“Learning Together about Care” Held at Kawasaki Municipal Takatsu High School General Course
Project CHANGE develops care products and systems that anyone can use anytime, anywhere, addressing the challenges of providing 24-hour care in community and home-based settings where hospitals cannot operate around the clock. Recognizing that cultivating “care capabilities” is also crucial, we implemented the “Learning Care Together” program for first-year students (7 classes, 280 students) in the general studies department at Kawasaki Municipal Takatsu High School, exploring how this could be integrated into school education. With active participation from the school's teachers, five sessions were held. A presentation event took place at the school on October 14th. Professor Ayumi Igarashi from the Graduate School of Nursing at Chiba University oversaw the entire project. Activities included explanations for faculty and staff, an online class for all students exploring “Health and Care for Me,” learning about the social security system with workshops, and watching a video depicting the life of someone with dementia. This culminated in a group discussion on how to support the elderly.
Observers involved in community care shared feedback: “As nuclear families reduce opportunities to interact with the elderly, it's highly meaningful for high school students to consider issues in an aging society,” and “It's profoundly significant that students researched, thought about, and articulated how to interact with the elderly, learning so much in the process.” This underscored the critical importance of cultivating “care skills” within school education.
Photo A: Quiz on interacting with the elderly
Photo B: Expressing the feelings of a son who raises his voice at his mother in the video for buying bananas every day
Photo C: Designing convenience items for individuals with dementia
Photo D: Yagi, Managing Director of the Kawasaki City Nursing Association (right), and Teacher Igarashi (left) giving the overall evaluation after the presentations
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
