Wednesday, October 22, 2008

We arrived at the elementary school early enough to see the children walking in their bright yellow hats. Almost all of them walk to school every day. I didn't see any school buses at all while I was in Japan.

Again, they were lined up in rows to greet us. The school's award-winning brass band played for us and they were fantastic! They can join beginning in 3rd grade and would definitely be good enough to play with most adults.

My first classroom observation was a 3rd grade math lesson. The children were calling out to their teacher and for a moment I thought it was chaos. But I could tell by their body language that they were on task and very eager for the teacher to approve their work. I observed a lesson in the computer lab. The students were writing letters to their parents--I'm pretty sure it was an invitation to the cultural festival for the upcoming Saturday. I took a picture of the keyboard because in order to make the characters the students have to hit two keys. I am amazed at the learning ability--Japanese students learn both Japanese and Chinese characters. The teacher invited me to play a game on the computer but it was in Japanese and I never quite figured it out.

At the end of the day we watched the brass band practice and Phil got to conduct the group. He is an orchestra teacher in Iowa. He said he wished his high school kids could play like this!!

I was struck by the independence of the children. I watched a group of first graders outside whose assignment was to "observe autumn." They each had little sketch pads and drew some of the best pictures I've seen of the changing leaves and other foliage. I didn't see anyone off task and the most surprising thing was the lack of adult supervision. When the chimes rang to signal the end of class the children quickly lined up near the entrance. Again, the children and adults clean the school in the afternoon. Older students are in charge of groups of younger students. They use products like Ajax and clean the bathrooms and mop.

Before dinner a group of us took a long walk around town and stopped at the visitor's center. Minamisoma is very proud of the horse festival that occurs every July.

This is a picture of my dinner. The English name of the restaurant means "May." It was a delicious sushi and sashimi--and yes, I that is squid and I did eat it.