The Hidden Joys of a Small School

Hello all,

For today's check in, I'd like to share some of the hidden beauties of teaching at, and attending a small school.

While I might have started my teaching career with classrooms filled with anywhere from 25-35 students, over the years it seems I have  niched myself into teaching for smaller private schools ranging from Montessori schools to accelerated schools to International schools.  And I have no regrets whatsoever.

Right now I am teaching at Kyoto International School.  We teach children ranging from our 2 year old program to Middle School.  And I, of course, teach Kindergarten.

I have 6 students.

6.

KIS an IB World School, and in my program, the PYP program, we follow an inquiry-based curriculum that uses play and independent thematic  exploration as the cornerstones for learning.

So for a teacher like me, with  a background in Montessori and a love of messy hands-on art and science as well as a passion for words in all forms, it is a dream-come-true for teaching.

Because for 5 and 6 year old children, play is their work, and work is their play and the two should be, and are, intertwined.  Which means I can bring in my experiments and wacky materials and set them up in a center and step back and see what happens.

And what happens?
Magic happens.
And like thirsty sponges, they soak it all up.
And they learn.
Effortlessly.
Words and reading, writing and numbers. Social skills and self-care skills.

I set up the classroom environment (hello there Montessori), I give the initial push, and off they go.

Now this kind of learning isn't just for small classes.  I could do the same with a larger class.
And this kind of learning isn't just for International schools in Japan, because I could do the same anywhere, including back at home in the United States.

Except that it seems that so many schools back at home  have forgotten, or maybe choose to deny, or maybe have never learned the secret to inspire joyful, independent education.

Time.
The secret is time.

At KIS especially, but in other schools I have taught at as well, I was given the gift of time.
At some schools the time I was given was shorter, because the school had a curriculum that needed to be addressed, deadlines that needed to be met and tests that needed to be taken.  Sometimes, like now, the time I am given is longer, allowing students to stretch their imaginations, hone their skills, work at the play that is so vital to real learning for young children.

But the benefits of a small school don't just rest in the individual classrooms.

I'll give you an example.

Just this week my Kindergarten class (6 students)  and our Middle School class (4 students) went on a field trip to visit our sister school that is located some distance  away up in the mountains.  Every year on Halloween students from our sister school visit us for Halloween fun, and in turn we are invited to their school for their Winter festival and mochi pounding (pounding cooked rice in massive stone bowls with wooden mallets until it becomes a delicious glutinous mass, which is then cooked and eagerly devoured).

10 students, 2 teachers.

That was it.

Now, in a larger school, the first difference would be that Middle School wouldn't even be a part of the elementary program, but would be separated into it's own school, maybe across town.

And even in a larger school that did go from Kindergarten to Middle School, the likelihood of them going together on a field trip would be small, since to take a large group with such an age spread would be challenging, to say the least.

But not here.

The four Middle School students willingly accepted being paired off, each middle school student with either 1 or 2 kindergarteners.

And those pre teens and teens stayed with their Kindergarten buddies all day.  On the subway.  In the stations.  On the train.  On the bus.  Through all the activities at our sister school  and all the way back on the trains back to KIS.

Now, I have 2 teenage kids myself, and I know without a doubt that this situation was perhaps not a teenager's idea of a great time, to be paired up with a 5 or 6 year old all day.  But, just as when Aya and Patrick volunteer with KIS during various events, each of the middle school students put aside what they'd perhaps rather do (just hang out together and chat or doze on the trains), and helped watch over wiggly, giggly Kindergarteners.

And here is where we can see what a small school does best:  it takes 50 or 80 or 100 kids from a wide spread of ages and cultures and backgrounds and experiences, and forges them into a family.

Like a family, they argue and get into scrapes sometimes.  But like a family they also look out for each other, help each other.  And when the students become a family, so too do the teachers.

This is an incredible gift anywhere, but perhaps especially here, in Japan, where so many of our own  families and long-time friends are thousands of miles away.

And as with so many of the wonderful, small schools I have been lucky enough to have taught with, going to work each day is like stepping into the warm embrace of home.

I wish everyone could be so lucky.


Until next time....

A Supersized Halloween

Hello all,

Yes, I am back.  And for all of our sakes I'm not going to even try to justify my blog absence.  You get busy.  I get busy.  Life grabs us and drags us off to work or family responsibilities.   The story is always the same, with just the pieces moved around.  So I'll just get into it.

Halloween back in California is usually a nighttime event that rarely goes very far beyond Halloween night.  If one is a child or a teacher, Halloween might extend into the daytime hours in school events, but since school celebrations of most kinds back at home  are slowly being swept out the proverbial classroom door, Halloween is mostly being narrowed down into an evening event.

Which means costume parties for teens and adults, macabre house decorations and trick or treating, either conventionally door to door,  or for safety's sake, car trunk to car trunk or booth to booth.

Here in Japan Halloween is slowly being adopted as an event.   Halloween decorations, costumes and candy appear in stores in early October  and many neighborhoods put together costume parades for the kids, with local businesses handing out treats.

Trick or treating, however, is mostly a big head-scratcher here.

But if the KIS Halloween celebrations this year are any indication, things may not necessarily stay that way.

This year I am teaching Kinderarten, which means that this year Halloween is once again a THING in my life.

My school, Kyoto International School (or KIS) traditionally invites our sister school down from the mountains to join us for a day of Halloween costume fashion shows, games, pumpkin carving and treats.  In return they perform a dance for us, and then later in the winter invite us to their school to join them for their Winter Festival.

This year's Halloween started out much the same.  Patrick and Aya volunteered this year as helpers, and spent the day hopping from classroom to classroom to gym to field, helping out whatever class needed  an extra hand.  Excited kids put on  costumes, played games, ate way too many treats and generally had a great time.

However this year was different.  This year KIS is in a temporary new school while our usual school building is being renovated.  Our "new" school had been, until this past March when it closed, the heart of the neighborhood and the local school since 1869.  

So we came up with a plan to help ease our way into the neighborhood--invite the former students of our school site to join us for Halloween.  But since all of them now attend different schools, any event we invited them to had to be in the early evening

And thus it was.

So after a day of Halloween hilarity, our students stayed at school, ate Parent Association sponsored pizza for dinner, and then slipped back on their costumes for an evening of trick or treating.

Yes, trick or treating.

Around 10 or 12 neighborhood businesses offered to give out treats (which our parent association collected in truly mind-boggling amounts).     All of our teachers, most of our parents, our Middle school students  and Patrick and Aya stationed themselves along the streets with flashlights to make sure all the kids stayed safe.

Lo and behold, it was trick or treating.  And it didn't feel like pretend trick or treating, as it could all too easily fall into.  Everyone was really into the scene--from the business owners to the kids to the parents to the neighbors who popped out of their houses to watch the spectacle of nearly 70 kids marching down the street in costume lugging overloaded bags of treats.

It was noisy and silly and chaotic and exhausting....and fantastic.

I'm not saying that Japan needs to adopt trick or treating, or Halloween, or really any of the holidays that seem to make their way into the stores and pop culture here. It's not my place to dictate what foreign holidays Japan adopts or doesn't adopt.

 But there was something touching and lovely about seeing so many people just enjoying being a part of the unbridled joy that kids feel on Halloween.

Because beneath the costumes, the candy, the spooks both hilarious  and terrifying, Halloween is simply about letting ourselves be silly and have fun.  And I tend to believe that sharing in some simple silly fun is a great way to make new friends.



Until next time,
Christina