Finding Belonging

When did you attend JIS as a student?

From February 1986 to May 1989.

What do you remember most about your time here as a student?

Diversity both in and out of classrooms! With just over 100 students per grade level in the High School, students naturally made friendships beyond their respective ethnic groups. Every day, every hut was a UN event.

What is your current position at JIS? What made you decide to return to JIS as an administrator/teacher/staff member?

High School teacher. I think every JIS graduate intuits just how progressive the community is, that the way students address differences and problems amongst each other, independent of or directly addressing misconceptions and stereotypes, is unique. I graduated thinking that the world would catch up to JIS norms regarding race and relations.

That first semester after graduation was a bleak one. Maybe it’s a prototypical TCK case study, but I couldn’t find anywhere that was comfortably comfortable. I was an outside insider in Japan and an inside outsider in the States. And I was lucky enough to come back to the one place that made me feel both normal and special at the same time.

How has your experience been so far?

Rewarding and life-affirming. I’m a part of something greater than myself: the community that welcomed and gave me belonging, and now I get to offer that same feeling to others — both alike and unlike me.

Do you think that being a former student has helped you with your job at JIS?

Yes, I think so. As students, we could always tell the difference between teachers who cared about students and those who cared about themselves, whether it was for their careers, paychecks, or both. The former always had time for you, and the latter almost never — they entered the classroom only to teach and left just as quickly afterward.

I think it may be a little different now, but one aspect that students always perceive is a teacher’s attitude about multiculturalism. Independent of the creeds that one may declare, students have a whole school year to perceive nuances, although they usually only need a month. What it comes down to might be the difference between those who ultimately reinforce an ethnocentric worldview or try to decentralize their perspective. And trust, participation, taking chances — all the different ways in which students engage with the teaching of a course — are all determined by that perception.

So, I think that the tolerance, understanding, and acceptance of other cultures and their values cultivated here at JIS (whether it was immediate or evolutionary — probably both) is earned and genuine, and so perhaps that allows current students with multicultural backgrounds to trust me. Hmm… asking the students might elicit more useful or accurate responses!