Japan and I have more in Common than I Thought

The video that I just saw of a third grade Japanese classroom totally blew my mind and all of the stereotypes I previously had. I'm probably not alone when I say that my vision of a Japanese classroom was that of a militant and stifling environment where everyone raised their hands. It was straight out of a vision from 1950's America, except in my stereotyped vision, everyone was a mathematical genius with refined manners. Shame on me!

This video actually made me feel a lot better about my own teaching practices. My principal and I often joke around about the organized chaos of my classroom. My students are anything but quiet or robotic. They are constantly in motion, and our conversations are heated and very often full of debate. To the naked eye, it looks a lot like what we saw in the video, but when you take a closer look, you see how excited the kids are about learning. The kids in the video are engaged, wild, and are clearly learning. Now, it's a little challenging for us to understand what they are saying, but we don't even need a translation because we can tell there is an authentic connection there between the students and the teacher due to their body language.

One thing that I found very interesting was the way one of the students tugged on the teacher's arm. This could be interpreted as lacking patience, but I honestly think the kid was so excited, he couldn't wait another minute to find out if he was right. Granted, a lot of American educators would look down upon an action like this, but maybe we need to start rethinking some of the rules and boundaries of education that we set up for ourselves and our students. We're all pretty sure that people remember what they are learning more effectively when they are excited and passionate about what they are doing. Passion is not methodical or robotic. It's wild and cannot be contained. Perhaps, we should let our students pursue those emotions a little more often. Their experience in our classrooms might be that much more meaningful for it.