TIS Director's Blog

Our university counselor, Melissa Lamug hosted a college admissions workshop for this year’s seniors (grade 12 students) and their parents last night.

An admissions officer from Minerva at KGI , a radically new concept in higher education, began the seminar with a presentation. As this article in the New York Times describes, it is a unique institution. They had over 11,000 applicants from 160 countries going for 200 spots. They have not had a student from Japan study at this new school. One of last year’s OIS graduates was accepted, but chose a different school to attend.  I would have loved to go to a school like that when I was applying for universities.

Next, Lisa Ishara, a graduate from the class of 2015, gave advice to this year’s seniors.

• “Take the safer road, not the easy road.”  – An example would be to take the SAT because as this may help you get admitted into the university of your choice.
• “You are responsible for your own deadlines.” – It is the student’s responsibility to meet deadlines, not your parents or the counselor.
• “Ask your teachers and counselor for help with the admissions essays and interviews.”

The program finished with Ms. Lamug giving an overview of the university application process and the team answering parent questions. Thanks to Mr. Mecklem and Ms. Lamug for leading the informative presentations.

The first priority for any family when choosing a school is the physical, emotional and pscyhological safety of their children. OIS has two representatives attending this weekend the seminar hosted by the Nagoya International School. There are around 50 educators participating in the workshop led by a consultant from Breakthrough: Leadership Beyond Limits. The goal for the weekend is to develop policies/guidelines for our school to support all stakeholders in keeping our children safe and happy.  This is set in the context of recent tragic incidents in international schools of child abuse and alleged child abuse. Unfortunately, a very small percentage of educators abuse children, either sexually, physically or emotionally, and schools have a responsibility to make sure we prevent and deal with abuse. The event is sponsored by the Japan Council of International Schools (JCIS) and the other part of the workshop is for us to produce JCIS-wide child protection guidelines.

The facilitator was Dr. Lois Engelbrecht, founder and board member of the Center for the Prevention of Child Sex Abuse, Quezon City, Philippines.  She has outstanding expertise in international social services and child protection advocacy and program development working with local programs and international schools in Malaysia, Viet Nam, India, China. She is the wife of the director of the Lincoln School in Ghana, Dennis Larkin. (see video above for an introduction to the topic)

The big takeaway for me on day one was the importance of having explicit child protection guidelines for our community. In our small group discussion, we compared it to having an expensive security system for your home. Thieves avoid homes that are difficult to break into and will look for homes without a security system. Schools that do not have published guidelines or background checks may be vulnerable to abusers.

The challenge is fitting this into an already busy curriculum.

The best resources we can use are as follows:

1. Association of International Schools in Africa Child Protection Handbook
2. United Nation’s  Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC). The full text of the CRC can be found here.
3. I read the English translation of Japanese law on the prevention of child abuse (Act No. 82 of May 24, 2000). Our school needs to have a good relationship with the local police, hospitals and prefectural officers that interpret national law.
4. I also read the Ropes report from the American School in Japan about the incidents of child abuse and their subsequent handbook that was developed to prevent further incidents. So often adults in the community know of suspicious activity but fail to act upon it before it is too late.

I. School-based Child Protection Team – a group that heads the child protection work in the school.

• train one person at the school to be the Child Protection Coordinator; best to be a host country national
• other people on the team will be counselor, nurse, head of school, principal, teacher representative
• First Meeting Agenda
  • make sure everyone signs the agreement
  • implement workshop/lesson with students, teachers and parents

• Second Meeting
  • audit the year progress
• School-based Child Response Team
  • group to deal with abuse allegations and incidents; ad hoc; add reporting teacher; no parents because of confidentiality

II. Child Protection Curriculum – teaching students how to protect themselves; the major challenge is fitting it in an already busy curriculum.

• The Michigan Model for Health was used by the consultant to help the Association of International Schools in Africa group make their healthy child curriculum.
• She recommends 5 lessons per year per grade in the elementary. Most of it deals with touching and progresses to being assertive in relationships. For older students, there are 4 concepts per grade level  (identify safe/unsafe situations, access to trusted persons, act to stay safe, value self and community)
• Working with parents – share school policy, personal safety curriculum, handling disclosure, where to go for help and networking with other parents; this is not sexual education, but parents need to be included.

