Who are the Newbies?

Seisen, once again, welcomed new faculty members and students into their community on August 23. In fact, I am a new student this year! 

I am Ain Cho, a freshman in high school, a new member of the Chokai house, Journalism, and choir. Being new comes with its ups and downs. For instance, I still have trouble remembering my classmates’ names and I frequently get lost in the hallways and different parts of the school when I’m going to my next class. So I thought it would be nice to do something that would help me and everyone else in this community get to know each other a bit better every quarter? My plan is to write an article about interesting facts about the teachers and faculty members of Seisen! It will be a mini-series that will go on for a whole year!

For my first article, I interviewed two new teachers, Mr. Bucklaschuk and Ms. Kotowich, that I had encountered often during the first month of school. Mr. Bucklaschuk is a Science teacher and has been teaching for about 13-14 years. Ms. Kotowich is an art teacher and has been teaching art for 9 years. I’ll start off with Mr. Bucklaschuk(Shaun Bucklaschuk). He is from Canada, and he has taught in Canada for 4 years, Kuwait for a year, and has been teaching in Japan for about 8 years. Before Seisen, he taught at the Canadian International School, which is an international school in Shinagawa. He likes being a teacher because he believes it is “a socially responsible job”, and is a job that he believes is beneficial for society. He enjoys seeing his students solve challenging problems and showing them how science works. Mr. Bucklaschuk teaches Grade 7 Science, Grade 9 Chemistry, Grade 10 Physics, and Environmental Systems and Societies (IB). When I asked about what he mainly likes about his subjects he said, “I like everything. I like how science shows you how things work.”, and he also mentioned that he likes figuring out how everything in this world works and functions the way they do, and he thinks that science gives you a lot of answers to how the world works and why. He also mentioned, “I like the experiments. I like making things explode. Watching things fall.” I also asked him how he liked Seisen so far, and he said, “Very well. That’s an easy question. The students are really easy to teach; it’s pretty easy to stay around everyone most days. The staff, are very hard-working and care about the students so at least we all hold that in common. I think that the staff is here for the students’ benefit. I’m glad I came.”

The next teacher I interviewed was Ms. Kotowich. She was born in Winnipeg, Canada, but also has US Citizenship, and lived in Arizona for over a decade. She has taught in Arizona, then in Doha, in Qatar, and just recently in Mumbai, India. When asked about I asked her what she liked about art, she said that she loves that it’s both hands-on and conceptually challenging. “There is something intensely satisfying about building things with your hands that connect to our primitive human capabilities, and yet at the same time the study of artwork can be intellectual and abstract.” She believes that the ideas explored through artwork can be powerful enough to bring about social change and influence the course of cultural development. “I love how art connects humans, regardless of our differences, and reconnects us to our past and our bodies.” She also mentioned that she’s only been living in Tokyo for 2 months. She mentioned that she “-loves how modern and easy it is to live here, but also how exciting it is with so much to do and see and experience.” Lastly, I ended the interview by asking her what she liked about Seisen she mentioned that she likes how Seisen is a tight-knit community. “The faculty are close and the students have been really lovely. It is always a little difficult to come into a new place with its own ways of doing things and takes some time to smooth things out, but every day is better than the previous one and I am really looking forward to what the rest of this year has in store.”   

We look forward to the growth of the Seisen family with such amazing people. We are delighted to welcome so many new students and teachers this year, and Ms. Kotowich and Mr. Bucklaschuk are prime examples.