EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY
At UST, we feel the purpose of education is not only to ingrain basic skills required for participation in modern society but also an avenue to allow a child to develop in a multitude of facets. Education can encourage students to become positively contributing members within an ever-expanding global environment. A need for increasing ingenuity and creative problem solving skills has never been more prevalent in the world market more than now. We believe it is important to start the development of these skills as early as possible to provide the greatest chance of success in later life.
With the understanding that each child is an individual, a school should provide an environment that challenges the students on a singular basis as well as in a group dynamic. When students have the opportunity to work with and learn from their peers, as well as from an educator, they develop understanding that learning is occurring at all times and that they are contributing to the education of their fellow students as well. Through this, a greater sense of responsibility for their own education as well as the education of the students around them will develop and stimulate a more socially conscious person.
Child-Centric Education
We believe that education should be child-centered. Children who can work in their area of strength and interests are more motivated and likely to be successful. Our goal is to give students a strong foundation by building thinking abilities to encourage life-long learning. Our core curriculum is designed to engage students using an enriched environment that is intriguing, fun and challenging.
Experiential Learning
Hands-on learning, more formally known as Experiential Education, reflects a teaching philosophy that promotes learning by doing. The strategy allows children to practice guided hands-on learning in which they absorb knowledge not only by listening, but by experiencing.
Hearing a lecture or even watching a teacher perform a physical demonstration of a concept, cannot instill a passion for knowledge in a student as deeply as hands-on experience can. Learning by doing allows children to become personally invested in their own learning process. Becoming actively engaged in their education builds confidence and teamwork, as the lessons require students to rely on their own abilities and abilities of others to obtain knowledge. That confidence and self-reliance inspires children to embrace the learning process and enthusiastically seek out additional knowledge.
At UST, a hands-on approach is applied to math, the sciences and art to create a better understanding of the concepts that the students would learn. A concrete example provides students with a more tangible opportunity to analyze and internalize their learning over the use of abstract ideas. Experiential learning gives more ownership to each child through the use of their senses: seeing, smelling, touching, hearing, and at times tasting.
Outdoor Education
As part of UST’s Experiential Learning approach, we like to take learning out of the classroom and expose our students to a progression of age-appropriate experiences to help them take ownership of their learning, develop confidence in their physical abilities and build confidence in themselves in their relationships with others. Outdoor education offers opportunities for children to enjoy first-hand experience outdoors, whether in urban green spaces in Tokyo or in Japan's countryside.
Some examples UST outdoor education program include building teamwork and interacting with nature of an overnight ski trip or camping trip; learning science through gardening or going insect and bird watching; researching a social studies project on a field trip; doing art sketches in the park or having a math class, while using fallen leaves or acorns as manipulatives; learning about social responsibility and environment preservation by going on neighborhood clean-ups; learning about compassion and making a difference by preparing rice balls for homeless people … the possibilities of active learning outside of the classroom are endless.
Creativity
Creativity is often utilized in the arts, where the notion of a “right” answer can be disputed with justification. The arts tend to promote the higher cognitive domains: analysis, synthesis and evaluation. The visual, performing, and writing arts help students to develop their ideas through active thinking and problem solving. Each step in these areas requires a student to analyze not only what he or she is doing currently, but the previous steps taken as well as future steps. UST applies these steps in the thinking process so that they can be applied to the subjects outside of the arts.
Fostering an environment that promotes creativity in students is one of UST’s most important goals. Creative thinking helps students not only with problem solving but also with understanding more complex ideas. Children tend to be naturally creative and can arrive at solutions for problems in a variety of ways by looking at the issue from different vantages. What often occurs is that when children become older, they are taught to conform to a rigid way of thinking and problem solving. This will often hamper their creative nature and ways to look at problems as well as the world around them. UST is here to encourage creative thinking amongst our students. Our students utilize a multitude of strategies and ways of thinking in order to have the range of possible solutions to be expanded.
Cooperative Learning
At UST children are encouraged to cooperate, collaborate and brainstorm, work in groups to come up with a best solution, as well as to support each other. One of the most important features of collaboration is that it not only creates more holistic results than individual work, but it also creates knowledge for a greater number of people. Collaboration in an international school setting becomes even more powerful as it brings culturally diverse perspectives into learning.
Children are encouraged to collaborate in different settings such as class discussions, pair work and small group work to enhance their learning experience. Learning by teaching is another great technique of cooperative learning that we use at UST. Students actively research a topic and prepare the information so that they can teach it to the class. This helps students learn their own topic even better and sometimes students learn and communicate better with their peers than their teachers.
Social Responsibility
Social responsibility is a very important part of education at UST. Learning about environmental and global concerns, as well as social issues in our local community raises students’ awareness and understanding of what part they play in shaping the world around them. Being given opportunities to get actively involved in making a difference helps them grow into responsible and conscious global citizens.
Safe Learning Environment
Finally, we feel that a school should provide a safe place for children to take chances. That means a child should not be afraid of failure but should look for the opportunities in it. Often times, students are afraid to take chances for fear of being wrong and this inhibits their learning as well as their self-development. Students need to learn when they do not accomplish a task how to reevaluate concepts that they might have had and build on them. When learning occurs in any form, there is no real failure at UST. UST provides a safe environment for social and academic growth on individual level.
