Hannah Wells
Join us in celebrating Hannah Wells, a remarkable JET Program alumnus who spent the full five years teaching in Nagaoka City of Niigata Prefecture, Japan from 2017 to 2022. During her time on the program, Hannah not only enriched the lives of her students but also immersed herself in Japanese culture, gaining invaluable insights and experiences. Now, Hannah is a teacher of Japanese! Discover how her time in Japan continues to inspire and impact her professional path!
My first day in Nagaoka was a truly unforgettable experience - not only was it my 22nd birthday, but it was also right in the middle of the nationally renowned Nagaoka Fireworks Festival. I watched it from the rooftop of my apartment complex with my fellow newcomers and my kind landlord. The sheer enormity of this festival is really something to behold and blows any other fireworks display I've ever seen out of the water - I didn't even know it was possible to make fireworks in the shape of watermelon, love hearts and Pikachu to name a few!
I'm now a Japanese teacher! I loved teaching English so much that I knew I wanted to continue to be a language teacher in my home country. I'd never actually studied Japanese before going to Japan for the job, but I self-studied in my downtime and after school, then took the JLPT exams up to N2 level. I was accepted onto a PGDE teacher training course at the University of Sheffield and am now in my second year of full-time employment at Dartford Grammar School. Our school is unique in that half of each new cohort to the school studies Japanese up to GCSE level, so we have 5 teachers of Japanese employed at the school. I'm also the manager of our Japanese Excellence Programme, where 1 class in each year group from 7-10 has a weekly extra Japanese lesson and gets to engage with cultural activities and trips such as visiting a local Japanese boarding school. I also attended our annual Japan trip this October.
Without JET, I would have been on a completely different life path to where I am today. I had an immeasurable amount of unforgettable experiences which I'm now able to share with my own students and inspire them to learn the language or perhaps visit one day too. Working in schools in Japan has also given me a unique insight into the educational system and school culture which my students are always really intrigued by.
If you're a current JET, make the most of your language learning opportunity - if you're really keen on teaching, perhaps Japanese language teaching is a possible career path for you in the future! As someone who is self-taught, it's definitely possible if you're determined, even if Japanese is not what you studied at university.
Are you a JET alum with a story to share? Get in touch to be featured in an upcoming Senpai Spotlight.
