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91: Expanding on Experiential Learning w/ Emi Takemura
14 Plays4 years ago
Today we're speaking with Emi Takemura. Emi is the co-founder and representative director of FutureEdu Tokyo, which seeks to reimagine education in Japan based on project based learning and experiential education inspired by High Tech High. She is also the representative director of Learn by Creation, which provides professional development, conferencing, and networking for inspiring hands-on learning in Japan.
Emi is a veteran entrepreneur who co-founded Peatix, a mobile event platform, and engages in many events on social entrepreneurship and start-up funding. She's worked at a senior level in various financial firms, and has been an advocate for female leadership, ethical investing, and reimagining education in Japan. Our conversation dives into what it means to develop a hands-on learning curriculum, how Japan and the US relate and differ, and how all of this should or shouldn't relate to the job market.
GUESTS
Emi Takemura, co-founder and representative director of FutureEdu Tokyo, representative director of Learn by Creation, co-founder of Peatix, and veteran entrepreneur
RESOURCES
FURTHER LISTENING
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction & Acknowledgments
00:00:05
Speaker
Hello and welcome to episode 91 of our podcast at Human Restoration Project.
00:00:09
Speaker
My name is Chris McNutt and I'm a high school digital media instructor from Ohio.
00:00:13
Speaker
Before we get started, I wanted to let you know that this is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are Brandon Peters, Aaron Dowd, and Tegan Morton.
00:00:20
Speaker
Thank you for your ongoing support.
00:00:22
Speaker
You can learn more about the Human Restoration Project on our website, humanrestorationproject.org, or find us on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.
Guest Introduction: Emi Takemura
00:00:45
Speaker
Today, we're speaking with Emi Takemura.
00:00:47
Speaker
Emi is the co-founder and representative director of Future EDU Tokyo, which seeks to reimagine education in Japan based on project-based learning and experiential education inspired by Hitek High.
00:00:57
Speaker
She is also the representative director of Learn by Creation, which provides professional development, conferencing, and networking for inspiring hands-on learning in Japan.
00:01:05
Speaker
Emmy is a veteran entrepreneur who co-founded Piatix, a mobile event platform, and engages in many events on social entrepreneurship and startup funding.
00:01:13
Speaker
She's worked at a senior level in various financial firms and has been an advocate for female leadership, ethical investing, and reimagining education.
00:01:20
Speaker
Our conversation dives into what it means to develop a hands-on learning curriculum, how Japan and the U.S. relate and differ, and how all of this should or shouldn't relate to the job market.
Project-Based Learning in Japan
00:01:30
Speaker
Hi, my name is Emi Takemura.
00:01:32
Speaker
I am representative director of FutureEDU and Learn by Creation.
00:01:40
Speaker
They are kind of similar to nonprofit organizations in the US system, but essentially we're in with both organizations, we're trying to advance the
00:01:53
Speaker
dialogue about the future of education by involving multiple stakeholders from schools to teachers to administrators to governments to parents and people in the community.
00:02:09
Speaker
But prior to starting or embarking on my education journey, I was actually
00:02:16
Speaker
entrepreneur and in the tech space for quite a many years.
00:02:21
Speaker
I started out my own startup event platform in 2010.
00:02:25
Speaker
And prior to that, I used to work for a large corporations like Amazon and Disney and McKinsey working on the internet and technology space.
00:02:36
Speaker
So I'm a little unusual for somebody who's trying to really focus 100% of energy and
00:02:45
Speaker
restoring or advancing our education, but with our kind of Asian technology where you can't really ignore how to look at our future by embracing technology, I feel like I have something to contribute at this juncture in our society.
00:03:05
Speaker
Of course, and your backstory is fascinating.
00:03:07
Speaker
I was reading all these different Q&As about you before we get started.
00:03:11
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I want to talk about your experience in entrepreneurship, because I know that you specifically focus on social entrepreneurship and how that led you to thinking differently about education.
Impact of 2011 Earthquake on Education
00:03:23
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I started out my own company with other co-founders in 2010.
00:03:26
Speaker
And as you might know, in 2011,
00:03:32
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we had a really major earthquake that hit Japan, which caused even today, you know, 40,000 people to be displaced and living outside of their own hometowns and things like that.
