{"id":3609,"date":"2013-12-06T19:05:30","date_gmt":"2013-12-06T10:05:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/?p=3609"},"modified":"2013-12-06T19:05:30","modified_gmt":"2013-12-06T10:05:30","slug":"vanessa-tenazas-zenryuji-nursery-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/2013\/12\/06\/vanessa-tenazas-zenryuji-nursery-school","title":{"rendered":"Vanessa Tenazas: Zenryuji Nursery School"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now that several months have elapsed, I can say that my volunteer work at Zenryuji has offered me some unique glimpses into Japanese culture and language through the lens of children and a nursery school environment. The dynamics between teachers and children, between head teacher and a supporting teacher, and between the children and myself have been of particular interest.<\/span><\/p>\n

Prior to coming to Japan, I was already quite aware of the hierarchy built into Japanese society as exemplified through things like the degrees of politeness in language and the\u00a0senpai-kohai<\/em>\u00a0dynamic.\u00a0At the nursery school, when a teacher is making an announcement or instructing the children to do something as part of the routine (i.e. when lining up), she uses polite language as a way to signal the formality of what is being said. On the other hand, it was interesting to observe teachers using plain speech when reprimanding the children,\u00a0which I imagine\u00a0was done in order to capture the teacher\u2019s frustration\u00a0and\u00a0put the children in their place hierarchically, since plain speech can indicate the speaker\u2019s superiority over the listener.<\/span><\/p>\n

On a related note, though I do not find the\u00a0power\u00a0structure at the nursery school to be anywhere near as rigid as a regular corporate setting, it is clear that not all teachers share equal roles and positions. The two head teachers of the group of kids I usually work with are responsible for making announcements, directing the children during their routine, and, if necessary, reprimanding the children. Meanwhile a supporting teacher will help clean up the room or pour the milk for each child during snack time. Here too I have observed the use of casual speech by the head teachers between each other and to the supporting teacher, but the supporting teacher will use polite speech in response to perhaps indicate their difference in position within the structure of the daycare.<\/span><\/p>\n

In my case, exchanges between teachers and I are exclusively in polite speech, while at the insistence of the children our exchanges are in casual speech. One child even corrected me the first day when I used\u00a0polite speech too much, saying\u00a0that it put too much distance between ussince\u00a0our relationship should be that of friends. While this would not happen even among my peers, I suppose with children the rules get a bit hazy due to their age. Without any direct equivalent in the English language, these kinds of observations have been consistently fascinating.<\/span><\/p>\n

In terms of the culture of raising children, I feel like my experience at Zenryuji was just like scratching the surfaceof it. What struck me immediately was the physical contact between teachers and students, where a teacher will not hesitate to grab or push a child as a means of correcting their behavior. My Asian background led me to be less surprised at the time, but knowing that in America such a thing would never be allowed without consequences did make me stop and think. That was probably one of the biggest cultural divides I had noticed while volunteering.<\/span><\/p>\n

What was strikingly similar to what I have observed in America, however, is that children here are also keen on \u201cplaying house\u201d during playtime. Participating children each take a role in the family such as mother or father, and someone is almost always \u201ccooking\u201d something (I need not mention how many times I have had to \u201ceat\u201d curry rice made out of sand). I noted that since children just about anywhere are most familiar with what happens at home, that represents one extent of their imaginations at this point in time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Similarly, the children tend to quarrel with each other very easily about small things like sharing toys and someone not \u201capologizing\u201d enough for something they did. I find being consulted on such matters a bit of a handful since I am not always sure what is culturally appropriate to say. Usually in the case of sharing toys, other teachers will go for the diplomatic approach and encourage the children to share, especially if one child has two of something. In the case of having children reconcile through apology, I think more so than the child wanting to apologize on their own it is the teacher\u2019s authority that compels them to do so. I know in my case even if I were to say someone should apologize, they would either continue pouting at me without following through on the direction, or would simply run away. It reminds me that even though I am well-loved by the children,\u00a0due to my age and outsider status\u00a0I am in this limbo between teacher and friend, making my influence less effective. Whether in the future I will become more of one or the other remains to be seen.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that several months have elapsed, I can say that my volunteer work at Zenryuji has offered me some unique … \u7d9a\u304d\u3092\u8aad\u3080 →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_locale":"ja","_original_post":"3609"},"categories":[93,118,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3609"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3609\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}