Today I visited Higashi Elementary School in Ueda, Nagano Prefecture. I had an amazing time and learned so much. Here is a summary of my day.
Overview of the school/school system+
When you arrive to the school, you take your shoes off and switch into indoor shoes so not to track dirt. They are very serious about this. All students and teachers have indoor shoes that they keep in cubbies at the school. Once a week, students are required to take home shoes and clean them!
The Country of Japan tells the prefectures (like states) how many hours of each subject they must teach in a year. Nagano prides itself on being very educated and always exceeds the minimum amount. The main subjects are History, Japanese, Math, and Science. After that they have music and art about twice a week, PE about 3 times, and then some smaller classes like health, moral development, and maybe a language like English. The PE is determined by the government as well. Just before I came was bike traffic safety classes and when I was there was swimming. However, heavy rains and flooding meant no swimming today. :(
In the school I was in they had 619 students from 1st-6th. Up until 5th grade there is one classroom for each grade. An average class is about 30 students. When a class is between 30-35 students they are required to hire an assistant teacher. After 35 they must split the class into two classes. Needless to say, the classes were very large and I was surprised at how noisy they were! Noisy in a good way--they children were learning but having a lot of fun.
I met with the Principal (Kocho sensei) and Head of Teachers (Kyouto sensei) for about 1.5 hours discussing the school and the system and asking and answering questions about differences between schools. Mrs. Kinoshita helped me greatly with the translations. Also, the secretary at the school had been a personal guide to the American speed skating mens team during the 1998 Nagano Olympics, so she was quite good (and funny! She told me how cute and single the skaters were!!). From this discussion I learned about the culutre of the schools and how students prepare for later levels. In Lower School, the students do not tend to do much after school besides some music lessons and maybe some sports. Starting in Middle School, students start to focus their outside activities and become more intense in a sport of instrument of their choice. Satowa's cousin who is in 8th grade is very into the trumpet and also has been taking English lessons once a week after school. She goes to trumpet lessons and brass ensembles after school most days until 7pm! A lot of students in the higher grades will attend tutoring classes for a few hours after school. Many people attribute Japan's educational success to this extra time and not the schools. But I have to say I think the schools were great. Middle school runs from 7th-9th grade, and in 9th grade they must take exams to determine which High school they will attend. In Ueda (where I was) there is sort of an unspoken ranking of the schools, 1,2,3,4 and then more techinical schools for students who are not planning on going to University. The exam and the teachers help determine which school they will attend. In 11th grade it is the same thing, although this time for university. These exams are very hard and very competitive. Teachers it seems are evaluated the same way they are in the States. They must write their goals for the year and give them to the head of school. At the end of the year, they sit for an interview to review how they attained their goals. These then get reported to the Education Board.
Are you still reading this? Wow! I am impressed!
I visited 3 math classes, 3rd, 4th, and 5th. I have to say the 3rd grade class was my favorite. The teacher was very animated and had good hands on activities. Actually, all the teachers had good hands on activities. The teacher in 3rd grade was teaching regrouping when subtracting whole numbers. She used base ten blocks on paper that she put on the board and then cut them when borrowing. I have video that I can show anyone who is interested. Then the students worked independently in their workbooks, which were so cool! They are fun and colorful and very thin compared to ours. They go much deeper into the concepts. The books contained much more geometry concepts and a lot of measurement. After they reviewed the concepts together. And since it was raining, PE was cancelled...so what do you do? DO a dance for the foreigner! HA! It was really cute. The girls had a dance club that they started and danced for me. I also have video.
5th grade was divided by ability, but not based on grades. It was actually based on what each student wanted to do. If they felt they were ready for a challenge they could choose the highest level. I wonder if this would ever work at NCS? I found that really interesting. I visited all 4 levels of math. The teachers, again, had many hands on activities. In 3 of the 4 classrooms students were working on angle measurements in triangles and quadrangles. They were exploring figuring out strange polygons by dividing them into triangles. And they were actually drawing them on paper and cutting them into triangles--something I would do! In the highest class, they were learning division of decimals by doing this awesome path maze. I copied it down and would try to explain it but I think it wouldn't translate well into words. When I get home I will scan it and put it on this site...I will also give a snickers bar to anyone who is still reading this. (Holly?) Also in the 5th grade classrooms were their artwork from class displayed (some neat watercolor and pen drawings of their backpacks) and their hopes and dreams for the year...yea! Again something I do!
4th grade was my final class that I visited and this class was also learning about angles of a triangle by estimating first and then measuring. The teacher (sensei) had large triangles that she put on the board and asked the students to estimate the angle measurements. Then she put up a trapezoid and had them estimate. She helped them to learn the concept of complimentary and vertical angles, but without using the jargon...just by having them discover those concepts. After they had to do a problem in their workbook that I found very hard with estimating and measuring the angles! Then came the embarassment...I was asked to introduce myself...not easy...or very pretty. It came out really broken and I needed help! Then the students asked me questions...anyone want to guess what the first question was?
You are correct...How tall are you??? Well, it turns out (since they had a chart with famous people's heights) that I am as tall as the famed baseball player Ichiro who now plays for the Seattle Mariners...that was a kick!
Some other tidbits about the school. The students have lunch at school and they all bring the lunch to the classroom and serve their classmates and then clean up. The have turns for doing this. The servers wear aprons, chef hats, and they all wear surgical masks when getting their food and then obviously take them off when they are eating. Today was very western, like a broccoli soup and hamburgers! But normally it is things like soba noodles, rice, and always a soup. All the students have small desks where they keep their notebooks, although there are not many of them. They also all have elaborate pencil cases...just like NCS girls! But maybe not as many sharpee markers!:) I found that the teachers were very interactive--I guess I was expecting more "old school" instruction...stand in front of the room and stay there. They wandered during classes and were very encouraging and complimentary of their students. I have read that many studies attribute Japanese success to the amount of praise given by teachers...I know it can't hurt! Most of the classrooms sat in desks of 2 by 2, alternating boy/girl. One class had them in pods...my arrangement of choice for group work. Students were very motivated to do well and to answer questions. When asked for possible solutions during the estimating, most of them came up with great ways to get to 180 degrees like 48 + 59 + 73 or 84 + 68 + 28. I was impressed!
Ok, wow...you made it to the bottom. Maybe two snickers bars. But only if you have read everything. I know some of you are skimming!:)
All in all, I loved the Elementary school and was so pleased to be there. I also got a chance to visit the Buddist temple in Ueda which is considered a National treasure because it is the only standing octagonal pagoda in the country. It was made of cedar and no nails!
Ok, any questions about the school?