00:03:46
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So the earthquake sort of really kind of changed
00:03:51
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everything in a way, like the way a lot of people look at the future of our society, that it's not as stable as we thought it could be like.
00:04:01
Speaker
So at that time, there's a lot of people who wanted to do something to help change our society.
00:04:10
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Even today also, but there's a lot of great social good projects happening around Japan.
00:04:18
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So I felt that maybe Japan was coming to the turning point where, you know, more people wanted to not just think and imagine, but actually do and create impact.
00:04:32
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And it certainly happened to a large degree compared to like pre-earthquake.
00:04:39
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But I used to run a social entrepreneurship program.
00:04:43
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for young people who wanted to actually make these ideas into more scalable concepts and adventures.
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And it was a really great program and partnership with a U.S. organization called, at that time, Unreasonable Labs.
00:04:59
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And we had this five-day intensive bootcamp courses where,
00:05:04
Speaker
Anybody with a great idea with a prototype or with some working prototypes could come in and work with the mentors and with our program staff to really polish and hone their product and service concepts and make them into a scalable idea and be able to pitch to investors and so forth.
00:05:23
Speaker
And I felt that, you know, I wish I was part of that program before I was starting my own company.
Challenges in Japanese Education
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It was really a good program, but I had such a hard time attracting talent.
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we ran two cohorts.
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And the first cohort, we did okay attracting talent with a word of mouth.
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So we actually got, ended up getting like cream of the crops of social entrepreneurs in Japan, and many of them doing wonderfully, receiving rewards and investments and so forth.
00:05:57
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But when it came to the second cohort,
00:06:00
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We actually ramped up our marketing effort and I went around seven cities around Japan to recruit and talk about the benefit of social entrepreneurship.
00:06:09
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And quite a few people came and listened to our conversation, but very few people applied.
00:06:17
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And that was kind of like my wake up call in terms of, okay, there are people who are, you know,
00:06:25
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acting on their issues in hand, but so many people are just sitting on the ideas and not being able to realize what they think should be changed into their own realities.
00:06:40
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And that's when it hit to me really hard that our education system is really creating a smart people, but not be able to act on their beliefs.
00:06:51
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It seems very likely that although our students are being very well trained in, I guess, like liberal arts, they understand the basis of English, math, etc., they don't necessarily have the proper tools to navigate what is often referred to as the real world or the connection to the community or learning through hands-on understanding.
00:07:14
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Yes, because I think it's really the iterative cycle of doing something with your idea, right?
00:07:21
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Either creating something or talking to someone and persuade and do something together or, you know, showcasing your work to the public.
00:07:30
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Whatever it is, I think our education sort of neglected the last mile of delivering whatever students have created to the real audience.
00:07:42
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So we kind of grew up without knowing the joy and also kind of scary part of doing that, right?
00:07:51
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Like you're sort of, when you're showing, casing your work to public, it's a little scary, but it's rewarding at the same time.
00:07:59
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But if you never experienced that, it's incredibly hard to kind of
00:08:03
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jump over the hurdle and actually do things for many Japanese people, especially the society itself is relatively compliant compared to probably that of the US.
00:08:14
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So our sort of system reinforces this concept of
00:08:20
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you know, people just be more compliant rather than acting on something on their
Emotional Difficulties in Schools
00:08:26
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own beliefs.
00:08:26
Speaker
That's so interesting, because like a common critique of the American education system is that it makes everyone hyper compliant.
00:08:33
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So it's interesting that you say that.
00:08:35
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And I think too, there's something to be said about when you make learning more meaningful, and you make it more
00:08:42
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engaging with the community, you're also going to pull in the students who hypothetically never really wanted to learn those, I guess, traditional academics to begin with, people that just weren't engaged with school.
00:08:54
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When you bring in meaningful problems and then have students create meaningful solutions, that's going to engage way more people because it actually makes sense.
00:09:02
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I mean, the most common question people ask is, why do I have to learn this?
00:09:04
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Why does it matter?
00:09:05
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Who cares?
00:09:06
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Some will do it anyway, but some will just decide, hey, this doesn't matter to me, so I'm just
00:09:11
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not going to participate.
