Today Decides Tomorrow

Tokyo International School
Patrick NEWELL

When Patrick NEWELL and his wife Ikuko learned how much it was going to cost to send their children to an international school in Tokyo, they did what no one would have expected – they built their own school.

Opened in central Tokyo in 1997 with only 12 students, Tokyo International School (T.I.S.) is an international learning institution serving students from pre-school to middle school age in the diplomatic, expatriate and host communities. After a decade of continual growth forged by a clear vision and backed up by an immense effort from their multi-cultural team of more than 60 educators, T.I.S. is now teaching 360 students from 45 countries.

The school has an intriguing Mission Statement: “To nurture confident, open-minded, independently thinking, well-balanced inquirers for global responsibility.” “The Mission Statement was created with the core idea of determining which attributes we wanted students to have when they leave T.I.S, as well as how children will be guided through their stages of development at the school,” Patrick says.

Realizing that simply teaching the school’s curriculum is not enough to meet anticipated future needs, T.I.S. has created an industry-unique system that is best described as nurturing children’s confidence through holistic integration. In short, it focuses on developing positive human characteristics and attitudes in children, and empowering students to actively participate in the decision-making process.

“Students discover the answers to chosen questions through various methods of research, and then summarize their specific findings into a central idea,” he says. “The final stage of the process is where students give a creative presentation of their learning to others.”

Most school teachers find that coping with a standard size class in which everyone speaks the same language is a large enough challenge in itself, but this task becomes far more complex when students come from different backgrounds and cultures and speak different languages. 80% of kids are from diplomatic or expatriate population, and 20% who have either one or two Japanese parents. While the main language of instruction at T.I.S. is English, Patrick says this is complemented with Japanese studies three times a week. “We integrate exchanges with local Japanese schools into our Japanese studies to increase the level of relevance,” he says.

To help students succeed after they move on to their next school, T.I.S. has developed rigorous curriculum standards based on models from around the world to help ensure students can attend their school of choice upon repatriation.

Demand for places is currently outstripping supply. In 2007 alone, T.I.S. has had to decline over 100 new students due mainly to capacity issues. “The next 10 years will be about raising the bar in every possible aspect at T.I.S. to fulfill the emerging 21st Century Model School label that we have been given.” Patrick says.

Tokyo International School
www.tokyois.com

Back to List Page