As you might know, I'm a teacher in Australia too. So I came to Japan thinking I'd be somewhat familiar with the layout of things. Not only was I in for a shock as to how the system would work differently in Japan, I was also surprised by the structure of school in my adopted home. Classrooms in Japan are very different beasts to classrooms in Australia - I'd like to talk about the major differences here:
1)
Chalkboards! Every classroom in Japan has a chalkboard! And that's not just because some school buildings are quite old. Oh no. My school for example was recently renovated (making it rather more earthquake-proof) and instead of whiteboards, all new blackboards were installed into each classroom. Writing on the board using chalk took some getting used to and I often found myself covered in dust at the end of each lesson (usually, comically, all over my butt from where I had inadvertently wiped my hands or leaned on the board while teaching). It was also quite the novelty to see students cleaning the board and then banging the dusters together outside their classrooms on the balcony!
2)
Wooden desks and chairs. These old-school items of furniture went out of fashion in Australian classrooms years ago, but in Japan every student has their own wooden desk (with metal shelving tray underneath) and wooden chair. Most of the desk and chair legs are fitted with cut tennis balls on the bottom, enabling the furniture to be slid around the room quietly and with ease. Students would be assigned a desk at the beginning of their junior high schooling and keep it for the remainder of their years at the school. Each desk would therefore be complete with sticky labels featuring their unique student number and name in kanji. Each desk also had multiple hooks on the side for hanging school bags, book bags and shoe bags!
3)
Technology. Once my school was renovated, I was surprised to see a large flatscreen TV affixed to hang permanently from the ceiling of each classroom - mostly because in my experience, technology is barely used in the Japanese classroom. On the few occasions that I wanted to show a PowerPoint slide show or a short video clip, it had been a tangle of collecting the right cords and spending some time with multiple teachers trying to get the tech set up prior to class. I hate to imagine just how few times those tech-toys get used each year! On the bright side though, Japanese students are well enough behaved for teachers to be able to leave the technology (as well as remote controls etc) in the classrooms without fear of it being destroyed (or having batteries go missing!).
4)
No aircon, no heaters. Yes, that's right, in the Japanese classroom there is no aircon and there are no heaters. But wait, doesn't it snow during Japanese winters? Yes, yes it does. At which point the windows are opened in an attempt to raise the ambient temperature of the room with the slightly-warmer-outside-than-inside breeze. And, um, aren't summer temperatures in excess of 35 degrees Celsius with 70-90% humidity? Ahh, yep. During which time the windows are once again thrown open in hopes of attracting a breeze, the students roll up their long-sleeves (!) and the one overhead fan is turned on.
5)
Floorboards. No classroom at my schools (a JHS and two elementary schools) had carpet - all of them rocked floorboards. I guess this is to keep down building and maintenance costs, but also because students are the ones responsible for cleaning the classroom, it makes sense to give them something relatively easy to keep clean. And by clean the classroom I mean using brooms to sweep up dust and wet rags to mop the floors afterwards.
6)
Students don't move, teachers move. In Japanese junior high schools each class is given their own classroom and in it they stay (unless doing home economics or sport classes). This means that teachers are responsible for shuffling around the school for each lesson while the students stay where they are all day. In between classes (there is usually a 10-minute window between lessons) students are free to hang out in their own classroom, wander the halls, pop in to see their teachers in the staff room or go visit their friends classrooms. But, by the end of the bell chiming for the next class to begin (a rather long and drawn out Big Ben chime) they must be back in their own classrooms, seated and ready to start with the new lesson.
This is what an empty classroom in Japan looks like (well, at my newly renovated school at least) - wooden floorboards, brand new blackboards and flatscreen TVs hanging from the ceiling.
The back of the classroom with pigeon-holes for the students to put their extra bags and books into.
Just outside those windows/sliding doors you can see the balcony. Each classroom has one of these (unthinkably unsafe for an Aussie classroom!).
