CGK Student's Families

Park Day

School Event Where Everyone can Participate and Connect

This event is held for the preschool and the elementary school in April/May, shortly after the start of the new school year. It's held in a large park so that students, parents and school teachers can have a chance to get to know each other better.

Each class has activities that allow the children and parents play and talk with their classmates, other parents and teachers. And after the event, everyone can bring their own lunch, eat together and socialize. The students enjoy running around and playing in the large park and having a wonderful day out together!

<Reference>

Social Night

Casual Gathering with Drinks for Parents and Teachers

Held just for preschool parents and CGK faculty and staff, this event has no restrictions on the topics that can be discussed, and to make the gathering more relaxed, alcoholic drinks are allowed.

Drinks and snacks are provided by the school and parents are also invited to bring their own drinks and snacks on a voluntary basis, making this a very lively, fun and informal event for getting to know each other!

Special Lessons from Parents, Field Trips to Companies and Shops Where Parents Work

CGK parents have a variety of jobs and special skills. They include company executives, doctors, artists, professional athletes, singers, designers, dieticians, teachers, chefs, etc. They kindly give special lessons to our students. In the future, we will also organize social studies visits to companies and shops where they work.

Artist - Grade 1 Elementary

In their ‘How we express ourselves’ UOI, the grade 1 students have been exploring the central idea of ‘Imagination is a powerful tool for expanding our ability to think, create and express ourselves.’ Through this unit, the students have been developing their artistic skills.

The grade 1 class is very lucky to have a parent who is an expert artist. The students did two lessons with this parent; one was a watercolor painting lesson and the second was a sketching lesson. The students not only had a wonderful time learning new skills but also demonstrated a growing understanding of how they can use their imaginations to express thoughts, feelings and ideas through the power of art.

Breast Doctor - Age 4 Preschool

In their ‘Where we are in place and time’ UOI, the 4-year-old class has been exploring the central idea of ‘Our families and the people in communities are all connected.’ Through this unit, the students have been learning about community helpers such as firefighters, police officers, pilots, etc.

The students are very lucky to have a parent who is a doctor that specializes in breast conditions. The students listened attentively to an explanation about how doctors work, what they wear and how they work together with nurses, technicians and many other people to cure patients' illnesses and injuries. The students also reviewed what they had learned in previous lessons and provided enthusiastic answers to a quiz given to them by the parent (the breast specialist).

Bashamichi Breast Clinic (馬車道ブレストクリニック)

Fashion Expert - Grade 1 Elementary

In their ‘Sharing the Planet’ UOI, the grade ones have been exploring the central idea of ‘We have responsibilities to protect our limited resources as we share the planet with other living things.’ One of the lines of inquiry in this unit is on recycling and reusing resources.

The grade ones are very lucky to have a parent who works for a fashion company whose goal is to recycle material to make new clothes. The students had an enjoyable lesson learning about the manufacturing and design process of clothes before using some donated material to decorate a kaleidoscope. The student both had a great time but also learned the power of reusing and recycling materials to help the Earth.

IB Information Sessions

A conversation with CGK family members

Several times a year we have IB information sessions. These sessions cover a range of topics and are designed to help inform parents about the IB at CGK. Prior to a session, we ask the parents for input about what they would like to discuss and check their understanding about aspects of the program. As much as possible, we try to address the areas that the greatest number of parents are curious or unsure about.

Previous sessions have covered topics such as conceptual learning, what transdisciplinary learning is, how we teach subject specific content, what our subject standards are, and how we assess learning. Frequently these subjects are addressed over multiple sessions as there is a lot of information to go through. While we do not expect parents to have the same level of understanding about our educational approach and the professional knowledge we have trained for, we want to be as transparent as possible, so we often share aspects of our curriculum that can be hard to understand and that other schools do not share. While this means the sessions often run long and parents are sometimes given more information than absolutely necessary, we believe this is important and that parents deserve to understand what is happening at their children’s school.

Prior to a session we prepare a presentation to try to make our educational approach clear. We do include a lot of the language and information that we share within our teaching community, but we try to make it accessible to parents who are not trained educators and therefore not as familiar with some of our professional language. We also translate all slides into Japanese and one of our Japanese staff assists with translation on that day. As we grow as a school, we have been including more examples from our classes and program of inquiry. We also address areas of the MYP and DP/CP, as appropriate.

One thing that is different at these sessions from other informative sessions that adults are used to, is the amount of parent involvement and participation that we hope for and encourage. As an IB educator and former IB student (Elementary Principal & IB PYP Coordinator, Ms. Darby), I love questions. And when it comes to informing our school community, questions direct from our community are incredibly important for addressing the appropriate content. This will allow us to answer questions about areas of the program and our school that we might not even realize parents have questions about.

Trusting an educational approach that can be so different from what we experienced as students ourselves requires a certain level of trust and open-mindedness. We appreciate all our families who are on this journey with us, and hope to find the best educational approaches and practices so that we fulfill our mission of “maximizing happiness” for our students and families. As teachers, we are dedicated to lifelong learning and are constantly striving to improve the teaching and learning in our classes. But we understand that the changes we have made can seem sudden or strange to families who can only remember and imagine a traditional teaching approach. As a school we want to honor the culture and expectations of our parents while still offering the best education possible to our students. This is why these conversations with our parents are so important. The IB information sessions are not only about sharing our educational practices and explaining the IB; they are also about hearing our parents regarding their concerns, their goals, and their needs.
We hope you can also join us for our IB information sessions! We look forward to hearing from and working with you!

Topic Examples