Hurray for Education!

While it may seem that the main purpose of our blog is to make you extremely jealous of all the adventures we are having, and all of the delicious food we are eating, we also must touch on the educational portion of our time here. After our thought-provoking visit to the elementary school on Tuesday, we had the privelege on Wednesday to discuss the Japanese school system with an expert on the subject, Professor Awano. The four of us shared with him some of our reflections after visiting the school. For example, I was surprised to see a home economics classroom at an elementary school. We all were impressed by the mention of an inquiry-based class that the students have which combines disciplines and allows students to choose the subject of their research. This was exciting to hear about after all of our discussions about inquiry in the MT program.

Professor Awano started by sharing with us some of the recommendations for Japanese education from the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. One recommendation expressed concern about the highly competitive school environment that exists in Japan. Students have to take entrance exams before being accepted into high school, and even though the birth rate in Japan has been declining, more schools close each year. This puts a tremendous amount of stress on students　in Japan.　Another recommendation had to do with the increasing number of consultations for ADHD in Japan, which sparked a very engaging conversation between the four of us and Professor Awano about ADHD, learning disabilities and the Alberta system of coding. Japan has separate schools for special needs education (we will be visiting one during our stay) but is slowly moving towards some inclusion, with the introduction of a resource room system. However, there is no extra funding allocated to special needs students. We talked about some of the rewards and challenges of the inclusive practices that Alberta Education is implementing.

Overall, a very stimulating and interesting session.

Now, back to making you extremely jealous.

Sapporo beer factory. Sampling some of Sapporo's finest exports.