Our Planet

Text :Riho Yamazaki

Yamanoko is consisted of 5 classes.I have always had the existence of “class” in my childhood. I felt the comfort of my own class, and I remember having a sense of nervousness when I am visiting the other class. Class is something that gives people a sense of belonging and comfort. Giving sense of both to children was crucial  especially to the smaller children, and something I have made sure was given all my career. Simultaneously, I had realized last year that there was an invisible wall that was made, depending on which class you were in.

That was triggered by my exchange study abroad in October last year. For two weeks, I decided to study abroad at “Kazakoshi Gakuen” in Karuizawa Town, Nagano Prefecture, which opened in April last year. The purpose of the exchange is to provide the opportunity for the child educator to enter the field of another childcare center and learn from each other so that the culture of each kindergarten can be activated without being fixed. By experiencing a field different from my own childcare center, I started to become a “fertilizer” to improve childcare, such as how to deepen the feeling of childcare and relationships with children.

I was partaking in the “Kaze Asobi” childcare for 2 weeks, which was a program held before the opening of “Kazakoshi School”. There is no “class” in Kazeasobi and 23 children aged 2-6 are playing together in one community.

It all happened when the children were talking about what they wanted to do at a gathering time in the morning. When a two-year-old child named Y-kun was talking, the four-year-olds started arguing. “It looks like some people aren’t listening,” the staff told Y-kun, who said. “Hey! I’m talking!” The four-year-olds who were arguing looked like a deer in the spotlight for a moment and said, “Oh, yeah. Go ahead.” and started to listen to them.

In these times of the exchange program, the interaction between the staff and the children have been impressionable, but what left the deepest impression was the community that was created by the children themselves. When I saw the sight of Y-kun, everything that I had built till then had collapsed with a huge sound.

Similar situations are now seen at classes of Yamanoko too. However, I felt as though the existence of classes and age groups tend to create boundaries. Often I heard “___ class can’t do this!” and “___ year olds can’t do that!”. Perhaps children saw classes and ages before they see that person in front of them as who they are.

 

After I came back from the exchange, I posed a question to the rest of the team: do we need to think about what basis we should have? How each member perceived this varied however, I presume this more or less brought a feeling that something seems not right. This was as though fog started to gradually cover us up. This “fog” began to clear away at the team meeting on 20th of May. It was around the time where the alert level of covid-19 started to go down, and we were scheduled to discuss the outlook on team structure from then on. “What shall we work on from now on?” “What are the things we want to cherish the most?” -such questions, springing from our mutual aspiration towards reconsidering our basis of child education, were naturally brought up from the team.

As a result of the impact of covid-19, during the two months when only around 10 children ages 0-5 spent the day together, the community at Yamanoko became very small, comparing to the previous times where we constantly increased the number of children ever since we opened. During these two months, we lost the opportunity to see many of the usual faces we always used to see. These 10 must have felt strange that something different is going on as they attended the same childcare center. The small community had the assembly at Akebi classroom and went out for a walk all together. As the days went by, changes were made slightly and gradually. Children who used to be alone and concentrated on themselves only would come along and help out the younger children at Urui and Kogomi. Children of Urui and Kogomi, provoked by the older children of Akebi class, would go for a walk to places much further than before. There were children who acquired language skills all at once by spending the day at the class environment at Akebi where higher level of language is used. This was around the time when I stopped hearing  “___ class can’t do this!” and “___ year olds can’t do that!”. We felt that this small community, children would support each other, inspire each other day by day, gradually but steadily brought a big transition as a whole. Such feeling was shared by one after another at the previous team meeting, which lead to the idea of “maze-koze group(multi-age mix group)”.

Currently, the team is constantly discussing on how we should do this. Below are the two in which are attempting on.

 
1.Having meals all together

Children are having meals all together in Akebi classroom, although eating time is different depending on the age group. In the beginning it didn’t work out so well; children did not interact with each other and adults were not used to the idea of having a diverse age groups in one room, at one point it even made us feel uncertain about this attempt. Around a month after we started this, children got used to the new environment.  Children who are siblings and who used to spend the day as different classes seem to be enjoying to eat together with their brothers and sisters.

2.Dividing the children into two multi-age groups and creating a safe and secure community for all ages and classes

This is the idea of “maze-koze group”.
Medaka and Tsubame (swallow) are the names of the two groups. We started off with only conducting an assembly for the children to recognise who are in their group. Now we have many more opportunities to spend time together; we go for a walk together everyday! At staff reflection meeting, all of us agreed that interaction beyond boundaries called classes has surely started to be an issue.

After the fourth day of maze-koze, we finally began to clearly see the impacts of multi-age community: the growing sense of support and care between the children, the development of children’s activities and how words and actions of elder children greatly influence the younger children speak and act. It also looks to me that children are interacting with each other way more outside the maze-koze group activities too. We are yet to find out how the state of maze-koze group will transform from now on -but what we do know is that we will continue to aspire to assure safe and secure environment for every child. What we also know is that we would also like to guarantee class time where children can spend time together with the same age group, develop their activities and cooperate with the others of the same age. Bearing those in mind, we would like to explore more, aspiring to create opportunities for children to interact without any boundaries and get to know and acknowledge each other as who they are, not which class, which age and which is to be looked after and which is to take care of. We will continue to create a foundation where children with the sensitivity that they live on the earth learn how to interact with people with diverse backgrounds in diverse communities as they grow.