About Mamenoki （English) :: インターナショナルデモクラティックスクールまめの木

まめの木通信

2022年6月9日木曜日 8時 39分

About Mamenoki （English)

We are an alternative school located in the countryside of Tambasasayama, Japan. We speak both English and Japanese, and as a democratic school, the students make decisions together to plan activities and projects and to establish rules. These activities can be as simple as deciding what games to play together or determining personal goals for study, or more long term goals such as planning a summer music festival or bike trips. Unlike most normal schools, we do not impose a timeframe, have a set curriculum, or make our students sit at desks and do homework, so each student's experience is customized to fit their unique personality and character.

We encourage our students to explore, play, move, and learn at their own pace in a rich and supportive setting. Students get practice deciding for themselves what is meaningful and important, and have the chance to determine their way forward on a daily basis. When a student has an idea, we try to support them without interfering with their process and controlling the outcome, so the child comes to understand their own abilities and take on challenges at the rate that is appropriate for them. We see students become comfortable with a trial and error approach to learning and creativity, and gain a certain ease with making mistakes and learning from them. Because studying is not imposed, we see an openness and curiosity towards learning and little of the resistance you see in normal schools.

While we believe it is important that all people be allowed to choose what activities to take on, we also value socialization and practice group decision making, so that everyone’s rights are respected. We take efforts to create a safe and welcoming space for all children, and encourage children to express their individuality without pressure to conform.

There is an abundance of nature at our school, with surrounding mountains, organic vegetable garden and orchard, and ponds free for the children to explore. We also have many animals, so children take part in a dog walks, caring for our chickens and gathering eggs, playing with the cats, and catching and keeping a myriad of critters. We think sustainability is important, so at Mamenoki not only do we produce our own electricity with solar panels, we practice composting, harvest rainwater, keep honeybees, and heat our school with wood from the local mountains. It's a joy to see our students devouring berries straight of the bushes and harvesting veggies to top pizza to bake in our wood-fired bread oven. We enjoy the slow country life, and hope that our space can provide fertile ground for children to pursue their dreams.

At Mamenoki we strive to provide a variety of contexts for children to learn, and we feel that the best way to learn is by doing, so we try to give our students every opportunity for hands-on experience. At our current facility we have:

-a crafts studio
-outdoor pottery workshop
-music studio
-playroom
-kitchen
-library
-central meeting area

We also have lots of bicycles and sports equipment, playground equipment, a playhouse, and plenty of trees to climb and room to run. We often go swimming at the pool or river and play at local parks, and go to the library or gym to play sports on rainy days. We also believe it’s important for our students to encounter different people and experiences, so we regularly set up workshops depending on the students’ interests at the given time. Some of the workshops we have held recently are:

-music
-ceramics
-language study
-cooking
-arts and crafts
-archery

We are currently doing a crowdfunding project to raise money for this renovation project. The money we raise will be spent on:

-200,000 yen (about $1,500) for demolition and disposal of the house interior
-500,000 yen (about $3,700) for building materials and appliances
-500,000 yen (about $3,700) to pay our carpenters and architect
-135,000 yen (about $1,000) to cover our crowdfunding fee
-100,000 yen (about $750) to cover the cost of our crowdfunding returns
-65,000 yen (about $480) to pay for publicity and advertising of the project

We hope to do a lot of the work ourselves, to make the most of our funds. Whatever isn't spent on renovation will be spent on improving the learning environment of the children. We hope you will consider donating to help us meet our our goal, and every little bit helps.

The crowdfunding site doesn't allow donations from outside of Japan, so we have created a paypal account to accept donations. We are so excited for this next phase in the growth of our school, and we are looking forward to working together on it with the students and sharing it with everyone.

Click here to donate to our paypal account.

https://paypal.me/sasayamamamenoki

投稿者 :西村源

まめの木通信

About Mamenoki （English)

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