Blog #1 - Introduction of the Mochagaijin

My name is Chejuana Willis. I am a 7th grade school teacher for DallasISD. I have been a teacher for a total of ten years, six of which I taught for the Japanese Board of Education in Osaka, Japan. It is in Japan that I fell in love with teaching. I love the whole aspect of giving students the power to examine and discover things on their own. I grew up in Dallas, TX where I went to a number of schools from private to public. In those experiences I gained a lot of understanding from different cultures and ethnicities at a young age. Eventually I graduated from the Business and Management Center High School in DallasISD. This high school was a melting pot of Dallas due to the fact that we came from all over the city and learned how diverse our hometown really was.

After graduating high school I attended Texas A&M and graduated in 1997. In college I took every opportunity to explore different cultures. While studying at A&M I studied and worked abroad in the glorious country of Spain. After graduating, I moved to Phoenix, AZ then to Osaka, Japan. I lived in Japan for a total of six years. I learned a lot and had the opportunity to explore the country and most of Asia as well. While in Japan I learned a lot about other cultures as well, which truly opened my eyes to the world.

My family is a huge mix of ethnicities . . . we are Brazilian, Creole, African American, and Native American. During the holidays you never knew what cuisine would be served or if everything under the sun would be on the dining room table. My purpose for taking this course to learn how teach/show my students cultural acceptance among each other, also how to explore this concept among my colleagues as well. My teaching philosophy is borrowed from Denzel Washington “We do what we have to do, so that we can do what we want to do”. I look forward to growing in this class and learning a lot more about myself and others.