Nakazato Elementary School

Nakazato Elementary School
Nakazato Elementary School (founded in July, 1900) is a small school of 59 pupils and 12 teachers. It is located in the northwest part of Hitachi, and is surrounded by mountains. A kindergarten is built right next to the elementary school. Almost all of the elementary school pupils are graduates of this kindergarten. Various joint events such as school lunches are held between these two schools. In this elementary school, second and third graders study as one class due to an especially small number of students. What do the teachers think about the influence of a small-scale school on their pupils? 　“Our children are really blessed to be taught sufficiently, but at the same time there is a lack of hard work. They rarely go through tough life experiences in this mild environment so we try to provide them with challenging lessons in class. The teachers know all the students so we must be very careful not to label them. Teachers discuss and try to understand them from different point of views.” says the vice-principal. What are the school days like? Let us introduce some of the interesting events of this school. On the occasion of the school trip to Tokyo for sixth graders, they do not charter a bus but use the JR train to get there. And in Tokyo they move by public traffic facilities. Children must study the route and the price. They buy their tickets by themselves. These experiences foster feelings of independence.

In January, “Mayudama Shukai” is held. Mayudama is a cocoon-shaped rice cake. In many regions in Japan, they have a custom to decorate some kind of tree with mayudama on the fifteenth of January in the lunar calendar, and pray for a good harvest of cocoons and crops. In spring, Nakazato children plant rice, and in autumn they harvest it. Using rice they harvested, they made rice cake and decorate trees with white and red mayudama. Parents, grand parents, and regional people gather together to “Mayudama Shukai” and have feast with children.Stocking the Sato River in the neighborhood with salmon is also a splendid event for the children. Children get spawns and watch them grow into young fish, then release them at the appropriate time after measuring water temperature and making several observations. Through this experience, the children are able to see the wonder of life and find joy in observing living creatures. There are three club activities in this school: sports, cooking/handicraft, and illustration. Some boys and girls belong to sports clubs outside the school or go to juku-school to further practice and study. As for the school equipments, besides having a computer room, there are also computers in every classroom. All the teachers are good at operating the PC so it is an ideal situation for children to receive education on information technology. Newsletters are issued once or twice a month to parents. They are also circulated amongst the locals. Due to the decrease in the number of children, it is said that Nakazato Elementary School may be closed in the near future. The locals however strongly hope that the school will stay open even if the numbers go down, as the school is the center of the area.