00:09:15
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You know, you're doing this work with Learn by Creation, with Future EDU.
00:09:19
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What are the goals that you have to build schools that are more unique and more hands-on that fit the needs of the moment?
00:09:27
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So in Japan, this may be quite unique to Japanese society, but as a background information, we do have increasing number of students who are
00:09:39
Speaker
not emotionally capable to go to school.
00:09:42
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Like we have about 180, almost close to 180,000 kids in primary school and middle school for many reasons.
00:09:53
Speaker
And part of it is bullying, part of it is psychological, part of it is family issues.
00:09:57
Speaker
But for many reasons, they're pushed to the point where they don't feel capable
00:10:06
Speaker
or they don't feel confident to attend school.
00:10:09
Speaker
So that's one evidence where our education has sort of like marginalized certain types of kids not to be able to exercise their right to be educated, right?
00:10:25
Speaker
So that's one big problem.
00:10:26
Speaker
But another side of the problem is we also don't support kids who have their own interests.
00:10:35
Speaker
because our education program is very much standards-based.
00:10:39
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It's probably much more strict than Common Core in the US that every unit or every subject in every unit has sort of very rigid sequence that you're supposed to be kind of following.
00:10:58
Speaker
And technically the teachers can actually opt out and be more free
00:11:05
Speaker
And, you know, if you they want to introduce hands on learning and make it more meaningful for students, they can do so.
00:11:12
Speaker
But because they've never done it, or that the school culture never really allowed that to happen.
00:11:20
Speaker
And they're afraid that maybe parents and other teachers might criticize of them doing something different from what they had done in the past.
00:11:28
Speaker
It's very difficult to come out of the mold for an individual teacher to introduce hands-on learning.
00:11:38
Speaker
So although there is a need from multiple sides of the students that they want to have more engaging and meaningful learning experiences at the school, and some teachers want to make it happen, our sort of system or the culture of the school makes it very difficult to kind of
00:12:02
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bridge over to the next phase of the learning pedagogy.
00:12:05
Speaker
So that's where I feel that people like us who are, you know, neutral, nonprofit oriented organizations to come into play and really kind of, you know, let multiple stakeholders to discuss what we want to really see happen.
00:12:25
Speaker
including hands-on and project-based learning or more safe environment for kids to feel that the school, they belong to the schools.
00:12:37
Speaker
And all these important ideas, I think a lot of people have them individually, but they were afraid to kind of surface these ideas.
00:12:49
Speaker
So we're trying to kind of create more common
00:12:52
Speaker
platform or an avenue for people to gather and exchange these ideas and think about how to move forward collectively.
00:13:01
Speaker
What you're describing sounds exactly like the same exact problems that we have here.
00:13:06
Speaker
Like the common core is very malleable and pretty open-ended, but states have their own individual standards, which tend to be a little bit more exact.
00:13:14
Speaker
However, the vast majority of teachers are in situations where they could
00:13:18
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deviate from the norm and do something
Standardized Testing and Its Impact
00:13:21
Speaker
different.
00:13:21
Speaker
It's just not either the culture of the building or something like something is making them feel like they can't accomplish the tasks that are at hand.
00:13:30
Speaker
And usually the number one thing that comes up is standardized testing.
00:13:33
Speaker
Now, the perception I have of Japan, this could be entirely wrong, is that standardized testing is a pretty big deal, more so than in the United States.
00:13:40
Speaker
What is the current situation?
00:13:43
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Yeah, so Japanese schools are actually seat time based grading system.
00:13:50
Speaker
So they do have tests, but also like attendance and other factors matter for grading.
00:13:58
Speaker
So high stakes test is not so much for the school grades itself.
00:14:03
Speaker
Of course, the effects, but that's not 100%.
00:14:06
Speaker
But where it plays a big role is the school admission to higher institutions, like from junior high to high school and high school to college.
00:14:15
Speaker
And because in our generation, you know, I'm a parent and, you know, in our sort of current parent of
00:14:22
Speaker
K-12 school kids generation, because we are sort of like ingrained to think that the better high school, the better college, better junior high, better high school.
00:14:35
Speaker
And we have this sort of like normalized curve of scores, like scoring each year.
