Representatives of Sendai Ikuei Gakuen High School of Japan recently visited Island Pacific Academy to sign a sister school agreement; the official signing serves to document the relationship between the two schools and opens the door for international student exchanges between IPA and Sendai both of which offer International Baccalaureate programs.
Takehiko Katoh, Sendai Ikuei Gakuen Head of School, and Gerald Teramae, IPA Head of School, signed documents that made official a sister school agreement between Sendai and IPA. Witnesses at the signing were Earl Okawa, Principal of i-Lion School; Seichi Katoh, a teacher at Sendai Ikuei Gakuen; James Dochtermann, the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme Coordinator at Sendai Ikuei Gakuen; Akiko Taira, IPA Japanese Language Department Chair; and Kip Cummings, IPA Secondary Principal.
“On the day of the signing with Sendai, we had IPA students in Querétaro, Mexico visiting Instituto Thomas Jefferson (ITJ),” says Gerald Teramae, Head of School. “We can now begin planning to offer a similar program between Sendai and IPA.”
Kip Cummings, Secondary Principal, says the sister school agreement is meaningful and purposeful. “Not only will this provide yet another avenue for exercising international mindedness within our International Baccalaureate curriculum,” Cummings explained. “It now means we have relationships with schools for the world languages taught in the secondary grades at IPA.”
Sister school agreements were signed in both English and Japanese by the Sendai Head of School and IPA’s Head of School.
Akiko Taira, Japanese language department chair, is excited to be involved in the planning of an IPA student exchange trip to Japan in the coming years. A future IPA trip to visit Sendai Ikuei School would take students to the Northeastern area of Japan where they would stay in host homes and the Sendai dorms. “We envision a program where our students would also have some community service opportunities while in Japan and take a cultural trip to Tokyo areas,” says Taira.
Sendai faculty are now also planning a trip to bring a group of their students to IPA. If you are interested in learning more about being a future host family, please contact Akiko Taira [email protected].
