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<\/p>\nWhen you first walk into Colegio Japone\u0301s Paraguayo in Asuncio\u0301n, Paraguay, one of the first things you\u2019ll notice is something not always found in many schools around the world \u2013 throngs of students excitedly greeting guests on their own.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people are wowed by that,\u201d says Patricia Toyotoshi, the director of Colegio Japone\u0301s Paraguayo. \u201cIt speaks to the discipline and respect we instill in our students.\u201d<\/p>\n
Known locally as the \u201cJapan School,\u201d Colegio Japone\u0301s Paraguayo was initially established by Naoyuki Toyotoshi, a Japanese immigrant in Paraguay, with the primary objective of providing a quality education to the local Japanese population in Paraguay. However, over time, the school evolved and grew its commitment to giving back to the broader Paraguayan community \u2013 now mostly serving native Paraguayan families. It\u2019s not just the values of Japanese culture brought over from Tokyo by Toyotoshi\u2019s father years ago \u2013 visitors to the unique school also will find students designing and making with 3D printers, or in an adjacent space, children creating simpler, smarter systems in the realm of mechatronics. Down the hall, students engineer robots and use computing and AI to enhance supply chain systems. In another classroom, children can be seen creating culinary delights or sewing new fashions, while young people work nearby to shoot, edit and create film productions.<\/p>\n
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For the roughly 330 young minds being shaped at Colegio Japone\u0301s Paraguayo, the private Pre-K through 12th grade school represents a beacon of promise in a country routinely ranked near the bottom in education globally. The school provides a foundational Paraguayan education but also multiple language courses and a wide-range of forward-thinking, vocational and STEM-related subjects, with the goal of preparing students to be productive and engaged citizens. The student-to-teacher ratio is 5 to 1, and most of the classes are taught by professionals successful in their fields of expertise. The school\u2019s foundation pays roughly half of tuition expenses for many students, and 100% of the infrastructure.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThese kids would have no way, if they weren\u2019t here, to have this opportunity,\u201d Toyotoshi says. \u201cThey are becoming what the world wants for work now \u2013 students who can think and produce something by working collaboratively.\u201d<\/p>\n
Upon assuming leadership of the school from her father several years ago, Patricia Toyotoshi took decisive measures to bolster and modernize the school\u2019s curriculum and infrastructure. At the time, despite the school having steadily grown and developed since its founding in 2000, Patricia reflected on an era when the school\u2019s potential for innovation remained untapped. Teachers instructed from the front of a dreary and shadowy classroom, where students sat in uniform rows of stationary desks. She believes the school\u2019s true innovative potential wasn\u2019t fully unlocked until the recent construction of its new \u2018creative building\u2019 \u2013 an expansion to the campus that features areas designed specifically for the wide range of disciplines the school offers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a whole process, and at the end, this is what you want. That building gave us the last component we needed to really bring out the true talents of our students,\u201d Toyotoshi says.<\/p>\n
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She likes to share the story of how a group of students from Colegio Japone\u0301s Paraguayo recently won a national aerospace and astrodynamics competition, crediting the school\u2019s new flexible space for launching them to success. \u201cIt\u2019s unreal, because you\u2019re putting physics, math and creativity all together into this work. And you have the kids who are really good at math and physics, but they may not necessarily know how to draw or make things. So this space allows them to collaborate with the kids who have skills in industrial arts and engineering, and together, they are able to be successful,\u201d Toyotoshi says. \u201cFor me, seeing these kids \u2013 how they worked together \u2013 this is what we\u2019ve wanted for such a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Toyotoshi, Colegio Japone\u0301s Paraguayo embodies a legacy of investment in educational excellence \u2013 a personal family commitment to a community that helped her father gain footing as a young immigrant to Paraguay, and later, provided him the support he needed to become a successful businessman.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur mission is to help these students become the future citizens that we want for our country \u2013 that\u2019s our vision. We truly believe in the value of an excellent education, and it\u2019s why we\u2019re here. It\u2019s why we\u2019re investing,\u201d Toyotoshi says. \u201cLearning is about what makes you happy and fulfilled as a person. Everybody has a talent. Everybody has skill. You just have to find it \u2013 and you can be somebody with that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A flexible edit on their spaces is allowing students at a unique school in Paraguay to aspire to new heights in STEM and vocational disciplines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37261,"featured_media":99324,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"topic":[14326],"class_list":["post-99322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","topic-learning"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n