1. Concluding Reflection
I enjoyed a lot reflecting on my high school experience at this moment, right before
the end of my ISB life. I remembered many things I experienced which are both negative to
positive. Throughout creating this e-portfolio and remembering my high school experiences, I
learned many things that I could not realize before. All the experiences and learning which I
had in my high school life are connected to one or more of the ways of knowing: reason,
emotion, perception, and language. For example, math is connected to reason, art is to
emotion, English is to language, and history is to perception. I think having connections to the
ways of knowing, I can gain knowledge about anything, not only about my high school
experiences. What I realized is that in the four of the ways of knowing, language has the most
connections to my experiences. I think this is because we cannot live our life without language
and it is the most certain way to tell something to or communicate with others. Without some
kind of language, people cannot understand each other, thus it is necessary for people to
depend on language. However, this is the part which I had struggled most with in my ISB life
since I am Japanese and English is my second language which I had never spoken until I came
to ISB at the beginning of the ninth grade, and all the communication in this school is done by
using English. Not only in normal school days, I also had struggle with language during the time
of Week Without Walls, when I went to Khao Lak and met Thai kids who of course do not
speak Japanese and even English. I had a pretty hard time at the beginning because there was
no way to communicate with the kids since we do not share the same language; however, later
I realized that somehow I was communicating with the kids. They understood what I wanted to
say, and I also understood what the kids tried to say. Then I realized that I was using body
language instead of verbal language. Another thing I learned from language is that language
can make a bias and stereotype. I believe it is always wrong to have them since they are often
not collect. I realized this when I was taking the class of modern world history because the text
book talks from only one side perspective and the other side of perspective was ignored since
there was a bias or stereotype taking place. So it is always important to have more sources and
know many perspectives about the event.
Throughout creating this e-portfolio, I realized that emotion is also greatly connected

2. to my experiences in my high school life. I got a lot of emotions such as happy, sad, angry,
regret, fun and so on. I realized that I became the person who expresses my feelings a lot after
I came to ISB. I think this happened because of the difference of the culture. In my own
culture, expressing emotions too much is considered as negative; however, in American
culture, showing emotion is considered as positive and even favored. I think without
expressing my own feelings or emotions, others cannot fully understand each other, so I prefer
this culture more and I am glad that I became an emotional person who can express more
about myself.
Language and emotion will always be important for me in my future. From my
experience of volunteering at Khao Lak, I learned the importance of helping others, so I want
to try to keep doing volunteer work after graduating from high school too. I think volunteer
work will help me understand how important sincere language and sincere emotions are, and I
think they are very important to help people. I think every person needs contact with someone
and from heart to heart is the best way. In addition, I will attend university in Japan but I have
almost never lived in Japan since I have lived in Thailand since when I was three years old
because of my father’s job. I think it will take time to learn about real Japanese culture,
especially language because I will have to understand Japanese body language, gestures and
word choice. I think it will be the biggest challenge for me to re-enter my own culture.
However, I believe my knowledge of language and emotion that I gained in my high school
experiences will be useful and important for me to succeed in Japan, a new environment I will
be entered. I believe that knowing about the ways of knowing will help me learn more deeply
and lead me to be a better student and a person in the future.