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New International School: “A fresh approach to learning”

By on April 30, 2008

New International School in Ikebukuro offers an innovative curriculum and teaching style. We talked to Director Steven Parr.

Can you give us a brief history of your school?
NewIS was established in 2001, as an alternative to both monolingual and age-grade international school programs. From our inception we have been dual language and multiage by design. We were accredited in 2005, and granted Gakko Hojin (School Foundation) status in 2006. We now have 175 students of over 20 nationalities or combinations of nationalities.

What inspired the dual language aspect of NewIS?
Well, it is easy to think that because we are in Japan the children can learn Japanese fairly easily, so it is OK or even desirable to spend most of the day in English. I don’t agree with that. It is perfectly possible for the children to develop academic as well as communicative proficiencies (which is true bilingualism) in two languages if the program supports it. We have two homeroom teachers in every class who team teach bilingually using an integrated, thematic based approach and developmentally appropriate strategies.

How about the multiage aspect? What is it exactly?
It starts already in our preschool, the Teddy Bear Class, which combines ages three and four. Then we have Primary A (grades K-12), Primary B (grades 3-5), Primary C (grades 6 and 7), and Upper School (grades 8 and 9) classes.

Multiage education is an alternative to age-grade education, which began in Prussia around 1800 in the context of the industrial revolution and the development of Statehood. What resulted is a kind of grid, separating the children by age/grade vertically and separating the subjects horizontally. What the children are supposed to learn in each box of that grid is defined by the curriculum and formalized in the textbooks. The children have to fit into this framework, and as such, it is a socialization/programming type of education, well designed to prepare children for factories and loyalty to the State.

However, we are now in a post-industrial and global society. Our children will need to be creative thinkers, problem-identifiers, and problem-solvers, who can work with others, learn with others and from others, and who can navigate all kinds of change. Multiage education is a great style to develop such skills. Individual intelligence, after all, is an aggregate of the connections one has in one’s brain. If the connections are programmed, it is a behavioristic type of education; if they are made through one’s own experience and thinking, it is a constructivist type of education. Multiage is based on constructivism.

But doesn’t that style make it difficult for children to enter a more conventional style of school later on?
Absolutely not! As Dr. Sandra Stone, the educator who inspired the multiage style of our school, said to a group of parents in answer to that question: “If you know there is going to be a famine in the future, do you want to begin to starve your children now?!” No, you want them strong and healthy so they can survive the famine! In fact, the children do fine in other systems as they have developed the social and thinking skills to navigate them.

Is there anything else you would like to mention?
Yes. I would really encourage prospective families to visit us as the school offers a real alternative in the context of international schools in Tokyo. Hence our name: “New International School.”

New International School
Tel: (03) 3980-1057
http://newinternationalschool.com

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