III. Multi Disciplinary Team (MDT) – It is important for an international school to think about what to do if there is a serious case of child abuse before one occurs. The consultant suggests to form a group of local authorities that will deal with cases of child abuse called the MDT. This group is composed of law enforcement, mental health expert, lawyer, social welfare personnel, school and medical personnel. This helps to build trust with local authorities. In many countries, there is a much distrust between the local authorities and the expensive, private foreign school. In Japan this is less so because the country is very well developed and there is a strong rule of law. I think the issue is to help the local authorities to understand the unique characteristics of our expatriate community.

At OIS we have an advantage of being connected to local authorities through the Kwansei Gakuin foundation. When issues come up, the foundation has the resources to help us. With a history of 126 years and serving over 24,000 students, they probably have had to deal with issues that a small international school may not have previously.

Another good thing for schools to do is to think about what kinds of cases they can…

Another idea is for the nurse to take photos of bruises. It is also good for the school nurse to be trained in forensic interviewing and investigation. This is to protect the school.

1. the school handle alone?
   1. low level bullying, academic pressure, relationship problems with children and parents
2. refer out for counseling yet continues to work with the child and family?
   1.   mental health, depression, parental substance abuse; mother is traveling to much; one-off discipline physical abuse incident
3. refer for medical and/or legal attention?
   1. sex abuse, serious physical abuse,

 IV Handling Disclosure – There is a second traumatic event for a child in disclosing the abuse. The consultant referred to the work of Dr. Roland Summit at UCLA on abuse accommodation syndrome. The first thing to do when a child comes to you is to believe them, even if the story seems crazy. There is usually something behind the story and most children do not lie. The adult also needs to be calm and to get enough information to see if there is reasonable evidence to further investigate. (believe, calm, support) This is a tricky

“If it is a problem with your safety, I can’t keep this confidential.” You need to immediately assess the safety of the child and if the problem is at home, then the child cannot go home.

Another good idea is to collect many case studies and have the Child Protection Team (CPT) go through them.

Day Three

It is encouraging to hear that the child protection expert said it is OK for an administrator to go with your “gut feeling” when dealing with observations of possible warning signs of offenders or signs of abuse. We did an role play of talking to a male teacher who is looking at the female students inappropriately. It brought up a very good discussion. Maybe if international schools would have been more trained in child protection, cases like in Karachi or London could have been prevented.

I also see the importance of having a code of conduct or professional expectations. It makes it easier to identify inappropriate behavior or recommendations. I spent most of the day in my group working on a JCIS set of guidelines.

The crisis response manager (and librarian) Nicholas Meyer (namer@nis.ac.jp) of the Nagoya International School was kind to take us on a tour yesterday. He demonstrated the equipment and procedures the school has on campus to respond to an emergency. I like to see what other schools are doing to take good ideas back to our school. It is a goal of mine this year to produce a thorough crisis response manual in English and review it with our community.

The good ideas I got from the tour were to print and post notices of the students with severe allergies (peanuts) or serious medical conditions. A page with their name, photo and grade is posted in the teachers’ lounge and in the business office. This will make it easy for everyone to identify. The other idea was a parent pick-up form (below) that makes it easy for the school to figure out who has left with their parents in case of an emergency dismissal. They also had safety officer vests to identify people  in charge. He also mentioned everyone knowing where the gas canisters are located to turn off and a reminder that people may be trapped in the elevator if the power goes out.

One thing to look up when I return is the anti venom for the red-back spider. We have found several red back spiders on campus historically. What would we do if someone gets bit?

On Thursday September 17 I attended the Japan Association of International Baccalaureate (IBAJ) meeting of heads of schools hosted by the Marist Brothers International School (MBIS) in Suma ward, the western side of Kobe.

My big “takeaways” are

1. it may be worth our while to explore the CP (Career Related Programme) or at least develop an internship program for our students
2. we should also be looking at offering online learning in the DP through Pamoja 

There were also many other smaller ideas and feedback I received from the other schools. All in all, a very valuable day for me and our school.

