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A New International School Emerges in Hakuba, Japan
Education & Catastrophe 83
John Tan
January 14, 2024
This is a guest post by Chris Balme, Founding Principal of Hakuba International School.
Imagine if, on your way to start the school day, you gathered first in a circle of fellow students and adults, in a grassy field with snow-capped mountains rising behind you. As a student, you actually ran this meeting, beginning with meditation, a greeting to everyone around you, then announcements for the day, and finally the sharing of news from around the world. This is the “Morning Meeting” that begins each day at Hakuba International School.
Imagine if the “class” you went to next did not start with opening a textbook or hearing a teacher speak from the front of the room; instead, you walked to a forest, where you and your classmates are using trigonometry to measure tree heights and thus calculate carbon density, while others take measurements that will be used to make a 3D model of the forest, so you can design a net-zero-carbon school building to be built there one day. This is an actual project that HIS students completed, part of the school’s focus on project-based learning and sustainability.
Imagine if you had a change you wanted to see in the school, something that you know would improve it, but the adults hadn’t quite figured it out yet. You bring that proposed change to the Town Hall meeting, where you need to make a compelling case to both students and adults, explain the impacts it would have on them, receive questions and amendments, and ultimately put it to a vote. This is how HIS runs a twice-monthly Town Hall, both to improve the school with new ideas, and to teach students how to be active democratic citizens and leaders. How else could they learn but through practice?
These are just a few of the unique attributes of Hakuba International School (HIS), a new international boarding school in the Japanese Alps. Set in a rural village of 8,000 people, in a gorgeous mountain valley that once hosted the Winter Olympics, HIS is building a different kind of school. It’s designed to be a “lab” school, in the tradition of research-based innovative schools founded by educators like John Dewey and Maria Montessori, who wanted to develop new and more effective methods for engaging students.
But the students explain it best:
“At HIS, the teachers are called guides. For classes, it’s not just like writing and just gather information and memorize it, it’s more like you can actually experience it and it allows us to be independent thinkers. And the students can suggest ideas, it’s not just the guides deciding, it’s the students.”
“PBL [Project-Based Learning] is a new way of learning, I had never experienced it, and a lot of the things we do here are quite interesting. It’s a way to learn while actually doing, so that you can remember better, because if you sit down and write notes, it’s hard to remember, but when you actually do something, it’s more motivating.”
“Students can decide what they want or give suggestions during Town Hall. Town Hall is basically when everyone, including students and guides, gathers together, and people come up with different proposals to maybe improve the school or change something, and then people would vote on it.”
HIS opened its doors in August 2022, the product of years of work and pilot-testing via summer programs, led by founder Tomoko Kusamoto. Having moved out of Tokyo to raise her family in the fresh air and peaceful surroundings of Hakuba, Kusamoto realized that there was a need for more innovative schools, both to draw families back to the Japanese countryside, and to demonstrate better learning methods to improve the state of education as a whole. She was also deeply involved in the environmental movement, having co-founded the Hakuba SDG Lab, which supports sustainability initiatives and the effort to create a circular economy in Hakuba.
In 2019, Kusamoto met Chris Balme, the co-founder and Head of School of Millennium School in San Francisco. Balme had helped to build a school that was gaining attention for its innovative methods, drawing on science-of-learning research from university partners like Stanford University, Columbia University, and the University of California. Together with a small team of educators, Kusamoto and Balme began laying out the design for HIS, building it around a few central ideas: learning through interdisciplinary projects; developing social and emotional intelligence through an advisory program; supporting high levels of student agency through the Town Hall meeting; and continually exploring and studying nature, building an understanding of ecology, and a deep connection with nature that would help students become stewards of the environment in the future.
The ultimate goal of the school became clear during this process: to become a place where people and the planet can flourish.
HIS is now in its second year of operations, serving students in 7th through 9th grades, and growing by one grade per year until it continues through 12th grade. It’s a place where students are actively designing the school itself, alongside their guides (faculty members). The school is accredited by the Japanese government, and expects to be internationally accredited in 2025, ensuring that its unique course of study positions students to attend excellent universities around the world if they so choose.
In many ways, the difference is not in what is studied — as students still learn all core high school subjects — but how. When students learn through projects, with freedom to test out their ideas and solutions, and the energy that comes from working collaboratively with peers, they are more engaged, more curious, more in touch with their own intrinsic motivation. When they do week-long expeditions into nature four times per year, learning outdoor skills, studying ecology and history, and bonding with classmates, they build a connection with the natural world that will last a lifetime. And when they act as founders and designers of a school, they gain leadership skills through actual experience, like how to prototype an idea, build consensus, present their opinion clearly, and ultimately, how to take care of a community.
But again, students get to the heart of it faster. When asked to describe the school in one word, they offered terms like: welcoming, helpful, diverse, free, outdoorsy, relaxed, fun, and community. HIS is founded on the premise that school should not be a painful and grueling journey, from which you’re glad to escape and start your “real life.” School should model what an optimistic “real life” might be in the future. It can be a place where you learn how to build good relationships, where your intrinsic motivation to explore your passions and curiosity only grows with time, and where learning feels like an adventure.
Further Reading
Becoming A Guide (And A Friend) To Your Middle Schooler - review of Finding The Magic In Middle School by Chris Balme
Join HIS founder Tomoko Kusamoto and Director of Admissions David Keeney for dinner and drinks at 7pm on Friday, 19th Jan, as they share more about school life at HIS.
Spots are limited. Please email [email protected] to register your interest if you like to attend.
Saturday 20th & Sunday 21st Jan, David Kenney, HIS Admissions Director, will be hosting families for 1-hour admission time slots at the Hotel Indigo Singapore Katong.
Spots are filling up. Please email [email protected] to secure your time.