Innovations Public Charter School established a sister school partnership with Seiko Gakuen Primary School in Tokushima Japan in 2007. Each year, students Seiko's 5th and 6th year students travel to Kona to spend a week attending school at Innovations. Involved in all academic classes as well as curriculum-based field trips, Seiko students also share presentations of their shared studies on a joint curriculum unit of study with Innovations' students. Presentations are done in English with student-created visuals and demonstrations that meet Seiko School's bilingual expectation component for its students. The share curriculum units of study facilitate the study of topics through multiple perspectives, resources and exploration by students of both countries.
Innovations' aims to send a group of interested students on exchange to Tokushima every other year. Six groups have traveled to Japan to date most recently in 2018. It is a wonderful experience of cultural exchange, curriculum immersion, site seeing and fun. Students spend a week in Tokushima attending school with their Seiko peers and participate in homestays for 4-6 nights - living the life of a student in Japan. We then travel together as a group to famous, noteable sites in cities such as Osaka, Kyoto and Hiroshima.