00:14:41
Speaker
school, even when it's public school for a high school.
00:14:45
Speaker
So if you're living in a small town, and there's only two high school, everybody knows which high school is a better school.
00:14:54
Speaker
So parents who are interested in education of their children, they go
00:15:01
Speaker
they go out of their ways to make sure kids are focused on these memory skills, cognitive ability, and not so much on other stuff.
00:15:12
Speaker
And that's where I see a lot of big problems throughout Japan, because the parents mean well, but the result doesn't really necessarily show the success of the students, because
00:15:28
Speaker
that focuses overly on cognitive ability at the expense of developing a child as a whole person.
00:15:36
Speaker
It reminds me of, I went on a tour of Chicago schools a couple of years ago, and I toured all of these quote unquote elite schools, and they were aimed to be progressives like Montessori's hands-on learning environments.
00:15:50
Speaker
And K through five was hyper-progressive, but I mean, traditionally it always has been pretty progressive play-based learning.
00:15:57
Speaker
But what was interesting is in Chicago, it sounds kind of the same.
00:16:01
Speaker
High schools typically had admissions policies and you needed to take a pretty
00:16:06
Speaker
intense test to get into the most elite high schools.
00:16:09
Speaker
So as soon as students got into seventh and eighth grade, right before they were shifting to high school, it was no longer a progressive school.
00:16:15
Speaker
They might've said that they were Montessori, but they were just doing worksheets and prepping for that test the entire time.
00:16:21
Speaker
Because again, there's that faux perception that in order to be elite, this is the way you have to learn.
00:16:27
Speaker
So how do we then utilize these conversations, protocols, ideas to shift the framing of learning
00:16:35
Speaker
away from traditional test-based rote learning into something that's hands-on and experiential and community-centric?
00:16:43
Speaker
It's a very difficult question, but I think in Japan, the biggest issue is really the college admission.
00:16:51
Speaker
And the positive sign is that there's still a long way to go, but there is a growing number of students who are
00:17:03
Speaker
take a non-traditional admission route to get into college.
00:17:09
Speaker
So these kind of non-traditional routes allows them to showcase what they have done in terms of like research projects or more kind of hands-on or experiential learning as part of the application as opposed to just taking the test.
00:17:27
Speaker
So I think we just need to really kind of
00:17:32
Speaker
shift the portfolio of college admission options and hopefully we transition like a bulk of a bigger chunk of the students body into these kind of more portfolio based assessments or alternative assessments.
00:17:54
Speaker
I would imagine too that as we build more portfolio-based assessment, the issue we're running into is that students are getting to college, they're going for two, four, six, eight years, and then they're graduating, but they're not doing much with the degrees that they're earning to begin with because they spent the entire time basically prepping for the next test.
00:18:15
Speaker
So they graduate and then it feels purposeless.
00:18:19
Speaker
That's an acute problem in Japan because, like I said, every school or every faculty at every college has this number against... It's a very arbitrary number and it's not really necessarily accurate, but because it's so easy to digest, a lot of people look at those numbers and say, oh, for this college, this department has score 60 versus...
00:18:48
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47.
00:18:48
Speaker
Therefore, if I'm accepted to two departments, one is 47 and one is 60, although I'm more interested in literature, which has 47 score, I would still have to go to this other one with a family pressure because it's supposed to be the better score.
00:19:07
Speaker
So a lot of the people's decisions are
00:19:10
Speaker
not true to what kids or students really want to do because the numbers seem to overtake and dictate a lot of the important decision makings for the families and children.
00:19:26
Speaker
That sounds incredibly similar to the U.S. News and World Report, which is probably one of the most corrupt things when it comes to higher education.
00:19:35
Speaker
I see that all the time, like with students that are applying to college and they go entirely based off of like this school's ranked number one in anesthesiology or something really random.
00:19:45
Speaker
Without understanding that like that whole number is generated by how many people that you deny or some like really bizarre algorithm that has nothing to do with the quality of instruction or the type of instruction.
00:19:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:56
Speaker
So it really calls for critical thinking on the part of students and teachers and family to really understand.
00:20:03
Speaker
kind of question those numbers, right?
