Ms Chiaki: Language Acquisition Teacher

This interview was written by Kai F.

She’s Japanese and has been teaching MYP for more than 15 years. She teaches MYP English and Japanese here at OYIS.

“What is happening to Earth?! I checked the temperature and today it was 12 degrees and in the daytime it’s high. OK so my point is, I’m curious about the weather change. My family lives in Chiba and we did not have any big typhoons, but this year a big typhoon hit Chiba directly. So I’m really surprised and wondering what is going on with the Earth.”

Near-death experience…

“What happened was I visited my friends when I was in college. It was my first time going to America and I had a driving license, but America and Japan’s directions of driving are the opposite. I completely went the opposite way and I was very very close to getting hit. Now I’m very, very careful while driving.”

Why are you here? Why did you decide to be a teacher at OYIS when you could have done other things?

She said, “There are a few reasons. One thing is my husband had a job transfer so I came to Osaka and I wanted to teach at one of the international schools, and I was also interested in IB. I was so lucky I was hired. Another reason is that I wanted to know more about diverse students because I used to work at an American school. I wanted to teach more diverse students, so I thought OYIS is a good environment to get to know more students, not just as a country. I wanted to know their personalities.”