(Professor of the Year)

Connecticut College's toughest teacher is also one of the best

By Jane Gordon Julien

urrounded by stacks upon stacks of the Journal of Asian Studies, stiff-backed dolls and posters of Japan, 10 students sit silently, absorbed in their work at a long wooden table in a small classroom on the Connecticut College campus. At the head of the table stands a woman in a black turtleneck and a bright, poppy-red blazer.

She speaks, breaking the silence. She has the students pass their papers to classmates on their right and begins to move about the table, checking in, giving instructions, laughing and encouraging. She is a flurry of contradictions— disciplined yet forgiving, rapid-fire and loud one moment, whispering and methodical in her enunciation the next. For an inexperienced listener, facial expressions and body language are all that can be understood, because she is speaking only in Japanese.

Total immersion in a language: That is the approach Hisae Kobayashi, a native of Japan and a senior lecturer at Connecticut College since 1999, has taken to teaching Japanese. During the 2014 nomination process for Professor of the Year, a program sponsored by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the letters touting her talents described a professor who gives all students a fighting chance — particularly if they do their homework — and who insists that success depends on following her “Ten Commandments” of Japanese. Those commandments begin: “I, Hisae Kobayashi, am the only teacher of Japanese 101-102. You shall have no other teacher.”

She is smart and charming, but also serious. In fully understanding the culture of today, she is able to clarify for her students what they can and should expect. From her commandments, an admonition: “We live in a climate of culture where everything needs to be solved immediately. When you have a headache, you take a pain-killer; when you are hungry, you heat up a microwave dinner; when you want to obtain certain information, you Google it. Learning Japanese is not immediate.”

For Kobayashi, teaching Japanese is all-encompassing. It is a 24-hour-a-day pursuit, one in which she behaves as an inventor, toiling into each night to discover an even better way to help her students master Japanese, arguably one of the most difficult modern languages.

National recognition

Kobayashi’s students and colleagues past and present speak emphatically of her teaching talents. She impressed CASE and the Carnegie Foundation, too, and was named the 2014 Connecticut Professor of the Year in November.

That’s quite an honor in a state crammed with top talent from the likes of Yale, Wesleyan, Trinity, the University of Connecticut and many more. All told, almost 10,000 faculty labor in classrooms throughout the state each year, according to the state Department of Higher Education. From crowds of blinding brilliance, Kobayashi emerged a star.

One of the most prestigious awards given to college professors, the CASE/Carnegie Foundation honor is not bestowed every year in every state. A high bar is set and must be met. “It is the only national program to recognize excellence in teaching and mentoring,” says Pam Russell, the director of communications for CASE. “The process is rigorous and the criteria high.”

Equally high are the standards Kobayashi sets for her students — and herself, She has published her research on teaching methods, and has presented at numerous conferences on Japanese pedagogy. Perhaps most telling to her teaching success, though, was her receipt of the College’s John S. King Memorial Award in 2008, given to teacher-scholars who demonstrate high standards of teaching excellence and concern for students.

Equally high are the standards Kobayashi sets for her students — and herself. She has published her research on teaching methods and has presented at numerous conferences on Japanese pedagogy. Perhaps most telling was her receipt of the College’s John S. King Memorial Award in 2008, given to teacher-scholars who demonstrate high standards of teaching excellence and concern for students.

Kobayashi’s commitment to learning — for herself and her students — has manifested itself in dozens of ways. She developed a technique for combining Japanese scripts and sounds in online materials, and participated in Haverford College’s Center for Educational Technology workshop to continue developing a Web-based Japanese reading and writing program. She serves and has served on several committees within the College, as the Japanese language program coordinator and as an adviser to the College’s Toor Cummings Center for International Studies and the Liberal Arts.

As the Connecticut Professor of the Year, Kobayashi adds another element to the excellent reputation of Connecticut College’s language programs. Of the 31 state honorees recognized this fall by the Carnegie Foundation and CASE, Kobayashi is the only language professor.

Says President Katherine Bergeron, “Hisae Kobayashi is an extraordinary language teacher who exemplifies the innovative teaching and highest standards of excellence that are characteristic of our Connecticut College faculty."

Senior Lecturer in Japanese Hisae Kobayashi is known for her strict classroom rules, including: No English allowed. But she also promises her students that if they put in the work, they will learn Japanese. "My ultimate goal is to help them become independent learners - not dependent," she says.

Reactions from near and far

Learning Japanese is one thing; using it, another. When the Carnegie/CASE award was announced, congratulatory notes — and stories — flowed in from around the world. One former student, Andras Molnar ’09, who is majoring in applied linguistics at Columbia University Teachers College, shared an update. He had applied for a position doing Japanese translation work for Columbia’s Eastern Studies Department — a position typically given to a native speaker. “I was really surprised I got the job. It’s difficult, but I know I can do it, partly from the confidence that comes from Professor Kobayashi.”

Kobayashi also heard from Andrea Mendoza ’13, a Ph.D. candidate at Cornell in Asian literature, religion and culture. “Congratulations — and, above all, thank you — to Kobayashi (sensei)!” she wrote. “Without her enormous influence, none of what I’m doing right now would be possible.”

From Jack Lichten ’10, who is living in Tokyo after finishing his master’s degree at Sophia University: “My undergraduate Japanese language professor was named one of the best in the country. Congratulations!”

They kept coming. Dozens of other joyful, congratulatory and news-filled missives flooded her email, her mailbox and the College’s Facebook page.

