In August 2026, after several years away from the classroom, I returned to TESOL in Hokkaido, Japan to help launch K&Y's inaugural High School Summer Program in Hakodate.
Created by colleagues from the Stanford Graduate School of Education, the program brings Japanese and American high schoolers together to live and learn for two weeks.
Our team designed and taught original English and Japanese curricula spanning climate change, demographics, diversity, and modern history.
In parallel, students learned about the Hakodate region through field trips and engaged in the full design thinking process — from needfinding to ideation to testing — to develop solutions to local challenges, such as an aging population.
