In which Mikki is held back a year… or advanced a year… or something

 The Japanese public school year is quite a bit different than that in the US, with three terms (of unequal length) beginning in April and running through March of the following year. They don’t have a long break like our summer vacation, but only a couple of weeks in between semesters. So for us, this means we entered school near the end of their school year, which will be ending on March 24th, and then the kids will advance to the next grade starting on April 6th. When we were planning the trip, this seemed like a really good thing. They could have the end of the previous school year to get used to things, and then enter the second and fifth grade already having a sense of what to expect. And, of course, they were both really excited about the prospect of advancing to the next grade before all their friends back home. And although there have been ups and downs getting used to the system, it seemed that everything was going about as well as we could have hoped.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I received an official letter in the mail last week letting me know that I should be sure to fill out the necessary forms to let Mikki start as a brand new first grader in April. Probably just a silly mistake, since she's been getting a long just fine in her first grade class since we arrived. When I called in to correct their error, though, it turns out the mistake was ours. Eli was fine (albeit a bit younger than most) entering the fourth grade due to his March birthday but because Mikki’s birthday falls at the end of April, by the Japanese count she was not yet old enough to be in first grade. I assume that the fact that we entered the school year partway through the final term threw everybody off and when I reported that my kids were to enter the first and fourth grade, nobody did the math. But now that they realized that Mikki was an IMPOSTER, things needed to be corrected. And this was NOT the sort of rule to which exceptions could be made. So what were we supposed to do? Mikki was already established in her first grade and had made some friends. It would be a shame not to let her continue on to second grade with the rest of her class. Not to mention that she would definitely bristle at the idea of going back to the beginning of the first grade year. The official I was talking to said he would contact the principal of her school and they would figure out what to do with her and call me back later.

As it turns out, this was one of those times when the rules were extremely strict, but the reality could be bent to meet them. Given her birth date, there was absolutely NO WAY she could be allowed to enter the second grade as planned. But, if we didn’t mind, they could accept her into the classroom as a “guest experience.” This is a status generally reserved for students who transfer to a new school very late in the term or for a very limited time, but since we’re only here until June they decided they could stretch the meaning to allow Mikki to be in the second grade for those two and a half months. Both the official at the city office and the principal of the school gave me separate phone calls that evening to make sure I was okay with the situation, and I was a bit thrown off by the fact that they seemed to expect that I might not be:

   “So she gets to move on to the second grade with her class?”

   “Yes, but she won’t be officially enrolled.”

   “But she gets to do everything her class does?”

   “Yes, of course. Now, officially textbooks are only supplied for free to enrolled students.”

   “Oh, that’s okay. We’re willing to pay for…”

   “Oh no, we discussed it and we can provide textbooks for her.”

   “Okay, great. So what exactly would change?

   “Well, she wouldn’t be officially enrolled. Are you… alright with that?”

   “Sign me up!”

They actually seemed to be genuinely relieved that I was willing to accept this plan they’d cooked up… which got us everything we wanted and cost us nothing. In fact, this was the way I’d originally imagined the kids would have to enter the school system: as guests. I didn’t care whether the kids had official status or whether they got much out of the curriculum. I just wanted them to experience the Japanese school system as a “guest experience.”

It makes me wonder, though, what things would have been like if we’d caught the birth date thing when we first signed them up. It was really easy getting the kids into the school system, which also helped get them integrated into the neighborhood. If we’d had to sign Mikki up for preschool instead… well, aside from having to pay for it and her almost certain indignation at having to go back to preschool I think it also would have been much harder for her to make friends in the neighborhood. At the same time, it might have been easier for her to pick up the language, especially the written language, if it had been something she was working on with fellow students rather than something that was assumed everyone already knew. Also, although both academically and socially she seems to be at the same level as the rest of her class, she doesn’t seem to have the same respect for classroom space that the other students do, and I’m sure that attitude was instilled in them during the first part of their first grade year. Despite the difficulties integrating into the system, though, I’m glad it happened this way. Trying to make your way through systems with which everyone else is familiar but that you have to learn through observation and trial-and-error is a big part of the study abroad experience. It’s inherently difficult, but I’m glad she went through it in the way she did. I don’t know if she is as happy about it as I am, but that’s something we probably won’t know until well after we come back.