Four Years of Ms. Arata

Noboru Yunomae

 

 [Part-time Upper secondary School]

In April 2010, Ms. Arata enrolled in a part-time upper secondary school where I work and in March 2014, she graduated from the school after completing the 4-year course. As a teacher of the part-time course at Osaka Prefectural “O” Upper Secondary School, I have not looked back on completely what we did and learned during those years. However, I am going to talk about those years, however, hoping I will be able to tell you, trainees coming from abroad, what happened during the 4 years and we together will have a deeper understanding of education of students with disabilities.

First, let me talk about evening part-time upper secondary schools. Curriculums of the part-time course at our school are offered in the form of evening course. Let me explain about the system using the descriptions you can find on the web site of the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.

(http://www.mext.go.jp/result.html?q=part-time)

 

¡  Part-time and correspondence courses of upper secondary school were introduced when the School Education Law was enacted in 1948.

¡  Objectives of these courses

•   Part-time course: To provide an opportunity to receive upper secondary-school education to young people who are unable to go on to upper secondary school full time for various reasons, for example, they started working after graduating from junior secondary school.

•   Correspondence course:

To provide an opportunity to receive upper secondary-school education through correspondence to young people who are unable to go on to full-time or part-time upper secondary-school course.

¡  Recent situations: The number of students enrolling in part-time or correspondence courses of upper secondary school has been increasing. In addition to those who take these courses, as they work during a day, some of them have been transferred from full-time course or started studying in upper secondary school because they were unable to do so in the past.

¡  Part-time course of upper secondary school is described as “a course in which class lesson is provided in the evening or some other time or time period in the year.” (Article 4, School Education Law)

à At our school, the part-time course is provided in the evening, with the 1st period starting at 17:50 and the 4th ending at 21:25.

 

[Part-time course and full-time course] Principally, the part-time course has 4 periods a day, 45 minutes for each period, while the full-time course has 6 periods a day, 50 minutes for each period. Students of the part-time course graduate after completing the 4-year course and those of the full-time course graduate after completing the 3-year course. There is a different part-time course in which students can graduate in 3 years, for example, using a system in which they can study in both part-time and correspondence courses.

[Part-time course of “O” Upper secondary School] In the academic year when Ms. Arata graduated from our school, we had 2 classes for the 1^st grade students, 2 classes for the 2^nd grade students, 2 classes for the 3^rd grade students and one class for the 4^th grade students. The total number of students was 146. During the same academic year, we accepted a total of 29 new students and sent off a total of 31 students as graduates. Teachers and staff included 2 managers (an assistant principal and a vice principal), 20 full-time teachers and 2 clerical workers. (The job grade of an assistant principal is the same as a principal at full-time secondary school and the job responsibility is also the same. The principal of “O” Upper Secondary School acts as principal of full-time course, while the assistant principal acts as principal of part-time course.)

 

[Accepting a student with severe intellectual disability for the first time]

At our school, we had never accepted a student with severe intellectual disabilities. We have had, however, several students who needed to receive special considerations. At our school, there are students who have different reasons and educational backgrounds to enroll, including “young people who could not go on to full-time upper secondary-school course because they started working after graduating from lower secondary school,” “students who were transferred from full-time upper secondary school course” and “students who were unable to receive upper secondary school education in the past.” According to our study made in the last academic year, the ratio of students for each reason was as follows: 1 out of every 3 part-time course students was a student who needed to take a job after graduating from lower secondary, 1 out of 4 was a student who took a job because s/he had free time and 1 out of 10 was a student looking for a job because s/he needed one. Apart from them, 1 out of every 3 part-time course students did not need to work or could not work or had other reasons. None of them was working as a full-time employee as far as we know. Every student has his or her own reason to enroll in part-time upper secondary school course. Still, we had never had a student with a severe disability who could not write before Ms. Arata was enrolled in our school.

