Saving the Best for Last...Takeo Junior High School

I'm sure I don't need to tell you that today was my favorite school visit in Taeko. I was so excited to see a Japanese Middle School! To be honest, it really wasn't all that different from William Penn! There are about the same number of students in both of our schools, but in Takeo Junior High School the grades are equivalent to our 7th, 8th, and 9th grades. They even have a field day just like ours, but they are divided into three teams instead of two. The Middle School also has a strict dress code. The sign on the right reminds girls to dress neatly, tie their bows properly, and to make sure their socks aren't slouchy and their hair isn't dyed or permed. It also reminds them that they are not allowed to shave their eyebrows (something that seems to be a popular trend among Japanese girls).

The Middle School students' day starts out with homeroom, and then today, in honor of our visit, the school had a special assembly to welcome us. I like to think that if we had special visitors to William Penn, our students would sit as nicely and quietly and be as well behaved in an assembly as the students at Takeo Junior High School were today.

In the Junior High School, as in the High School, the students switch classrooms for each subject. The first class we observed was a first year math class. What made this class different from any other class in the school was that the students were divided into two groups, so there were only 20 students in each class instead of 40. This is only done for 7th grade math. When we entered the room, there were four students at the board solving problems, just like Mr. Garretson has students do at William Penn!

Next, we observed a 7th grade Science class, where the students were conducting a flame experiment. If I'm not mistaken, the 8th grade students at William Penn will have the opportunity to conduct a very similar experiment in their science classes later this year. Mrs. Blackshire will also be happy to know that even in Japanese schools, seating is an issue in Science classes. Only this time, instead of three students sharing each long black table, there were four students per table!

It probably goes without saying that I was very excited to see Social Studies classes. In 7th grade the students were studying the Middle Ages, just like we study the Middle Ages at William Penn in 7th grade. In this class, instead of studying Europe in the Middle Ages, these students were studying the history of Japan in the Middle Ages and learning about samurai and shogun. In 9th grade they were learning about the Japanese Constitution and Human Rights. I think it would be really interesting to compare the United States Constitution and our ideas about Human Rights with the Japanese Constitution and their students' ideas about Human Rights!

The one things I did notice is that the Japanese textbooks were much thinner than our textbooks and they didn't have as much content. Otherwise, our books were pretty similar, complete with guiding questions and primary sources. They even used graphic organizers to help them take notes, just like we do! At the end of the day, I had the opportunity to talk with the Junior High School Social Studies teacher (with the help of a translator) and learn more about how she conducts her classes. We found out that we have a lot of the same ideas about teaching Social Studies!

Takeo Junior High School has all of the same special area subjects that we have, but the students get to choose which classes they would like to take within each discipline. For instance, instead of just having one art class, the students can choose between crafts and drawing. In crafts, the students were constructing paper lampshades. It looked like a very complex process! In drawing, the students were making "imagination pictures", which were very abstract, colorful paintings that involved many steps to create the final product. The teacher and students in that class were very friendly and invited us to join them and help with their paintings.


The other special area classes we were able to visit were the instrumental music classes. In these classes, the students learn to play traditional Japanese instruments, such as taiko drums (the type of drumming from the festivals we saw in Takeo) and koto. The teachers in each of these classes also arranged for us to pair up with students who taught how to play these traditional instruments.

In the drumming class, the students sit at their desk and practice on a drum pad, while the teacher demonstrates on real drums in the front of the room. Japanese drumming starts out soft and slow and the beat gradually gets faster and louder, then it ends softly and slowly again. When playing the taiko drums, the students used western musical notation. Since I used to play an instrument when I was in middle school, I could follow along with the beat and keep up with rest of the class. The teacher did have a lot of corrections for me to make on my posture. Real taiko drumming uses a very athletic stance and takes every muscle in the body (as you could see from the pictures and videos from the festivals earlier in the week!).

Playing the koto seemed kind of like playing a harp, but it was also very different. There were so many ways you could manipulate the strings to make different sounds. With the help of a very patient and talented student, I was able to play some notes on the koto, but the musical notation was so different from western style music that there was no way I could decipher it. The entire class performed a song for us on the koto and traditional Japanese drums. I below is a short video clip of the performance. The sound did not come out very well on the video recording, but I think you will get a good idea of how the koto is played from watching:



After 4th period, the students went back to their homerooms to eat lunch. Lunch in the Middle School is served much like the lunch in the elementary school. The individual desks are pushed together in groups of 6 and covered with tablecloths and the food is brought in pots to the classroom. Members of the group take turns acting as the server for each table. Once everyone has their food and the class has thanked the people who prepared the food, a teacher comes on the loud speaker and announces what song will be played that day. Then, while the students are eating, classical music is played through the PA system. When the students are finished with their lunches, everyone clears their plates and rearranges the tables for the next class. I should mention that Japanese schools (and Japanese society in general) are very conscientious about recycling. The schools do not use disposable dishes, trays, or silverware, and each student unfolds their milk carton to make it flat, rinses it off, and recycles it. This is an area where William Penn could really learn something from Japanese schools. By this point, I bet you can guess what the students did once they were finished lunch. You got it...they CLEANED THE SCHOOL! Even though this was the third time I saw it happen, the concept still amazes me! What a great idea!
After school is over at 3:40 pm, the students either go home or go to their club activities like they do at the High School. Many of the clubs they have in Middle School are the same clubs as in the High School. Some of the most popular clubs are volleyball, baseball, soccer, tennis, judo, and kendo. (To find out what judo and kendo are, go back to yesterday's blog and find those words highlighted in my entry. Click on them and it will take you to links that explain each sport.) Unfortunately, we did not get to observe the Sumo club because they were away from school at a meet that afternoon. We did, however, get to see volleyball, kendo, and judo.
After clubs and activities were done for the day, I took advantage of the nice weather to hike up to the top of one of the bigger hills in Takeo to watch the sunset. It was very beautiful and peaceful. I know today's post was a bit longer than usual, but it was such an exciting day and I learned so many things that I just had to share! Tomorrow morning I meet my host family and I will stay with them until Sunday evening. On Sunday they will drop me off at a traditional Japanese Inn where I will stay until we fly back to Tokyo on Monday. I think it's a pretty safe bet that I won't have access to email until I am back in Tokyo Monday night. I'm sure I will have a lot to tell you when I get back, and I still haven't even told you how we are ordering food without a menu or the use of language. I'll give you a hint: we have to be very creative in how we communicate with the servers. I can't wait to hear what you would do! To help you think, I'll leave you with a picture of the menu from dinner tonight and the food I ended up getting after I ordered dinner at that restaurant: