Activities

We developed the “Learn through Q&A: Disasters and psychological care” (part of the emergency work in FY2013 by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology to dispatch school counsellors) booklet as part of the emergency work in FY2013 by the MEXT for dispatching school counsellors under permission from the Board of Education of Miyagi Prefecture, Iwate Prefecture, Fukushima Prefecture, and Sendai City. We have distributed the booklet to approximately 3,000 public and private kindergartens, elementary schools, junior high schools, senior high schools and schools for special needs education in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima Prefectures.

Through our efforts to support schools in the disaster-hit areas, which we have been continuing since shortly after the disaster, we recognised the importance of communicating to adults specific methods of psychological care for the children around them. Last fiscal year, we produced the “Psychological Support Video Collection” which is a recording of methods to cope with stress caused by the disaster. This video collection was put to use in school classes and teacher training in each region, and there were schools that even incorporated videos in their weekly school assembly. For FY2013, we developed and started distributing a Q&A format booklet that answers in a pinpoint fashion the “what do we do in this situation?” worries and doubts that we had received the most requests from schools about.

Three years have passed since the Great East Japan Earthquake, and psychological support for children in the disaster-hit areas is becoming an even more serious issue. From the day when the booklet was distributed, we have been receiving numerous inquiries from kindergartens and schools. Further deliveries of the booklet will be made with written applications based on the number of booklets remaining in stock on a postage-to-be-paid-on-delivery basis.

We have started publication of EDUPONT, a community magazine to support the young people who will support education in the future. It will be distributed to all education universities, and all universities having an education department, starting with Tokyo Gakugei University, Hyogo University of Teacher Education, and Osaka Kyoiku University.
The name EDUPONT comes from the English word “education”, and the French word “pont”, meaning bridge, and the magazine aims to serve as a bridge between education and society, as well as university students and classrooms by conveying information about classrooms and education to university students.
Editing is done with a “participation” system ? by creating a special “student correspondent” system, allowing university students to prepare interview reports, and by giving students the opportunity to talk to alumni and students from other universities. We hope that, by creating media, we will be able to develop a network of students wanting to become teachers. We also hope to provide a place for useful information and opportunities for students where they can turn their ambitions into action. By offering more points of contact between society and young people who will be the providers of education in the future, we aim to construct a scheme that allows the entire society to ponder on the future of education.