Teachers and staff at our school trained themselves, received advice from teachers working in school for special needs education and received support in terms of human resources under a system of the Osaka Prefectural Board of Education. Our school organization was improved and opinions were exchanged among teachers. In addition, we made extensive discussions at our school on how to enrich Ms. Arata’s school life. We also exchanged opinions with her mother vigorously. Specifically, the support we provided included a caretaker each day when Ms. Arata came and a teacher who supported her learning in the classroom. The caretaker took care of her while she was not in the classroom (at the school entrance, taking a turn from an escort responsible for her way to and from school, to take care of her when she moved from classroom to classroom and changed clothes for PE class), during breaks and lunch time and when she had to go to a restroom during class. Under the system provided by the Board of Education, schools can select or request such caretakers. But they are not necessarily people who have been trained as caretaker and you cannot have the same caretaker every day. So, at our school, when there was no caretaker available, teachers filled in.

To every class where Ms. Arata studied, a teacher to support her learning was appointed. We tried to prepare appropriate teaching materials for her through trial and error. Materials we prepared included puzzles and study materials with dot-connecting and letter writing by joining dots. We made it a rule to assign a separate teacher for taking care of Ms. Arata for each school subject she studied in classroom.

Right after she entered our school, she often cried out loud. When she arrived, she would first say, “Pee.” and “Temperature.” When she was taken to a restroom by the caretaker, frequently she would not come out of the cubicle. “Temperature” means taking temperature in the school nurse’s room. Often, in her early days from the 1st to 2nd year, she wanted to have her temperature taken even if she had no temperature. As time passed by, Ms. Arata seemed to gradually fit in. We also learned what we could do and could not do. Little by little, we had learned how we should let her spend school life at school.

[The 3rd year and later]

When I was transferred to “O” Upper secondary School, Ms. Arata was in her 3^rd grade. At that time, I was the vice principal. In my job responsibility, I was not required to directly instruct Ms. Arata. However, I had many opportunities to meet her mother as a manager of the school. In addition, I heard from other managers including the assistant principal a lot about how she had enrolled in and how she had been at our school. The assistant principal came to the school when Ms. Arata was in her 2^nd grade. The assistant principal made a decision that the support teacher to take care of Ms. Arata in the classroom should be the same teacher and this new arrangement was introduced when she was in her 3^rd grade. As the result, I could see Ms. Arata’s behavior in the classroom somewhat improved.

In the fall, she participated in the school excursion. It was decided that she should not have a special caretaker on the trip and we increased the number of female teachers to take care of Ms. Arata, taking turns.

At the end of her 3^rd grade, she said to me in the gymnasium, “I got sweaty.” We had a teachers meeting to exchange opinions and found that Ms. Arata’s vocabulary had been increasing little by little.

[In the 4th year]

We shared the joy among teachers to find her vocabulary had been increasing. In her 4^th grade at our school, the support teacher changed. The new support teacher took care of Ms. Arata in the classroom, for 19 periods out of 20 periods in a week during her 4^th grade. We worried about the graduation ceremony, too. Our concerns were, whether she would be surprised with a different atmosphere from usual, whether she would behave differently from usual or how we should react to such a behavior. Actually we had no problem at all since we had already become to share the same idea in terms of how we should react and behave in such situations. We decided that we should treat her the same way we treat other students and if anything significant occurred, we would try our best to mitigate the confusion. It was also decided that if the situation would be unlikely controllable and if it would be inevitable, the vice principal would give an instruction so that Ms. Arata would be taken out of the hall temporarily.

[Conclusion]

Naturally, we, teachers or schools, are not perfect. There are things that we cannot do and problems that we cannot solve. However, what we have been doing is what we are supposed to do, clarifying what we can and cannot do. I believe we did what we had to do whether our students had disabilities or not. Education in Japan, in terms of inclusive education, is still in its development phase. I want us to deal with what lies ahead of us, one by one, with hands in hands, for the future world. Thank you very much.