From clueless to confident

Passing between many Japanese students and alumni are legendary stories of those who walked into their first “Introductory Japanese” class in the history-laden Woodworth House and felt certain they had entered an alternate universe.

When Donglin Li ’17 settled in on his first day of Japanese class last year, he heard only Japanese. Kobayashi had invited upperclassmen to sit in, and they were chattering away. “I expected some English,” Li remembers. He sat there, worried thoughts racing through his head.

Was he supposed to already know Japanese? He turned to a fellow student and whispered, “Are we in the right class?”

His classmate nodded.

Now he chats effortlessly in Japanese with fellow students and Kobayashi. “I didn’t expect the level of intensity,” he says. “I didn’t expect to study this hard. Professor Kobayashi has a distinct style of teaching — it’s this constant pressure.”

It is a pressure Kobayashi also places on herself. “Since I challenge students, I think it’s only fair for me to be challenged,” she says. In keeping with that philosophy, she recently took up ballroom dancing, a physically and mentally rigorous activity that, like Japanese, requires flawless precision. “I felt like the instructor did to me what I do to my students,” Kobayashi says. “It’s good — good for me to be the student.”

At the end of the fall semester of classes this academic year, the College hosted a reception to honor Kobayashi. As colleagues, College staff, and current and former students congratulated the professor, Dean of the Faculty Abigail Van Slyck stood up to say a few words. Van Slyck noted that Professor of the Year recipients “are not just excellent teachers, but they go a step beyond excellence in terms of their dedication, commitment and skill at getting the very best out of their students.”

To illustrate her point, Van Slyck, a professor of architectural history, told a story about a student, Daniel De Sousa ’07, whom she and Kobayashi had both taught.

“I knew Hisae as a colleague, as a wonderfully warm person,” Van Slyck said. “Daniel told me what she was like in class — and it scared me a little. She is very demanding, very strict — and he couldn’t get enough of it. I find it a very good sign that one of our very toughest teachers has also been recognized as one of our very best.”

Even after her students have graduated, they seek her counsel. When a tsunami and earthquake struck Japan in March 2011, leveling the rural town of Yamamoto, where her former student Molnar was teaching, he evacuated to Tokyo and assessed his options. His family and friends in the United States demanded he return home, particularly because Yamamoto was close to an endangered nuclear power plant.

He called Kobayashi instead. “She said to me, ‘Take a moment to look at all the roads in front of you, and make a decision that will end in having the least amount of regrets. Then don’t look back,’” Molnar remembers. “The conversation gave me confidence and direction. I chose to go back to the town and live with whatever fate came with it, and if I had gone home, the experience would have been very different emotionally for me. I was so very glad she talked to me about it.”

Is there a secret?

Whenever Assistant Professor of Japanese Takeshi Watanabe arrives at the East Asian Languages and Cultures offices at Woodworth House — morning, noon, or night — he finds his colleague toiling away in an office crammed with files, books, pictures, posters and thank-you notes from students.

“She is absolutely dedicated to her work — to Japanese studies,” says Watanabe. “I really respect her for challenging herself constantly, and for expecting her students to do the same.”

Over time, as America has become an increasingly visual culture reliant on technology, Kobayashi has seen students go from struggling with learning a difficult language to struggling to communicate in any language at all.

“I am teaching today’s students Japanese, but also how to communicate,” she says.

She assigns students a daily conversation for them to memorize and grades them each day on their performance. “Speaking Japanese will improve reading skills, but the reverse is not true,” she tells her students. To help improve their speaking skills, she requires they work with audio files.

Her “Intensive Elementary Japanese” class meets five times a week for 75-minute sessions, and she demands attendance. But showing up is not enough; students must be prepared. “I don’t care if you are a good student or a weak student. I like a student who studies,” she says. Preparation is a must; she does not wait for raised hands, but rather calls on students randomly.

She embraces the process of learning — the road to the end rather than the end itself. Before midterms and final exams, she tells her students, “I want you to go through frustration and negative emotions to find the answers. Unless you go through the process, the information will not stay in your brain. Technology advances daily, but human beings have not changed at all. There is no easy way to learn.”

Hisae Kobayashi celebrates her third birthday at a party in her family's apartment in Japan.

Sidebar

Finding her place

Hisae Kobayashi grew up in Setagaya-ku, a quiet residential suburb of Tokyo, and still owns, with her younger brother, the family home. When she was in high school, her homeroom teacher told her she should become a teacher, but she didn’t yet see herself in that role. At that point, she had decided only that she would live in the United States, where her mother’s family had spent time, and that she liked foreign languages.

She went to Tsuda College in Tokyo and, after graduating, landed a job teaching at an all-boys trade school in Tokyo. “The students did not want to be there, and they definitely did not want to learn,” she remembers. It was a difficult assignment, but she learned an important aspect of teaching — that controlling the class comes first.

But a new world awaited her. In 1992, while she was in her late 20s, she left Tokyo for the United States. She attended the Bryn Mawr College Summer Institute to train to teach Japanese as a foreign language. From there, she went to Evansville, Ind., where she earned her master’s degree at the University of Evansville. She taught Japanese for five years at Williams College before making what would be a long-term commitment to New London and Connecticut College’s Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures.

Although she periodically returns to her native country with students for 10-day visits as part of the College’s Traveling Research and Immersion Program, she sees herself as a woman without a country, a Japanese native who left her homeland long ago, and an immigrant to the United States who, after 22 years on American soil, still perceives herself as a visitor.

But her students would say that they know where home is for Kobayashi Sensei, as they call her: a classroom, wherever it may be.