Collaboration with local schools

At Canadian Academy, we always welcome the opportunity to collaborate with educators from other schools. This week, teachers and librarians from local schools visited Canadian Academy to observe our educational practices. 

Teachers from Ritsumeikan Primary School in Kyoto, Tsuru University, and an elementary school in Amagasaki, Hyogo, visited us to see Ms. Shigeta’s lessons. Ms. Shigeta is our ICT Integration Specialist and has been implementing various digital tools in her class to extend the students’ learning. The visit started with a classroom observation of a grade 2 class. The students learned how to create a digital avatar, which was connected to their ‘Who we are’ Unit. Our guests were impressed to see how digital tools were used to broaden the students’ learning. At the same time, our grade 2 students were extremely welcoming and happy to share their work with the teachers.

After some classroom observations, the teachers were given a school tour. The teachers enjoyed seeing the library with a warm atmosphere and the classrooms beautifully decorated with the students’ artworks. At the end of the visit, the teachers had a Q and A session with Ms. Shigeta. We were pleased to see them inspired by Ms. Shigeta’s creative use of technology.

On a separate day, Ms. Clark and Ms. Middleton, our Librarians, hosted teachers from Tokyo Gakugei University International Secondary School in Tokyo and Asahijuku Secondary School in Okayama. They have been collaborating for three years through an online workshop for IB Librarians in Japan, and they finally met in person this week. Ms. Clark was excited to share her experiences as a librarian, fully involved in planning and delivering lessons at CA. The teachers liked the idea that our library is designed to be a collaborative community space rather than just a space for books. At the end of the visit, it was nice to see the teachers enjoying exploring our broad collection of books. 

At Canadian Academy, our teachers are very open to connect with national and international educators and enjoy sharing their experiences. This is how our teachers commit to the learning community and further develop themselves as educators.