00:20:05
Speaker
And it also implies, too, that perhaps high school should be shifting toward, if we're building community-centric project-based learning, that students might not need to go to college at all, that they can learn the skills that they need without or very little post-secondary options.
00:20:22
Speaker
Yeah, sure.
00:20:23
Speaker
I mean, I think probably the U.S. colleges are ahead than Japanese colleges, but I think the whole notion of
00:20:33
Speaker
going to college for four consecutive years to complete a degree that they can't deviate from what they had originally thought at the age of 17 or 18, that I think needs to be kind of transitioned to a newer concept because the world is so rapidly moving.
00:20:54
Speaker
And especially when kids' exposure to real world during high school years is so limited,
00:21:03
Speaker
I think it's quite natural for kids to change what they want to do with lives after first year of college or maybe during a gap year and I think we need to kind of
00:21:17
Speaker
give students more options to design their own higher education as opposed to entrenching them into this two-year or four-year package program that they can't get out of at a very high price tag.
00:21:32
Speaker
So let's then kind of shift into imagining what that process looks like using your organizations as kind of the example.
00:21:39
Speaker
And I think first it might be useful to just get the perspective of what's going on in Japan in terms of what students are experiencing day to
A Typical Japanese School Day
00:21:49
Speaker
day.
00:21:49
Speaker
I know that the hours are longer than U.S. schools.
00:21:53
Speaker
It looks a little bit different.
00:21:54
Speaker
Could you briefly describe just like a traditional Japanese school day?
00:21:58
Speaker
Yeah, so Japanese school typically has six to seven period a day and five days a week, plus some public schools have Saturday twice a month, usually in the morning.
00:22:16
Speaker
And after those six or seven periods, which is usually from 8.30 or so to 3.30,
00:22:28
Speaker
And after middle school, starting middle school, a lot of kids get become engaged into what we call club activities.
00:22:35
Speaker
And that is one of the positives and
00:22:40
Speaker
disadvantages of Japanese education is that the school takes a lot more responsibilities than just academics.
00:22:50
Speaker
So I guess the original purpose is really the human whole child development, but kids are allowed to choose, you know, whatever club that they want to belong to, you know, which running or basketball, theater, whatever.
00:23:06
Speaker
And they're supposed to pursue that, oftentimes for three years during middle school and three years during high school.
00:23:16
Speaker
And during that time, they cannot change, even if there's interest shift.
00:23:22
Speaker
And so it takes up...
00:23:25
Speaker
their days become very monotonous very quickly because the curriculum is completely fixed.
00:23:34
Speaker
For the most part, there are some selections, but for the most part it's fixed.
00:23:38
Speaker
And then, and the club is fixed.
00:23:40
Speaker
Once you choose, you can't get out of it.
00:23:44
Speaker
So kids
00:23:46
Speaker
have very little time to think for themselves or why they're learning what they're learning, why they're doing this homework.
00:23:54
Speaker
They have very little time to questions about their lives.
00:23:58
Speaker
And do they run into the same issue?
00:24:00
Speaker
Because that's relatively similar to what happens here.
00:24:03
Speaker
There's not the locking in of clubs, but there is an issue of students over scheduling themselves to get ahead all the time.
00:24:11
Speaker
The students that are quote unquote A students, the ones that want to get in the top rank universities will schedule themselves till nine or 10 p.m.
00:24:20
Speaker
at night every single day because they want to build up their resume.
00:24:24
Speaker
Is that the same there?
00:24:26
Speaker
Yes, it's very similar.
00:24:28
Speaker
So I don't know, maybe that's a positive of high-stake tests, but because the club activities, things like that, don't count for the most traditional type of college testing.
00:24:41
Speaker
But instead, kids go to cram schools, which is a school of
00:24:49
Speaker
purely the whole purpose is to test prep kids for SAT type of things.
00:24:54
Speaker
So although you don't have to do service learning and volunteer and all these things to beef up your resume, the kids are still busy because they're focused on academics.
00:25:08
Speaker
And these club activities can be quite difficult.
00:25:14
Speaker
harmful to some kids because they do take up so much of their time regardless of their interests.
Innovations by Future EDU
00:25:20
Speaker
So with that being said, let's talk about future EDU.
00:25:24
Speaker
Let's talk about the work that's being done to counteract that narrative and what we can do to do things better.
