Catch Them Young – with proper curriculum development [Toba/Japan]
SEEDS Asia has worked together with the Toba Elementary School, Toba, Japan, ever since our board member Dr. Yukihiko Oikawa regularly visited the Toba Municipal Board of Education. In 2018, teachers from the City participated in the AXA UNESCO Association Disaster Mitigation Education Forum, and met a SEEDS Asia member to seek a collaborative approach to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and disaster risk reduction/mitigation education in Toba. Since then, short visits have been paid by SEEDS Asia as lecturers, and this is the organization’s approach of supporting preparedness in non-disaster-affected areas.
Since April 2020, enhanced curriculum management has been promoted in the school, so expertise of ESD integrating ocean education will not just belong to individual teachers or conducted as events, but will be a whole-school initiative. In order to provide technical inputs, Prof. Ranko Kishida, who has extensive knowledge and experience on curriculum management (and has been Principal of Kyoto Municipal Takakura Elementary School), joined this initiative as a Technical Adviser.
The training was a third session with Prof. Kishida. She gave a lecture themed “For Advancing Curriculum Management” in which a learning procedure through questioning based on the experiential learning cycle was shared and learned among the teachers in a workshop. Mitsuko Otsuyama entitled her lecture “To reduce community disaster risk – Updating from ‘We know’ to ‘Let’s do it’” and introduced examples of impactful problem-solving approaches involving younger generation.
We sincerely thank the school, teachers and all concerned for this wonderful opportunity.