It's the second day of regular classes. The new school building allows for a learning style that is not restricted by time or place, and classes are always being held somewhere.
In the 5th grade Japanese language class, the teaching topic "Making a town a comfortable place for everyone'' has been changed to "Making a school a comfortable place for everyone to spend time in.'' We are currently investigating what measures are being taken to make the school a comfortable place to spend time. It is very interesting to see the variety of research methods used, such as focusing on chairs that are popular among children for their comfort, focusing on the shape of school buildings, and interviewing children at kindergartens. We are preparing to make it available to the public at the school after the study ends, so please look forward to further updates.

It would be a waste if your playthings were just put away. Jenga and other games are now kept on desks in the school, and everyone could be seen playing with them right away.

Today, during the fifth period, all the students gathered for a creative workshop. What discussions are taking place?

The theme of today's discussion was "How can we get along with more local people?'' During the first semester, we made business cards with our portraits on them and we introduced ourselves by handing them out to many local people, but when we think about it, we don't think we've had many opportunities to interact with local people beyond just greeting them.
So, what can we do to make more friends with the people in the area? When we asked other designers, they suggested that there are many events that can be enjoyed with local people during the second semester. They grabbed pens and paper and decided to put together their ideas.

The children wrote silently by themselves, they discussed ideas with their friends, and they developed ideas while incorporating the opinions of designers. The interaction with the students who came to the tour of the school building also seemed to invigorate the children's ideas.

While brainstorming ideas, some children talked about the importance of getting to know the local people and what each other likes. The reason is, "When we watch a movie together, we can't decide what to watch unless we know what we like.'' It's very encouraging to see that the children envision building deeper relationships with local people than any designers could have imagined.

As I wrote earlier, in today's class there were scenes where the children interacted with visitors to our school. The visitors who came to our school today are students from England. Different languages ​​can make even adults more nervous than usual, but while the adults were nervous, the children and visitors started playing tag. We were surprised to find that the children's desire and ability to communicate with others was far greater than we had imagined.

On the other hand, when a visitor was playing and singing on the piano, some children can be seen saying, "I want to talk to them and tell them how good they are! But they're worried about interfering with them playing...'' out of concern for the other person. I feel that designers must pay close attention to children's wishes and thoughts so that they do not fade away.