Learning & Teaching News

Japanese Sister School Visit

As a school, we recently welcomed visitors from one of our sister schools in Japan, Wako Kokusai High School.  15 students and 2 of their teachers enjoyed 10 days in Melbourne visiting our school, staying with our students in their homes and enjoying our city.  The last time we had a visit from a sister school was in 2019 and so this was an exciting beginning to reestablishing this relationship with Wako Kokusai High School.

The question can be asked, why is the school interested in investing time and effort into creating and maintaining this relationship. All that we do as a school is aimed at improving the educational outcomes for our students, and such relationships have amazing educational outcomes.  Our senior Japanese classes benefited greatly from engaging with our visiting students.  Many of these classes engaged in “speed dating” where over a lesson they were able to have one on one conversations with each of the visiting students.  This was the first time many had spoken Japanese with a native speaking young person and provided vital conversation practice in preparation for the upcoming final oral exams for the Year 12 students.  Feedback from the visiting teachers was that they were very impressed by how accomplished our students were at communicating in Japanese, especially given the lack of interactions with native speakers.  The Year 9 Content Language Integrated Learning class, who are studying Geography in Japanese, were able to work in collaboration with the Wako Kokusai students to learn more about the geography of Japan, to share their knowledge of Australian geography, and to put into action their language skills to describe why people travel to the various destinations in Japan.  The VET Hospitality - Kitchen Operations class, were given the opportunity to teach our visitors how to make meat pies and lamingtons.  This was a time where they could show off their amazing skills in the kitchen and solidify their knowledge by sharing it with others.

Whilst we often lament the current situation which does not allow us to take our own students to visit Wako Kokusai in Japan, the benefit of welcoming them to our school can be greater.  This is because on a trip to Japan, only a limited number of students with the financial means to participate are able to go.  However, in a visit to our school, all Japanese students and many others in our school community are able to take advantage of the interactions the visit entails.

As a school we are very appreciative of all the families who hosted one of the Wako Kokusai students in their homes, and provided them an amazing experience here. We also hope that in future years, as Wako Kokusai return for more visits, an ever increasing number of our students and families can participate so that more and more of our community can receive the benefits of these visits.

Mr Andrew Mitchell                                                         Mr David Hansen

Learning & Teaching Pedagogical Coach                Deputy Principal – Learning &Teaching