Happy New Year everybody! I hope everyone had a great winter break. It’s always a challenge to shake off the frost of the extended holiday and get back into the swing of things.
This month I’d like to draw attention to another one of the unique aspects of our Middle School Program: the Community Enterprise Collaboration. Students will have the opportunity to work directly with a number of local businesses across a variety of industries throughout their time at our school.
The ISN Community includes many parents who own and operate their own local businesses, as well as Supporter Companies who also believe in our vision for our students. We wish to take advantage of this unique setup in order to provide your children with real-world experiences and a deeper understanding of how the things they learn at school directly apply to outside the classroom.
The Community Enterprise Collaboration projects involve eight different companies, with a six-month project associated with each company. Students will learn what each company does and how it runs, and will experience what workers actually do with the company. Each company will have its own big project in which students will discuss, design, and promote their ideas and creations with an opportunity to reach the company’s customers. Students will get practical experience, which will lead to further inquiry and a deeper understanding of the company and its impact on the community.
So what would one of these projects look like? Let’s take a look at an example of a proposed collaboration:
Agriculture & Food Industry “Local Vegetable Direct Sales Store Operation”
Key Skills & Knowledge (3 items)
- Basic calculation skills: Simple cost calculation, sales aggregation, profit concepts
- Observation & recording skills: Vegetable growth records, sales data recording
- Basic communication: Greetings, product explanation, teamwork
| Period | Activities | Deliverables |
| Months 1-2 | Farmer lecture (1 hour), Vegetable cultivation experience, Market visit | Vegetable growth diary, Price survey table |
| Months 3-4 | Harvesting experience, Sales preparation, POP creation | Sales plan, Handmade POP |
| Months 5-6 | Direct sales practice, Sales aggregation, Reflection | Sales report, Experience reflection |
I asked our MS Program teacher, Igor, about where the idea for this program came from, and how it lets us offer something students cannot obtain elsewhere:
“The center of ISN’s educational philosophy (and the IB PYP) has always been building students into life-long learners. In the ever-evolving world we live in, we don’t want to teach students things that might be obsolete or forgotten in a couple of years. We want them to know how to learn, develop their own skills, and both understand and actualize their own goals and motivations for learning.
“In this way, our students grow up to be life-long learners, so whatever changes may happen, whatever new interests they acquire or whatever jobs they take on, they can tackle those changes by knowing how to inquire and learn new things.
“So if we want the students to learn how to apply what they gained from the classroom in the real world, why not offer them a chance to do just that while they’re still at school? That’s where the idea was born. We’re using the potential we have within our community to offer more to the students. This is also the uniqueness of this program – ISN’s location in beautiful Shinshu, and the fact that the businesses involved are locally-owned companies shaped by the location and the community.”
Thanks again everyone! We hope you’re as excited about this new program as we are.
