Saturday October 14, 2006 8:30 p.m.
It is Saturday evening. I’m at my host family’s house in Joyo city. I’ll try and catch up with the last few days.
I spent yesterday at an elementary school. It was a very busy place. Almost every class had 35 – 40 students, even the 1st grade, and 1st grade was the only class with an aide. There was no small goup instruction, anywhere, two special education groups, with 5 or 6 kids. There was no pull-out for reading or any other special classes.
The entire education system is controlled by the central government in Japan (with an emphasis on the word “control”). Every class in every grade level was doing exactly the same thing at the same time, all day, so, for example, when you walked down the hall and passed 3 third grade rooms, every teacher was doing exactly the same thing.
We also saw no disciplining of students except in the most gentle way. Things like running in the hallway (there was a lot of that), general rough-housing, and talking while the teacher was giving a lesson, were almost completely tolerated and ignored. When we met with a few teachers and administrators after school, we asked about that. They said that it is expected that the parents are teaching the children what behaviors are acceptable in society, so the school does almost no disciplining. However, later when I talked to the 17year old daughter in my host family, she said teachers are always yelling at the kids to be quiet and settle down. So I’m not quite sure what really goes on. We definitely saw and heard many contradictions during our school visits. But even with the large class sizes, lack of individual attention and noisy atmosphere, when the teacher gave a specific direction, every student responded.
I was very impressed with the positive attitude of the teachers and the happy atmosphere of the school. There was lots of energy and the kids were enthusiastic and very friendly. They were very eager to answer questions, tell us what was going on and correct our mistakes. Of course, they spoke almost no English and we spoke no Japanese, but we still communicated very well. It was a great day.
(The teachers in my group have had many lively discussions about the huge differences we see in the school structure, behavior, lessons, etc. I would love to discuss these differences with teachers at home to hear more opinions. Other topics for discussion that have come out of this trip - intrinsic vs. extrinsic rewards, instilling self-motivation, boys’ behavior, the purpose of testing – to rank students or as a diagnostic tool for individual needs and strengths assessment.)
Classes I observed – Reading, home technology, music, calligraphy, science, computer, math. Art, PE. I ate lunch with the 1st grade. They made lots of origami and gave it to me as gifts.
It was a long day, but I found a bit more energy to go into Kyoto for a few hours.
This morning my host family picked me up at 10 a.m. We visited at their house for a while, then walked to the grocery, toured the back garden, had udon noodles for lunch. I took a quick nap because I was so exhausted, and then we went to the Hippo Family Club meeting. 20 people from toddlers to middle age adults gather in a community meeting room in Uji (right next to Joyo) to practice learning about other languages and cultures. My family has been a part of the group for over 10 years. We went around the circle and introduced ourselves in English, for my benefit, and then for 2 hours we listened to tapes of songs, which we danced to, and conversations in Japanese, Spanish, English, German and Russian. The organization is in Japan and Korea, and they sponsor study abroad and other cross-cultural activities. It was amazing. I’ll have to look them up in the Internet and see what I can find out.
We had Japanese curried chicken for dinner with salad and fresh fruit, a soccer game on TV, a Japanese-style shower, and early bed for me. My bedroom was an 8 tatami mat room with a futon in the middle of the floor and one low table. The”curtains” are sliding wood-frame doors with rice paper. Beautiful.
Oyasumi nasai.
It’s now Sunday morning. I slept over 11 hours! I hope to take lots of photos of the house this morning because so many things are so different.
After returning to our hotel, a group of us went into Kyoto for a few hours. Lots of walking and talking and eventually a Spanish restaurant where I gat a cheese pizza! It tasted really, really good after all the Japanese food.
It’s now after midnight and I need to get some sleep.
I don’t know when I’ll have a chance to post again because of our travels, but I will as soon as I can.
Oyasumi nasai.
It is Saturday evening. I’m at my host family’s house in Joyo city. I’ll try and catch up with the last few days.
I spent yesterday at an elementary school. It was a very busy place. Almost every class had 35 – 40 students, even the 1st grade, and 1st grade was the only class with an aide. There was no small goup instruction, anywhere, two special education groups, with 5 or 6 kids. There was no pull-out for reading or any other special classes.
The entire education system is controlled by the central government in Japan (with an emphasis on the word “control”). Every class in every grade level was doing exactly the same thing at the same time, all day, so, for example, when you walked down the hall and passed 3 third grade rooms, every teacher was doing exactly the same thing.
We also saw no disciplining of students except in the most gentle way. Things like running in the hallway (there was a lot of that), general rough-housing, and talking while the teacher was giving a lesson, were almost completely tolerated and ignored. When we met with a few teachers and administrators after school, we asked about that. They said that it is expected that the parents are teaching the children what behaviors are acceptable in society, so the school does almost no disciplining. However, later when I talked to the 17year old daughter in my host family, she said teachers are always yelling at the kids to be quiet and settle down. So I’m not quite sure what really goes on. We definitely saw and heard many contradictions during our school visits. But even with the large class sizes, lack of individual attention and noisy atmosphere, when the teacher gave a specific direction, every student responded.
I was very impressed with the positive attitude of the teachers and the happy atmosphere of the school. There was lots of energy and the kids were enthusiastic and very friendly. They were very eager to answer questions, tell us what was going on and correct our mistakes. Of course, they spoke almost no English and we spoke no Japanese, but we still communicated very well. It was a great day.
(The teachers in my group have had many lively discussions about the huge differences we see in the school structure, behavior, lessons, etc. I would love to discuss these differences with teachers at home to hear more opinions. Other topics for discussion that have come out of this trip - intrinsic vs. extrinsic rewards, instilling self-motivation, boys’ behavior, the purpose of testing – to rank students or as a diagnostic tool for individual needs and strengths assessment.)
Classes I observed – Reading, home technology, music, calligraphy, science, computer, math. Art, PE. I ate lunch with the 1st grade. They made lots of origami and gave it to me as gifts.
It was a long day, but I found a bit more energy to go into Kyoto for a few hours.
This morning my host family picked me up at 10 a.m. We visited at their house for a while, then walked to the grocery, toured the back garden, had udon noodles for lunch. I took a quick nap because I was so exhausted, and then we went to the Hippo Family Club meeting. 20 people from toddlers to middle age adults gather in a community meeting room in Uji (right next to Joyo) to practice learning about other languages and cultures. My family has been a part of the group for over 10 years. We went around the circle and introduced ourselves in English, for my benefit, and then for 2 hours we listened to tapes of songs, which we danced to, and conversations in Japanese, Spanish, English, German and Russian. The organization is in Japan and Korea, and they sponsor study abroad and other cross-cultural activities. It was amazing. I’ll have to look them up in the Internet and see what I can find out.
We had Japanese curried chicken for dinner with salad and fresh fruit, a soccer game on TV, a Japanese-style shower, and early bed for me. My bedroom was an 8 tatami mat room with a futon in the middle of the floor and one low table. The”curtains” are sliding wood-frame doors with rice paper. Beautiful.
Oyasumi nasai.
It’s now Sunday morning. I slept over 11 hours! I hope to take lots of photos of the house this morning because so many things are so different.
After returning to our hotel, a group of us went into Kyoto for a few hours. Lots of walking and talking and eventually a Spanish restaurant where I gat a cheese pizza! It tasted really, really good after all the Japanese food.
It’s now after midnight and I need to get some sleep.
I don’t know when I’ll have a chance to post again because of our travels, but I will as soon as I can.
Oyasumi nasai.
posted by JDieckman | 10:05 AM
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