00:25:29
Speaker
Because there are a lot of really, really, really cool things going on.
00:25:32
Speaker
A brief side note, no matter who I talk to, no matter where they're at in the world,
00:25:37
Speaker
Everyone kind of has the exact same thing going on.
00:25:39
Speaker
There's these systems that are in place that are hyper-traditional.
00:25:42
Speaker
There are a few pockets that are working to change those things, and there's change on the horizon.
00:25:46
Speaker
Some have succeeded, some have failed, but there is movement over time.
00:25:50
Speaker
What is FutureEDU doing?
00:25:52
Speaker
So we started out more as a volunteer organization five years ago to really start up a conversation dialogue among multiple stakeholders that they used to never talk before.
00:26:07
Speaker
So we use, I should say we use, but we started out by screening film called Most Likely to Succeed in Japan,
00:26:20
Speaker
in 2016.
00:26:21
Speaker
And the first time we started, there's only English subtitle, which is a really high hurdle in Japan.
00:26:29
Speaker
But without much promotion, we still got like 60, 70 people to show up from all walks of life.
00:26:36
Speaker
Some are school teachers, some are corporate executives, some are parents.
00:26:41
Speaker
And we had a really inspiring conversation about what's going well at our schools and
00:26:47
Speaker
what can be better and so forth.
00:26:49
Speaker
So I was really inspired to take this kind of conversation more broadly across Japan.
00:26:57
Speaker
So I sort of became ambassador of the film in Japan and
00:27:04
Speaker
I work with Ted Dentersmith and others to bring the Japanese subtitle version to Japan.
00:27:14
Speaker
And to a big credit to Ted, he was so kind to make that happen.
00:27:20
Speaker
And so since then, I've been really promoting or encouraging any
00:27:30
Speaker
any changemakers in Japan who wants to see change in education to use the film as a tool to kind of start up conversation.
00:27:40
Speaker
And fortunately, I don't have exact number, but 46 out of 47 prefectures in Japan has now hosted a screening plus the conversation or workshop dialogue about future education.
00:27:57
Speaker
And increasingly, more and more schools are trying to use that type of media as a way to train teachers.
00:28:09
Speaker
So initially, like at the beginning, it was community based film screening and increasingly it's becoming now more.
00:28:16
Speaker
schools, K-12 schools and colleges.
00:28:19
Speaker
So I was really inspired by that sort of progression, as well as, you know, all these voices I was collecting because we do survey with all the changemakers who host screenings.
00:28:37
Speaker
And that sort of like evolved into the conversation about what else we can do to kind of help everyone
00:28:46
Speaker
make a small first steps.
00:28:48
Speaker
And that's why we started this event series called Learn by Creation and creation meaning like create any new learning.
00:28:58
Speaker
So we try to gather people again from all walks of life to come together.
00:29:06
Speaker
And we do have some seminars and panel discussions, but we also have workshops and we have hackathon and multiple activities.
00:29:14
Speaker
So anybody at a different level of mindset, whether you're still really skeptical and you just want to find out the evidence about hands-on learning, experiential learning,
00:29:28
Speaker
they can come and learn about it from, you know, people who are practicing or if they are, you know, ready, but they don't know how they can join the workshop.
00:29:36
Speaker
Uh, if they really want to hone their craft, they can join a teacher training program.
00:29:40
Speaker
So we kind of created different options for anybody who can participate, um, and have a meaningful conversation and like a fun and safe environment.
00:29:51
Speaker
And, um, it's, it's being quite, um,
00:29:55
Speaker
Remarkable how people are feeling empowered to find other people to work with.
00:30:01
Speaker
Because my whole interest is to create innovators around Japan who can kind of act and be in charge or facilitate conversation around progressing or advancing our education.
00:30:16
Speaker
Because central control model, it doesn't work for education, I don't think.
00:30:24
Speaker
So we need to just empower everybody at a different regions in Japan who live in different circumstances and different culture.
00:30:34
Speaker
They think their own feet and they feel empowered with their colleagues across Japan to work together and do something to improve and take our first steps.
00:30:47
Speaker
Yeah, empowering communities is such a huge step.
