This month, the NIS community gathered at the Hilton Nagoya, bringing together generations of students, alumni, staff, and families to celebrate a true milestone — the 60th anniversary of our special school. It was a humbling moment, standing in that ballroom, looking out over the incredible community that has built the NIS story, and reflecting on how it all began.
It’s easy to think about a school's history by looking at the concrete realities that surround us. We can trace the journey from the earliest days — borrowing buildings from a local Japanese school — to the move to Moriyama and the building of the original Raymond and ELC buildings, and then over the years, the new projects: the gym, the Wing Building, the Annex, the Design Lab, and, most recently, the wonderful East Building, completed in the midst of Covid in 2020.
But the buildings, impressive as they are, are not the real story.
NIS has always been a human story. It started as a dream — families sitting around a kitchen table, imagining an education that could meet the needs of their children. It was a story of families coming together, gaining the support of local business leaders, the mayor, the governor, the US State Department, and the broader community of advocates for international education in Japan — all simply trying to make something good happen, at that moment, for the children who needed it.
That DNA — a community coming together to create a school to serve the children who need it most — has sustained our mission right up to today.
Even in the early days, families were thinking carefully about how to best serve their children's needs. They created the Raymond Building with its circular design — because, just like learning, the corridors on a circle never end. And also, if you want kids to think outside the box, why would you put them in a box!?
Of course, the school has changed so much in 60 years. And just as surgeons today don't operate using 1960s technology and ideas, so too our teachers today bring brain-based learning theory to their classrooms, creating irresistible learning and engagement. In many ways, a classroom at NIS today would be unrecognizable to the students and teachers of 60 years ago.
Yet in the ways that matter most—it is still NIS.
It is still a community driven by the people it serves. We are still a school that strives to include, and that remains here for the families who need us.
We happen to be the generation that is holding the vision on the 60th birthday — but we know that we are simply custodians of a dream that predates us. Our job is to ensure that the mission stays strong and alive for the generations yet to come. So that, even 60-years from now, there will still be a place where NIS dolphins come to learn to Inquire, Inspire, Impact – and Include.