By Kotaro Sueyoshi, Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer
The Daily Yomiuri
17 May 2004
Source: http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/newse/20040516wo33.htm
The Tachikawa city government in western Tokyo has attracted attention for assigning active or former kindergarten and nursery teachers to primary schools to deal with difficulties arising from unruly first-grade primary students.
Primary school teachers frequently find it hard to manage first-grade classes as children who are unable to adapt to a new school's surroundings walk around classrooms and talk during class time.
A number of teachers are reluctant to take charge of such classes.
A major factor contributing to the disintegration of acceptable behavior in the classroom is the declining ability of the family and the community to raise children properly. Placing into classrooms children who reach school age before they are psychologically mature enough to cope with such a change has contributed to the rise in unacceptable behavior.
The term shoichi puroburemu (first-grade students' problems) was coined to refer to the situation as most of the students who cause trouble are those who cannot adapt to their new surroundings.
To cope with the situation, the Tachikawa municipal government in spring began to send teachers called "school life supporters" to 10 of the 20 municipal primary schools to assist in classes that have more than 30 first-grade students.
Since April 6, the start of the new school year for primary students, 20 such teachers have been assigned to help homeroom teachers as temporary assistants for two months.
Over the past month, the schools say the assistant teachers have been good at dealing with children and have been an inspiration to school teachers in many ways. They also praised the support teachers for helping conduct classes smoothly, although some misbehavior in first-grade classes is to be expected when the students prepare their materials for class.
Tokyo Seitoku University Prof. Masashi Fukaya said universities had not emphasized in primary school courses the problems particular to first-grade students and assumed that children of that age already were used to group dynamics.
"The know-how of kindergarten and nursery school teachers is invaluable in dealing with such behavioral problems," said Fukaya, who is the head of the primary school teacher's training course at the university.
An increasing number of primary schools nationwide are implementing various measures to deal with the behavioral problems of students in the lower grades.
One such method is limiting the number of students in classes to ensure a manageable group of children. The method can be approved in exceptional cases under the compulsory education standard law, but it states that a class should have 40 children.
The schools in Akita Prefecture were among the first to introduce the system, and many others have followed suit.
Another method is a cooperative exchange between kindergarten and primary schools of teachers to facilitate a child's transition from one school to another.
The Education, Science and Technology Ministry has begun to develop curriculums for this method to be implemented in 13 regions.
However, these measures are not enough.
The ministry says full cooperation in regards to this method has not been realized, although there have been some exchanges at schools.
"Teachers don't have time to do such an exchange, and many primary school teachers see it as unimportant due to a lack of understanding of children's education," a ministry official said.
The Osaka Prefectural Board of Education selected primary schools and public kindergartens this fiscal year to be models for this method and started personnel exchanges between them.
"We're using only public kindergartens, but we want to extend such cooperation in the future to include private kindergartens and nursery schools. It'll be hard to secure the same relationship between kindergartens and primary schools as that between primary and middle schools or middle and high schools because kindergartens and nursery schools often have very unique teaching methods," an education board official said.
The ministry will continue to monitor the progress of the Tachikawa municipal government's experiment.
The local government realized the school life supporters scheme partly through support from the association of private kindergarten directors.
However, there is only one active teacher under the scheme as the other participants are on maternity leave or have quit their jobs for family reasons.
By utilizing workers who are on leave or former teachers, the problem of first-grade students may be solved.