00:30:50
Speaker
And most likely The Succeed is a very effective film that's showcasing what hands-on learning could do.
00:30:55
Speaker
We've interviewed Ted Dinnersmith.
00:30:57
Speaker
I've personally been to High Tech High now four times, I think, in the last five years.
00:31:02
Speaker
Yeah, I keep heading out there.
00:31:03
Speaker
And it's really cool to go when classes are in session, you see students working.
00:31:08
Speaker
But I'm always taken aback by kind of a more natural look at what's going on in the film.
00:31:15
Speaker
makes the implication that like all they do every single day is all this crazy stuff and it's always so wild but it feels a lot different on the ground and I actually found that very calming like kids still goof off they still talk to each other they still run around and be weird and there's there's a natural flow to learning that does not look like kids sitting in rows and just listening to someone talk
00:31:37
Speaker
The vast majority of it is very natural human behavior of kids.
00:31:42
Speaker
Some kids are working on some stuff.
00:31:43
Speaker
Some of them are talking to each other.
00:31:44
Speaker
Some of them are watching some random television show.
00:31:46
Speaker
But over time, the teacher is guiding them and helping them to get there.
00:31:50
Speaker
As you're working with these different school leaders, these different innovators, et cetera, what, if any, changes have you seen in the classroom as a result of showcasing this film and speaking with
Classroom Changes & Teacher Collaboration
00:32:02
Speaker
them?
00:32:02
Speaker
Sure, yeah, so some schools have kind of created this like innovation team and for a lower,
00:32:15
Speaker
I see more happening at private school than public school, unfortunately, at this moment.
00:32:21
Speaker
For example, for like a seventh grade curriculum, the teachers work together to create these cross-curricular or interdisciplinary project-based learning.
00:32:33
Speaker
And...
00:32:35
Speaker
they were able to use their existing unit by working collectively to do a somewhat long-term project and able to do an exhibition which received a really good feedback.
00:32:48
Speaker
So now they're even more empowered to do it for the grade eight and things like that.
00:32:52
Speaker
So that's kind of more successful organized examples, but yeah,
00:32:59
Speaker
There are also other schools where teachers, like public school teachers, have found their units to be kind of combined, like, for example, English and social studies and things like that.
00:33:14
Speaker
And just for one class, they experimented with hands-on learning with a theme of convenience store, which is very common in Japan.
00:33:25
Speaker
And a lot of kids are really interested in going there.
00:33:27
Speaker
So they try to
00:33:29
Speaker
have a project around like convenience store and and the world and and i went to see their exhibitions and it was quite quite fascinating or another science teacher uh created a project to create instrument and it was a unit on the sound um but kids kind of
00:33:49
Speaker
came up with their own materials to create their own instrument.
00:33:53
Speaker
And the teacher weaved in the concept of the sound in that instrument.
00:33:58
Speaker
And in the end, they had a concert.
00:34:00
Speaker
And it was great because the teacher himself is a former musician or, you know, amateur musician.
00:34:07
Speaker
So it was his interest as well.
00:34:10
Speaker
So he was really excited to make that project happen.
00:34:14
Speaker
And, you know, it was interesting for students as well.
00:34:17
Speaker
And it
00:34:18
Speaker
I think when those two could be combined, I think it can become really a powerful project.
00:34:24
Speaker
And there's, there's two things that you bring up that, that instantly come to mind on the power of this.
00:34:29
Speaker
One is.
00:34:30
Speaker
When you display this work publicly and invite in the community, not only is it more authentic and meaningful, but it proves to the community why this style of education works.
00:34:41
Speaker
Typically throughout the school year, there's some skeptical voices of like, well, why are they not reading this book or whatever it might be?
00:34:48
Speaker
And then when they see the final part, they're like, wow, this is really cool.
00:34:50
Speaker
And I haven't seen anything like this before.
00:34:52
Speaker
It's incredibly powerful.
00:34:54
Speaker
The second thing is that, speaking of monotony, it's less monotonous for the teacher.
00:35:01
Speaker
I couldn't imagine teaching a class where every single year I do the exact same thing.
00:35:05
Speaker
That would be so boring.
00:35:07
Speaker
Whereas if you do these projects, it's very much driven by what the current learners want to do and what their interests are.
