ブログ BLOG

先週は神奈川県に研修に行ってきました！
３日間連続の研修です。

今回のような施設長を対象にした研修は今回で４回目となりました。これまでの研修は、現在の保育をめぐる国の動向、保育の質を高めるためのマネジメント、改定された保育指針、子育て支援、人材確保・育成、マーケティングなど、その内容は多岐に渡り、大変勉強になりました。参加される方も全国から集まる園長・副園長の方々なので、貴重な情報共有の場ともなりました。それにしても、話を聞いていると現在の保育をめぐる状況はいろいろな意味で課題がたくさんあります。園として改善・工夫できるものもあれば、私たち現場のものではどうにもならない状況もあります。講師の方々も項目ごとに違い、それぞれにいろいろな想いを抱えているのがわかり、様々な視点から物事を捉える必要があると感じました。

今回の研修で印象深かったのが、一つの動画です。その動画は、１歳の子が大人のスリッパをひたすらはこうとするものでした。何時間もかけてスリッパをはいて歩こうとするのです。その子はまだ歩き始めたばかりなので、片足立ちができません。やっとはけたと思ったらすぐに脱げてしまいます。それでもだんだんと上手になっていきます。驚きなのは、保育者に助けを求めることなく、無言でスリッパをはくということに集中して取り組む姿です。一歳児でも何かに熱中して主体的に取り組むことで、ものすごい力を発揮し、やり抜く力や感情のコントロール力などが身に付き、大きな成長がみられます。非認知能力の育成や生きる力の基礎を培うということに、幼児期の遊びや子ども自身の主体的な活動や学びがいかに大切かがわかります。

子どもたちの主体的な学びはアクティブラーニングともよく呼ばれますが、子どもたち自身が遊びのなかで様々なことに興味を持ち、楽しみながら、主体的に取り組み、探求することが、幼少期の学び・育ちにおいて非常に重要です。

さて、そのような特色を持つ国際教育を取り入れている小学校が横浜にあります。こちらの小学校も今回視察させていただきました。詳細はまた後日お伝えします（＾－＾）

I attended a professional development training in Kanagawa Prefecture last week. It was a three-day training program.

The training program was for heads of schools and it was my fourth time attending such training programs. The training covered topics like recent trends regarding child care, management skills for improving the quality of child care, the revised child care curriculum in Japan, parenting support, staffing and professional development, marketing, and so on. The training also covered a whole lot of various topics and in the end, it was very fruitful.

The attendees of heads/deputy heads of schools came from all over Japan, and all participants took the opportunity to exchange pleasantries with each other and also share useful information about education.

There are quite a lot of challenges that we face in every aspect of our lives. There are some challenges we can overcome by ourselves and there are others that we need assistance to deal with. The speakers all had different thoughts and ideas about child care and I felt the need to have different views and opinions on how best to handle situations.

There was a video shown during the training session. It was about a one-year-old boy trying to wear one of an adult pair of slippers. He literally spent hours trying to wear it. The boy had only started walking, so he could not stand on one foot. At last, he wore the slipper, but as soon as he started walking it came off his foot. The impressive fact is that for hours while he was trying, he did not say a thing. He was very much focused and concentrated on his challenge to the extent that he did not get bored. He did not ask for any help and he did not give up either.

Even for one-year-old children, when they are so active and enthusiastic, they show their strength and interest in accomplishing something by controlling their emotions and discovering the purpose that enables them to do a task just like the one discussed above. It shows how important it is for young children to be devoted to something that they are interested in and how passionate they are about doing things.

This is often described as active learning, in which children develop interests, enjoy activities, become proactive, and inquire about things. In early childhood education, these are extremely important.

I was fortunate to visit an elementary school in Yokohama that implements international education policies with these features. I will talk more about that in the future（＾－＾）