Mini-Series Four Perspectives on Home: Seeking, Creating, and Sharing Our Safe Spaces more

Sat, May 21, 15:30-16:30 Asia/Tokyo

In this session, four panelists will discuss what experiences and resources have helped them develop skills at creating and maintaining safe, welcoming, home-like spaces. Jackson Koon Yat Lee: I will share my personal experience as a Hong Kong Canadian living in Japan and the ever-changing meaning of home throughout my life, as well as how the journey has led to my on-going engagements in DEI-related topics in professional and social lives in hopes to demonstrate solidarity and inclusion for others with blurred visions of home. May Kyaw Oo: In my talk, I will discuss the fluidity of identities connected to the concept of displacement due to political unrest, and how existing in a liminal space impacts a person’s identity as a person, as an educator, and as a researcher. I will also discuss the importance of having an online community where one feels safe and respected when practicing self-disclosure and expressing opinions. Jenny Morgan: I will share how my concepts of home and community have shifted throughout my life due to multiple layers of identity categories that have involuntarily worked to position me at times as an insider, and at others, an outsider. I will discuss how this forced positioning and fluid and flexible perspectives inform how I co-create with learners a sense of home in their classroom communities of practice. Gerry Yokota: Most university students are at a transitional stage of life, many leaving home for the first time and/or uncertain where they are headed after graduation, and many English language educators are in similarly liminal positions. I will demonstrate how I use applied cognitive linguistics, especially attention to the power of metaphor, to facilitate classroom discussions about shifting experiences and perceptions of home and community, with reference to cultural expressions found in film, music and poetry by or about exiles and refugees.