Since then, I have taught students ranging from elementary school children to adults at various schools and colleges in three different countries: Japan, Canada, and the United States. Over the years, I have gained various teaching experiences that helped me crystallize what is important as I continue my teaching career. Wherever I taught, the following three commitments guided me through my teaching journey: empathy, student-centered teaching, and life-long learning.

Even though my main background is in education and language acquisition, I have taught math, science, social studies, English, Japanese, and more, as required in my various teaching positions. From these experiences teaching diverse content to my students, I have come to realize that my primary ambition is not to impart specific knowledge but to serve as a role model whom my students can trust and learn from in order to grow as individuals. Every semester I try to achieve this by modeling mutual respect and empathy as well as actively getting to know my students and using open communication in class. I believe that connecting with my students as a person and establishing a trusting relationship has a positive impact on their learning, overall classroom experience, and, hopefully, their lives. I always feel honored to be a small part of my students' lives, with the opportunity to help them develop academically and socially so that they can realize their dreams. I aspire to be an empathetic person by giving my students support and understanding.

To me, student-centered teaching means knowing my students' different needs and being flexible and open in delivering my courses. Through different teaching experiences, I believe that I have become more attuned to students' needs and able to adjust my instruction to better serve them. My ability to gauge students' needs and to be flexible has proven to be very valuable in teaching at the different UNG campuses. I have been teaching both on the Dahlonega campus and on the Gainesville campus. Student populations on these two campuses differ significantly in terms of their cultural and social backgrounds. I adjust how I deliver the lessons as well as how I relate to my students on the respective campuses, even though I use the same curriculum.

I am a strong believer in life-long learning, and that is exactly why I chose to work in education. After each semester, I feel that I learned more than I taught, from my students, colleagues, and the whole experience of teaching the course. I always communicate to my students that learning is very important to me, and I try to model and encourage life-long learning by becoming an active learner. Being an active learner is very crucial in language acquisition. Having taught English and Japanese for so many years, I have come to believe that the majority of student learning actually takes place outside of the classroom. Classroom instruction is merely an introduction, source of motivation, and opportunity for students to be exposed to the language. Students develop and acquire their language skills outside of classroom, working on their homework, using the language in their own life, and trying to make sense of it in their own mind. Therefore, I think that I need to strive to be an effective instructor who can make our students want to learn on their own, give them the tools that they can use, and serve as a guide along the way. In order to encourage my students to have more control in their own learning, I have my students assume class facilitation roles such as starting each class, going over the schedule, and making announcements. This is done in Japanese, which gives them practice speaking the language, while also overtly signaling that they are in control of running the class. Throughout the semester, I also introduce my students to different learning techniques, devices, websites and so forth so that they can try and choose what works best for their own learning.

I feel very fortunate to be in my position at the University of North Georgia, where I can work and collaborate with talented, supportive, and genuinely nice colleagues and students. It has been six years since I first joined the university community. I believe that I have been able to contribute to students' learning by teaching each of my classes under the guidance of my commitment to empathy, student-centered teaching, and life-long learning.