Miku Kusuda
Kumamoto Prefectural Amakusa Special Needs School

Introduction

Our school is located in the south-west part of Kumamoto Prefecture, and is the only special needs school for pupils with intellectual disabilities in the Amakusa area, which is made up of the Amakusa Islands, surrounded by a beautiful indigo sea. From the 2016 to 2017 fiscal years, it was designated as a part of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s “Project to Promote the Introduction of Community Schools” and led the way among the special needs schools in the prefecture in beginning the work needed to become a comprehensive community school. We are now in our seventh year. I will introduce our progress so far, as we have made use of the PDCA cycle and sought for ways to become a sustainable community school.

1. The understanding of “community”

When we at prefectural special needs schools think about our “local community”, a difference between us and municipal elementary or junior high schools is that the place in which the school is located and the places where our pupils and students live are not necessarily the same. It can be said that this is one of the reasons why the community school system has not been proactively introduced to prefectural special needs schools so far. At elementary and junior high schools, it is easy for local community initiatives which say that “the community should raise the community’s children” to take hold. However, since our school’s catchment area is broad, encompassing two cities and one town (Amakusa City, Kami-Amakusa City, and Reihoku Town), we started by seeking a shared understanding of our “local community”. We understand our school’s location to be “the core of our local community”, all the while recognizing the entire Amakusa area as our “community”. We go on to support the sound upbringing of children who will live independent lives and participate in society in Amakusa, this “community” in which they were born and raised. We decided to carry out our work on the basis of the above shared vision, and taking into account the aspect of being a theme-based community.

2. Sharing our vision

Ever since the introduction of the community school system, the people who support the children at our school in their learning and daily lives have been drawing up a “community school vision chart” (Fig. 1) to enable a shared overview of the current situation, issues, and pillars of our work. In early May each year, after an overall review of community schools, each department brainstorms, using the KJ method to clarify the good points about and issues for pupils and students, families, the school, and the local community situation. It is a valuable time for sharing a team vision of the kinds of children, school, and community for which we aim. Due in part to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were particularly big changes to our school’s situation and the issues faced this school year. Based on our prefecture’s improvement plan for prefectural special needs schools, which aimed to resolve the shortage of classrooms due to the increase in the number of senior high department students in recent years, our school’s senior high department moved to the campus of Amakusa Takushin High School’s Hondo Building from this school year. As a result, our school is now in two locations and the pupils and students of our elementary and junior high departments go to school in a different building from the students of our senior high department. However, thanks to this “community school vision chart”, even if there are changes in the circumstances surrounding our school, we are able to share our vision of observing the “now” for our children in the context of connections with the local community and thinking about what we ought to do now and for what purpose.

3. Three support teams

The three support teams in the central part of Fig. 1, the “community school vision chart” – 1) Loving support, 2) Learning support, 3) Daily life support – are the cornerstones of our work (the initial letters of each support team in Japanese spell out “Amakusa”). 1) is responsible for the work of building connections between the school, the local community, and parents and guardians. 2) is responsible for creating lessons which make the most of local material and human resources. 3) is responsible for building partnerships between the school and relevant organisations, with the aim of enriching disaster prevention education, guidance on students’ next steps in order to move towards independence and participation in society, and so on. Within the school, we coordinate between the three teams and the school management division, enabling each teacher to participate in school management, from the standpoint of a community school, without feeling this to be a burden. In addition, by having the members of the school management council (hereinafter, “the Council”) belong to one of the support teams, we aim to have the school and the Council work in tandem. At the Council meetings, which take place twice a year, in June and February, we share our vision for supporting our children’s learning and daily lives with the councillors. Using a “PDCA sheet”, which depicts our goals, action plan, evaluation, and intentions for the next school year in visual form on one sheet of paper, we discuss and plan the measures to be taken to address issues in each support team, and discuss evaluation of the year’s initiatives and our intentions for the next school year.

4. Each support team’s projects

1) “Loving support” team

By regularly disseminating information about the educational activities of our pupils and students, the school management council, the projects on which each support team is working, and so via the school website and the “Community School Heartful Newsletter”, they are aiming to make Amakusa Special Needs School known to everyone. Visits to the school website increased rapidly after the introduction of the community school system. Information and communications are the first step towards connections with the local community. Recently, the chief careers guidance counsellor appeared on Amakusa City’s community FM radio station and talked about the attractive features of our school and our hopes for the employment of disabled people. In addition, the recruitment (currently suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic) and activities of “Amakusa supporters”, parents or guardians and local residents who put their hobbies or specialist skills to use to support our children’s learning, were an opportunity for local community members to learn about the personalities of each one of our pupils and students. We are currently thinking flexibly about methods and tools to permit encounters, interaction, and mutual support during the COVID period, such as making use of ICT.

2) “Learning support” team

Our school was already working on various initiatives to deepen connections with the local community, such as inter-school exchanges and activities contributing to the community, as well as school events. After introducing the community school system, we have seen changes in teachers’ awareness, such as making sense of these activities from the perspective of links with the community, or aiming to create lessons which make use of local material and human resources from the standpoint of a community school in which learning does not end at school. Through the cooperation of “Amakusa supporters”, opportunities to learn by doing both inside and outside the school increased and, by attaching importance to systematic lessons including pre- and post-study and reviews, we have seen deeper learning which does not stop when the experience finishes.

3) “Daily life support” team

Bearing in mind the lessons from the Kumamoto Earthquake, which occurred right after the introduction of the community school system, we hold repeated discussions about disaster preparedness through community partnership every year. At the initial stage of creating this disaster prevention system, staff of the Amakusa City Disaster Prevention and Crisis Management Division and of the Extended Area Central Fire Station were appointed as extraordinary members of the school management council. They gave us advice about evacuation centre management and the evacuation of pupils and students who need support, which led to the drawing up of a disaster prevention manual. We are working on various initiatives with the keywords of “partnership” and “collaboration”, including an earthquake evacuation drill with the cooperation of the local auxiliary fire brigade and district association leaders (Photo 1), an evacuation drill with the PTA officers, a handover drill in partnership with parents or guardians and welfare facilities, gaining an understanding of emergency evacuation sites in the areas where our students live, and so on. Our senior high department, which moved this year, held a joint evacuation drill with Amakusa Takushin High School.

Conclusion

Seven years have passed since we held a conversation about “Amakusa’s PATH (Planning Alternative Tomorrow with Hope”, which depicted our future vision for our school and the Amakusa area, at the Council meeting in February 2017. Several of our dreams for the ways we wanted our school and community to become are already being realized. We foresee several more changes from now on, including with the COVID-19 pandemic, the spread of ICT, and the circumstances surrounding special needs education. However, we will not fear change, but maintain a long-term outlook and share our vision for our work. Thinking about “What can we do now?” to resolve issues, our three support teams will set out concrete goals and plans, implement, evaluate, and improve them, continuing to gradually rotate the cogs of the PDCA cycle, which take us forward to the next year, through a three-way partnership between the school, families, and local community.

Photo1 : Earthquake evacuation drill held with the cooperation of the local auxiliary fire brigade and district association leaders