With the understanding that each child is an individual, a school should provide an environment that challenges the students on a singular basis as well as in a group dynamic. When students have the opportunity to work with and learn from their peers, as well as from an educator, they develop understanding that learning is occurring at all times and that they are contributing to the education of their fellow students as well. Through this, a greater sense of responsibility for their own education as well as the education of the students around them will develop and stimulate a more socially conscious person.
Child-Centric Education
We believe that education should be child-centered. Children who can work in their area of strength and interests are more motivated and likely to be successful. Our goal is to give students a strong foundation by building thinking abilities to encourage life-long learning. Our core curriculum is designed to engage students using an enriched environment that is intriguing, fun and challenging.
Experiential Learning
Hands-on learning, more formally known as Experiential Education, reflects a teaching philosophy that promotes learning by doing. The strategy allows children to practice guided hands-on learning in which they absorb knowledge not only by listening, but by experiencing.
Hearing a lecture or even watching a teacher perform a physical demonstration of a concept, cannot instill a passion for knowledge in a student as deeply as hands-on experience can. Learning by doing allows children to become personally invested in their own learning process. Becoming actively engaged in their education builds confidence and teamwork, as the lessons require students to rely on their own abilities and abilities of others to obtain knowledge. That confidence and self-reliance inspires children to embrace the learning process and enthusiastically seek out additional knowledge.
At UST, a hands-on approach is applied to math, the sciences and art to create a better understanding of the concepts that the students would learn. A concrete example provides students with a more tangible opportunity to analyze and internalize their learning over the use of abstract ideas. Experiential learning gives more ownership to each child through the use of their senses: seeing, smelling, touching, hearing, and at times tasting.
Outdoor Education
As part of UST’s Experiential Learning approach, we like to take learning out of the classroom and expose our students to a progression of age-appropriate experiences to help them take ownership of their learning, develop confidence in their physical abilities and build confidence in themselves in their relationships with others. Outdoor education offers opportunities for children to enjoy first-hand experience outdoors, whether in urban green spaces in Tokyo or in Japan's countryside.
Some examples UST outdoor education program include building teamwork and interacting with nature of an overnight ski trip or camping trip; learning science through gardening or going insect and bird watching; researching a social studies project on a field trip; doing art sketches in the park or having a math class, while using fallen leaves or acorns as manipulatives; learning about social responsibility and environment preservation by going on neighborhood clean-ups; learning about compassion and making a difference by preparing rice balls for homeless people … the possibilities of active learning outside of the classroom are endless.
Creativity
Creativity is often utilized in the arts, where the notion of a “right” answer can be disputed with justification. The arts tend to promote the higher cognitive domains: analysis, synthesis and evaluation. The visual, performing, and writing arts help students to develop their ideas through active thinking and problem solving. Each step in these areas requires a student to analyze not only what he or she is doing currently, but the previous steps taken as well as future steps. UST applies these steps in the thinking process so that they can be applied to the subjects outside of the arts.
Fostering an environment that promotes creativity in students is one of UST’s most important goals. Creative thinking helps students not only with problem solving but also with understanding more complex ideas. Children tend to be naturally creative and can arrive at solutions for problems in a variety of ways by looking at the issue from different vantages. What often occurs is that when children become older, they are taught to conform to a rigid way of thinking and problem solving. This will often hamper their creative nature and ways to look at problems as well as the world around them. UST is here to encourage creative thinking amongst our students. Our students utilize a multitude of strategies and ways of thinking in order to have the range of possible solutions to be expanded.
Cooperative Learning
At UST children are encouraged to cooperate, collaborate and brainstorm, work in groups to come up with a best solution, as well as to support each other. One of the most important features of collaboration is that it not only creates more holistic results than individual work, but it also creates knowledge for a greater number of people. Collaboration in an international school setting becomes even more powerful as it brings culturally diverse perspectives into learning.
Children are encouraged to collaborate in different settings such as class discussions, pair work and small group work to enhance their learning experience. Learning by teaching is another great technique of cooperative learning that we use at UST. Students actively research a topic and prepare the information so that they can teach it to the class. This helps students learn their own topic even better and sometimes students learn and communicate better with their peers than their teachers.
Social Responsibility
Social responsibility is a very important part of education at UST. Learning about environmental and global concerns, as well as social issues in our local community raises students’ awareness and understanding of what part they play in shaping the world around them. Being given opportunities to get actively involved in making a difference helps them grow into responsible and conscious global citizens.
Safe Learning Environment
Finally, we feel that a school should provide a safe place for children to take chances. That means a child should not be afraid of failure but should look for the opportunities in it. Often times, students are afraid to take chances for fear of being wrong and this inhibits their learning as well as their self-development. Students need to learn when they do not accomplish a task how to reevaluate concepts that they might have had and build on them. When learning occurs in any form, there is no real failure at UST. UST provides a safe environment for social and academic growth on individual level.