Yamahana Middle School visit part 1

We visited the Yamahana Middle School today. The kids and staff were awesome! They had a shortened schedule this day for parent teacher conferences. The teachers were going to the students's homes to conduct the conferences with the student and most likely just the mother. (The father would probably be at work.) The 9th graders were staying for test prep in the afternoon, for their high school entrance exams.

As we entered the school, we put on school slippers...



Middle school is for grades 7-9. The students stay in their classrooms for their academic subjects and their teachers move from room to room. Different from the US. Teachers share a large room for their desks...


The teaching style is so very different in Japanese classrooms. The teachers lecture and the students are not encouraged to ask questions. While the classrooms didn't have SmartBoards, the teachers did use document cameras...



I had lunch in an 8th grade classroom. It was delicious!



It was Hokkaido rice, vegetable soup with pork, a fried clam roll (I think!), lime ice, and milk. It was so good. (FYI, the soup did not come with a spoon! I used chopsticks to eat the solid part and copied the kids to pick up the bowl and drink/slurp the remaining broth!). There was a little "paper spoon" to fold and use for the lime ice.

Location:Sapporo, Japan