Care and Education: Reflections on CGK’s First Three Months

This is Minoru Kai, Chair at the time of writing.

After our first entrance ceremony on April 1, 2016, CGK International School began with a small group and gradually grew with families’ support.

The new classrooms, initially pristine but impersonal, gained warmth and life through three months with the children.

Traces of their daily growth appeared in many forms, and memories were already becoming part of the school.

I began this international school project, CGK International School, with a strong commitment to early English and global education. Yet before opening, business and operational questions often occupied much of my attention.

Spending these three months with children, thinking deeply with teachers about education and care, and explaining why I started CGK brought the original motivation back into sharp focus.

Here, without a word limit, I would like to reflect on that.

Living in Multicultural Countries

Living abroad is not an experience everyone easily undertakes, and relatively few Japanese people choose it.

From age twenty-six, I had the opportunity to live in Australia, Canada and the United States.

Each is home to people from many ethnic and cultural backgrounds, especially in larger cities.

What stood out was diversity, rather than a single national stereotype.

Assumptions and Diversity

Japan has its own shared assumptions, many of which differ from other developed countries. From within, those differences may not always be obvious.

Other countries have their own assumptions too.

But in the multicultural societies I experienced, and in parts of Europe, I felt less of a single fixed idea of what everyone should take for granted.

People from different backgrounds brought different expectations, with room for them to coexist.

During my first long stay abroad, the variety of experiences and values made simple descriptions of any country feel inadequate.

What Those Experiences Strengthened in Me

It can be difficult to recreate the experience of living abroad while remaining in Japan.

It is also difficult to communicate entirely in words. Diversity means a single national identity may not be shared in the same way by everyone.

A tangible achievement is valuable, but so is noticing unfamiliar things and taking time to think and feel for oneself.

One does not need a definitive answer every time. The willingness to think matters in its own right.

I hope more Japanese people can have such experiences. Knowing that people hold many different values can broaden perspectives and change how we understand and welcome the unfamiliar.

I founded CosmoBridge with the hope of becoming a bridge between Japan and the world and helping people take that first step overseas.

International Exchange Events

Our first activity was organizing international exchange events.

They offered a taste of international encounters within Japan and a way to develop interest in going abroad.

They also became places to gather information, and many participants came to practice English.

Beyond enjoyment, we introduced overseas cultures to Japanese participants and Japanese culture to international participants.

English Education

Language can be a barrier to going abroad.

For English-speaking destinations, that means English. Japanese participants often told us they wanted to speak it better.

We soon opened an English school.

Challenges in Adult English Classes

We had two main aims for adult learners:

improving English and encouraging interest in the world.

Progress can be difficult with one class a week, little contact outside class and no pressing need to use the language.

When improvement is not immediately apparent, motivation can be hard to maintain. Multicultural learning helped support that motivation.

Moving Toward Preschool

Extending an adult English school’s work to children is a natural step.

However, I did not want simply to offer another occasional extracurricular English class.

We chose a full-time early-childhood setting combining care and education, with the original schedule fixed at five weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. The intention was to provide the time, approach and experiences to support meaningful bilingual development. These are the arrangements described in this 2016 reflection, not current opening hours.

Caring for young children and influencing their lives brings a different level of responsibility and reward from adult education.

Young children have limitations in what they can do, but the long shared day also creates opportunities for many experiences that occasional classes cannot offer.

Three Months of Growth

Only three months after opening in April, the children’s growth continued to surprise us.

At first, there had been little interaction among them. Now they played together, apologized if they upset a friend and helped by passing things. These small actions showed growing consideration.

Some parents were surprised to see two-year-olds sitting, listening and participating so attentively.

I had initially focused most on bilingual and global education. These months made me feel even more strongly how important emotional growth is within care.

Language development was also striking, with children already choosing between English and Japanese. I will discuss that separately.

There were enough experiences before opening to fill a book, though I have no plan to write one! Every child’s smile makes that effort feel worthwhile.

Sometimes I feel the weight of sharing hours that families could otherwise spend together. I am deeply grateful for their trust. Witnessing children’s growth on their behalf brings a strong sense of responsibility.

Staff continue planning daily care, education and events that nurture inquiry and curiosity about new discoveries.

I look forward to the surprises still to come!