The good thing about having a school with both elementary and junior high teachers is you can ask teachers with more specialised knowledge about certain subjects.

In 2nd period, the 3rd year students visited the junior high mathematics designer (teacher) at the entrance of the classroom. They want to make something out of PET bottle caps, but they don't know how many they need, or how to make it. The mathematics designer invites the students to think about which arithmetic skill to use, which they have already learned in school. They came to ask this teacher because it was something beyond what they had already learned! You could tell from the looks on their faces that this is what they wanted to say.
After working out the details of how big they wanted it, the teacher asked "How many do we need vertically, and horizontally, and what calculations shall we use?" They returned to the Community Welfare Centre with smiles on their faces. What kind of things are the 3rd grade students trying to create using the power of mathmatics? We will have to wait and see.

In the 5th grade social studies class, they studied the climate of various parts of Japan. On a map of Japan which was pasted on a board, they drew on factors of the enviroment that would affect the climate, such as the plains, islands, and the prominent mountain ranges of each region. The map of Japan became more and more complete. Having lived in Aizu until last year, they thought about the difference in climate between the two places, being near the sea, and far from it. Keeping in mind that in Inawashiro, it snows a lot.

In addition, this afternoon, some teachers went out of the school to conduct some training. They visited a storage facility in the town, and the Kumamachi Elementary School building. They walked around the site, and observed with their own eyes. The first half will be training today, and the second half will be training on Thursday, the 15th.

Ogawara, where we now have our school, is a part of Okuma. What is the current state of Okuma, and what happened to Okuma in the past? It's important to actually see it and experience it. However, when they went around Kumamachi Elementary School, it still looks like how it did before the earthquake. They felt conflict and troubled about stepping into it with shoes on. Now that we are getting more and more children who were born after the disaster, it seems difficult to talk about reconstruction, even more so since the children have changed. For the sake of the children, and for the town, as a teacher of Yumenomori, we need to keep this in mind. For that reason, we think the training is very meaningful for us, and a profound learning experience.