We discussed the following issues:

• MYP E-assessments – No MYP schools in Japan are participating in this program. Practically, they do not offer Japanese language and for 50 students, it would cost $30,000 and it takes place the same time as the IB DP exams. The argument against also is too much testing and the certificate is not worth much.
• Dual Language Diploma – I was confused on how many subjects must be taken in English to earn this diploma. They must take English and one other subject in English as a minimum.
• Learning Support – Schools struggle to find experts and specialists in Japan, especially in English. Remote services (online) are gaining traction especially for speech therapy. There is one specialist in Tokyo that was highly recommended.
• Career Related Certificate – No schools have this IB programme in Japan. Several schools are developing internship programs.

We had video conferences with many key personnel from the IB Asia Pacific Region.

Kevin House – regional head of school services Asia Pacific

• He leads a team of IBEN (experienced IB educators) to help schools with authorization, self-studies and evaluations. School services also manages professional development programs (Base Camp) and facilitate coordinator networks. Kevin’s conversation reminded me of how useful the site can be. I will make a module of useful links on this blog.
• The next IB visit to our association (IBAJ) will be in the spring of 2017. We asked them to give us dates and a venue for this meeting.

Ayumi Hoshino – IB regional development manager of Article 1 (local – prefectural accredited) schools in Japan

• Geography, Visual Arts, Music will be soon released in Japanese language.
• MEXT is issuing special teacher certification for schools hiring foreign teachers. It is a lot of paperwork, but not a difficult process.
• MEXT announced on August 19 a flexibility scheme that made it easier for Article 1 schools to meet the national compulsory  subjects and all classes can be in English except Japanese language. Japanese students need 74 credit hours to graduate which is much more than an international school. Hence, Higher Level courses will be worth 10 credit hours each and Standard Level courses worth 6 credit hours each. They still need to earn more credit hours outside of the DP subjects, and MEXT is trying to reduce this.
• The University of Tokyo and Kyoto University will start DP admissions from this winter. Both universities do require students to take the preliminary exam. They do not have to take the individual subject exams, only the basic proficiency exam in Japanese.  Hosei University and Osaka City University are also making entry tracks from the IBDP.
• Environmental Studies, Psychology, Self-Taught Language subjects are not going to be accepted by MEXT soon as Japanese subjects because they do not match with the current national curriculum.

A good idea for our schools Faculty Forum to do an activity with Theory of Knowledge (TOK), a special course in the Diploma Programme that really encapsulates the IB philosophy.

Ed Lawless – Employee of Pamoja Education, the sole provider of online/blended learning sanctioned by the IB. He is former head of PD of IB Asia Pacific. Ed gave us the following about Pamoja’s growth.

They are accredited by WASC since 2011 and have moved to In-house course development in 2012. They are growing and currently have 2009 3091 students, 113 teachers and 17 courses. They have courses in all subject groups except experimental sciences. They focus on courses that help schools fill in gaps. They have TOK and ATL integration across all courses. They also have a new LMS (learning management system) called “Canvas“. “Learning Spaces” are forums that students can interact with each other and the teachers. Nice advantage is the four cohorts of 25 students can interact with 4 teachers across the world. The scores of the students are pretty good, with 82% of the students earning a 4 or above. Regarding costs, 25-30% pass the costs on  to the parents Good ideas for schools is that if student withdraws, then parents pay for the course and some schools have an application process to earn the right to take an online course.

They are developing school-supported self taught languages and English B. An idea would be to bring all the language tutors in the JCIS schools together so if one school has a good Russian tutor he/she could do all the schools. He said more students are choosing psychology over history. They are thinking of developing a”taster” course 4-5 week pre-IB experience for grade 10 students to get used to on line learning.

I believe that this is an experience we should be giving our students – self-regulated learning environments, because this what students will face in university.

We are always concerned about student safety. This weekend, the KG facilities department installed covers for the drainage canals near the east parking lot. This is a high traffic area with the buses loading and unloading, students coming to school on foot and bike, and parents waiting for picking up their children. The grates will make sure no one falls into the canal. The grates have a rough surface to prevent becoming slippery when wet.

