Blogpost#8 what’s the pace of student with learning difficulties

There are existing labels to students with Learning Differences (LD), e.g., the slower.  Being slow and different in needs in schooling is normally taken as against expectations; no matter one is a high-achiever or an average-achieving student from general mainstream classrooms, or a student with Learning Differences (LD) in a separate resource classrooms. Besides, the notion of slow pace reminds me of a book I enjoyed reading a lot several years ago: Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window¹, written by a Japan's best-loved television star Tetsuko Kuroyanagi who was regarded as different from general students or as a ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) kid from a modern lens in LD and was expelled from elementary school. The book is about Miss Kuroyanagi's unconventional education in Tomoe School² in Tokyo during World War II and the values it taught her. I still remembered the astonishing thoughts came out after my readings on the book, as it is in Tomoe School in the period of World War Two, which might be into the category of special needs schools that include low-achievers, students with LD and students that are not accepted by local public/private of other reasons, that Miss Kuroyanagi found schooling as joyful and meaningful experience and finally grew up into a socially defined person without mental health issues. The slow pace in school lives benefit both teachers-educators and learners. Teachers and the principal had time to develop sustained attention to the formation of themselves as professional lifelong learners. They are learners first before teachers, as they have to learn the needs of children who need extra helps first and to actively response to their needs. As for students, they had a say in deciding the course order, they could leave classroom (actually old railroad cars) to have leisure time, recreation and enjoy solitude at any point during the class. The freedom, time, acceptance and encouragement upon creativity in unique balance between relaxation and teaching and learning in Tomoe School enabled Miss Kuroyanagi to achieve so much in her later lives.

            This book  would become the resources of support in my persistence of not scheduling too much things for a day, which has pushed me to strive to save time for the sake of it. Obviously, applying the philosophy of Tomoe School in the revision of teacher education program in Ontario is not realistic; yet it could act as a reminder that to act in a slow pace does not equate low achievement and being incapable, but a chance to have relaxation, to strive a balance between knowledge-absorption and digestion, to make reflection and to engage into conductive cooperation.

1. Kuroyanagi, T. (1982). Totto-chan, the little girl at the window (1st ed.). Tokyo : New York: Kodansha International ; Distributed by Kodansha International/USA through Harper & Row.  Book review on NewYork Times: GROWING UP JAPANESE http://www.nytimes.com/1982/11/21/books/growing-up-japanese.html

2. Tomoe school was destroyed by American B-29 bombers in the 1945 air raids that leveled most of Tokyo.