00:35:15
Speaker
So as a result, you can pull in your own interests, their interests, and every year looks a lot different than the previous year.
00:35:20
Speaker
So it's like you're always teaching different classes.
00:35:22
Speaker
And it's exciting and fun, which is what learning should be at the end of the day.
00:35:28
Speaker
I think Japanese teachers are so dedicated and they think about kids and sometimes they forget about their own learning.
00:35:37
Speaker
And I think it's very important that they feel growth and they feel that they're learning from teaching experiences as opposed to, you know,
00:35:49
Speaker
like you said, like teaching the same material year over year.
00:35:53
Speaker
It allows you to center the student voice so that you're learning from the students.
00:35:57
Speaker
I've done like video game projects.
00:35:59
Speaker
I've done like theatrical performances, like all sorts of random stuff that I have some experience and I learned a lot from the project.
00:36:06
Speaker
But honestly, the kids are the ones that taught me a lot of the stuff that was going on.
00:36:10
Speaker
And that feels good to have that intertwining of ideas.
00:36:15
Speaker
The challenge is for teachers to really let go of the fear of not knowing everything, especially in the Japanese cultural context that, you know, elderly is supposed to be respected, but they're supposed to know everything in this kind of traditional Japanese culture.
00:36:35
Speaker
So I think there is a very high expectation that the teacher put on themselves that they have to know all the answers.
00:36:42
Speaker
Therefore,
00:36:43
Speaker
it's a little too scary to kind of step out of that sort of guidelines and do the projects that they are passionate about, but they may not have all the answers.
00:36:53
Speaker
For teachers that are listening into this that maybe feel intimidated to try out more hands-on experiential learning or reaching out to the community, what suggestions would you have for them to initiate or start that process?
Integrating Hands-on Learning
00:37:06
Speaker
I think one of the
00:37:09
Speaker
more empowering things that you can start is to have a really kind of candid, meaningful dialogue with people who are not in your profession.
00:37:19
Speaker
So if it's the parents with the teachers or if it's teachers with administrator or teachers in other subject areas, because oftentimes, at least in Japan, at high school, teachers in English departments don't seem to talk a lot with teachers in the science department or, you know, social studies and
00:37:37
Speaker
I've seen times and times again when people's kind of eyes light up and they get so excited about all the great ideas that they have when they start having this candid meaningful conversation, but oftentimes they feel they're not allowed to have these kind of talks.
00:37:58
Speaker
And I think, I mean, film is one way, but it doesn't have to be the film.
00:38:02
Speaker
But I think if you can organize
00:38:05
Speaker
a casual gathering hopefully on a routine basis just to kind of imagine and talk about you know
00:38:16
Speaker
what is it like to have this or that?
00:38:19
Speaker
Or what kind of kids would you like to develop it?
00:38:22
Speaker
How would you like to see kids be succeeded in 10, 20, 30 years from now?
00:38:28
Speaker
If we gather in a really serious manner, I think from the beginning, there is always a tension.
00:38:34
Speaker
But if we can somehow organize a casual conversation in a relatively safe environment for people to really
00:38:44
Speaker
talk their ideas out and find a commonality and find like maybe a low hanging fruit projects that they can maybe start out and try.
00:38:54
Speaker
It could be something very simple, like, you know, having a circle time conversation at the beginning of each day for students to express their interest.
00:39:08
Speaker
And maybe over time, those interests can become a seed for project ideas.
00:39:14
Speaker
Because I'm a big proponent of social emotional learning.
00:39:19
Speaker
And I think unless kids feel safe and free to speak their own interests to teachers and peers, I think
00:39:32
Speaker
Even if there is a choice in voice, it's very difficult for students to express that during the project time.
00:39:39
Speaker
So we can step back and kind of start from there as well, because it doesn't take a lot of time and we can make it into routine practice and evolve from there as well.
Conclusion & Resources
00:39:56
Speaker
Thank you again for listening to Human Restoration Projects podcast.
00:39:59
Speaker
I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to push the progressive envelope of education.
00:40:03
Speaker
You can learn more about progressive education, support our cause, and stay tuned to this podcast and other updates on our website at humanrestorationproject.org.