Elementary School Visit

Wednesday, June 18

I have always been a high school kind of teacher, shying away from hanging out with the younger ones in elementary school. I don’t know why. When Reed and Lucy were born, of course, my attitude towards the younger ones changed completely. Now that I am a father, I am much more able to relate to the younger ones and appreciate their stages in development. Today was the first time I had ever actually spent an entire day with elementary school kids, and it was an incredibly wonderful and special time. Maybe all elementary school kids are like the ones I met today in Kamisu-City, but the children I met today were incredibly fun to hang out with. Today was just the sort of day I imagined I would have when I applied for the JFMF program.

When we arrived, we met the Principal and Vice Principal and did some of the formal stuff, and then we waited at the entrance of the school: In Japan students are not bussed to school. They may be dropped off by a parent, but generally speaking, all students walk to school in groups. After meeting the children, we took a commemorative photo, while the entire school assembled in the gym. Once we arrived, we took our seats of honor up on the stage, and then after introductions, and a variety of formal presentations that were done in Japanese by several children who had obviously been chosen in advance, and which we could not understand because their speeches were not translated, they all then stood up and sang us a song of welcome. 500 kids singing, all on pitch and smiling. Amazing.

One member of my group, Kathy from Rosaline, Long Island, was weeping she was so moved. It was a very special moment. After that the students rearranged to take a commemorative photo with us. They way they moved was phenomenal; it was like watching groups of soldiers in a military parade, or members of a marching band, moving into formation. Kids weren’t running around crazy or not paying attention. Well, that’s not totally true. There was this one student who was clearing struggling with some ADHD issues, but in the end, he did what was expected.

After the photo, we were greeted by the principal, vice principal and the director of Curriculum and instruction for the school with more formality. Afterwards, we made our first visits to classrooms. The school is designed in a very open way, and although there are walls dividing individual classrooms, for which the average class size is 40, all of the classes are connected with an enormous open area. So, if one class is teaching reading or writing and is quiet, and the other group is chanting a song, all rooms hear the song. The intention is to help develop concentration skills and foster a sense of unity among all classes, but I couldn’t teach in an environment like that.


I was able to watch and participate in a 1st grade Japanese class, which was a lot of fun. They were learning katakana or hiragana characters, both saying them and writing them. So, I worked on a worksheet as well, although I had no idea what the symbols meant. I also stopped by the Art class and the Music class. In the above picture I am participating in an English class game where all of the words are political. As I'm sure you can sure, I was was "subordinate" for a while. All subjects, including music and art, are more or less instructed by the classroom teacher. The concept of “special” where kids in our schools go to PE, music or art does not exist here. The teachers do not get a break. From 7:30 until 3:00 they are with the kids, including for lunch. The food is brought to the classroom and they eat lunch there. There is not a cafeteria.

Here is a girl in the class I ate lunch with. She was so cute and outgoing, I couldn't help but take a picture. Besides, if you look carefully, the hint of dimples, the cheecks, the arced eyes and the pony on top resemble Lucy a lot.

I was able to hear different groups of students singing throughout the day, and I noticed that everyone participates, everyone is on pitch and in key, and they all have the songs memorized. Now, this could just be things that they had prepared especially for our visit, but when we asked whether the behavior of the students today was typical or not, they said it was.

My favorite time besides recess, which allowed my inner child to get back on the monkey bars and back to climbing poles, was the calligraphy class. We were all allowed to participate and write the two characters that mean “future.” The student pictured with me below is a purple belt in Judo and her favorite throw is Tai Otoshi, which also happens to be my favorite.