I would like to thank the OIS Parent Teacher Association (PTA) for bringing this to our attention and the Kwansei Gakuin facilities department for purchasing and installing the grates.

 

 

Above is the first OIS Parent Bulletin of the 2015-2016 school year.

I am here at the main campus of Kwansei Gakuin University attending a KG council meeting. The council is made of a small group of trustees and others to serve as a check and balance to the regular board of trustees. Masago sensei and I will be giving a presentation entitled “Two Schools Together: Contributing to a Global Community”. It will focus on how we interact with the wider world with our two school model. Every council meeting, several schools in the KG foundation make a presentation on recent educational trends. There are over 40 members present in addition to the head table of the president, chair, chancellor and other leaders of the foundation. The meeting is conducted in Japanese but director of operations Lewis-san is providing translations and technical support. Most of the members are older male, I am counting only two women present. Besides Lewis-san and me, there are two other foreigners, Chancellor Grubel and KG professor Dr. Wider.

Above is the slide show accompanying our presentation. We featured our expansion of the DP, the Global Futures program, SIS Super Global High School grant, international memberships and then an update on school events, enrollment, etc.

Some of the other items reported at the meeting included the following:

• Kwansei Gakuin Senior High School Principal K talked about their English language trip to Australia, attending a soccer school in Germany and their field work in Cambodia as part of the Super Global High School grant. Here is a link to their English website. 
• University news included an agreement with the “US AID” or “Peace Corps” of Japan, JICA, for university students to volunteer in Sri Lanka.

We were served a nice bento lunch and headed back to Senri. The campus was pretty quiet because classes do not start for another couple of weeks. The next council meeting will be December 5.

As we continue to get ready for the start of the school year next week, the teachers are planning for the school year in different areas. John Van Plantinga, our Inclusion Specialist, gave an introductory workshop for the faculty. Inclusion, as defined by the International Baccalaureate is as follows:

“Inclusion is an ongoing process that aims to increase access and engagement in learning for all students by identifying and removing barriers.”

John’s presentation got me thinking about the definition of barrier. This could be anything from limited English to those students, especially young boys, who cannot be sedentary for the hours required by schools. We also define barriers as poor organization skills, fear of mathematics, depression or health problems, etc. Some of the barriers are permanent, like autism, dyslexia, and others can be improved or disappear, depending on the individual student’s situation.

The OIS inclusion website, Total Access Learning, is full of resources for teachers, parents and students. There is information on disabilities (professionally diagnosed cognitive or psychological problems) and difficulties (non-diagnosed, more common challenges of children and teenagers) as well as techniques and strategies teachers can use to improve learning. Below is an inspiring video from the Khan Academy and an example of the resources Mr. Van Plantinga has on his web site.

During the orientation this week the Athletic & Activities Director, Pete Heimer had a PD session with the coaches and sponsors. In his introductory remarks, Pete reminded us of the scoreboard fundraising. He also reviewed all of the online resources for coaches, students and parents. You can find links below. As part of our efforts to reduce paper use at the school, students and parents can use online google forms. Mr. Heimer showed us a humorous and instructive video that he made to emphasize what the school is looking for in good coaching.

“Coach” Heimer was quite inspiring and made me think about how I will comport myself this season. We are all looking forward to starting the season this weekend. His blog is full of thought-provoking articles.

SOIS Athletics Links

Sabers Athletics Facebook page

sabers.senri.ed.jp – The athletics department web site. It has all of the forms, schedules, calendars, rules and other information about the sports teams at the school.

The Athletic Director blog

It was nice to see alumni and current students at the school on Sunday. The boys get together to play baseball and water polo at the school occasionally on weekends. The alumni managers, the girls in the photo, also come to enjoy the camaraderie. In the photo, current students are in the front row and alumni in the back rows.

The game ended up 7-6 and took 10 innings to complete. Baseball is a serious sport in Japan and the quality of this “pick-up” game is amazing. It looked like minor league baseball team practice! To beat the heat, they enjoyed a game of water polo in the SOIS pool and a lunch afterwards in a nearby restaurant. The group is facilitated by SIS activities coordinator, Mitsuhashi sensei.