After-School Activities at HIS

Sharing Perspectives with Sagara High School

Written by Rem | 著作: 太田玲夢

Translated by Hinano | 翻訳: 増田久菜乃

Photos by the HIS Publications Team

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**This article is part of a series of articles coming from the 2022-2023 HIS x SHS Exchange Club, a club that began in 2021 as a way to share school cultures between Hokkaido International School and Sagara High School.** For more information on the club, see "A Day in the Life of a Sagara High School (SHS) Student", "Closing the Gap: The 2022 Hokkaido International School (HIS) x Sagara High (SHS) School Exchange" and "The Makinohara Intercultural Exchange" among others. The goal of these articles is to share information about HIS and SHS as club members discover more about each other and their respective schools.**

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In HIS, there are several after-school activities such as basketball, volleyball, and badminton. Some of the activities have many participants and are energetic while others only have a few participants and constantly face the threat of enclosure.

The rock club is getting popular at school nowadays. Students in HIS are always grateful for this environment and enjoy it enthusiastically. Extracurricular activities bring students unique experiences which might not be possible to obtain from normal classes. Although we have extracurricular activities like other Japanese public schools do, we uniquely conduct them. In this article, we’d like to share some interesting facts about how extracurricular activities are held in HIS.

HISには、バスケットボール、バレーボール、バドミントンなど、いくつかの放課後活動があります。活動の中には、多くの参加者がいて活発な活動もあれば、少数の参加者しかおらず、廃部になりそうな活動もあります。ロッククラブは最近学校で人気が高まっています。HISの学生は常にこの環境に感謝し、熱心に楽しんでいます。課外活動は、通常のクラスでは得られないかもしれないユニークな体験を学生にもたらします。他の日本の公立学校のように課外活動を行っていますが、実施の仕方が異なったりします。この記事では、HISで課外活動がどのように行われるかについて、いくつかの興味深い事実を共有したいと思います。

First, we have a quite different system with after-school activities compared to Japanese schools. Each sport has its on-season and off-season, therefore, our after-school activities change seasonally. For example, basketball practices are only held between November and January of next year. Volleyball club practices from September to November. HIS aims to let students experience various sports throughout the year. We heard that in Japanese schools, each after-school activity is held actively throughout the year so that students can dedicate themselves entirely to one sport. We thought it was good to understand different policies for after-school activities both in SHS and HIS. 

一つ目は、日本の学校と比べて私たちは部活動でとても異なる制度があります。それぞれのスポーツにはオンシーズンとオフシーズンがあり、私たちの部活動は季節に応じて変わります。例えば、バスケットボールの練習は11月から翌年の1月の間だけ行われます。バレーボール部は9月から11月に練習します。HISの目的は一年間を通して生徒に様々なスポーツを経験させることです。私たちは日本の学校では積極的に部活動が行われるため、完全に一つのスポーツに尽くせると聞きました。私たちはSHSとHISの両方の部活動は、異なるポリシーを理解するために良いと思いました。

Another unique custom we have in terms of after-school activities is that participation in practice is not strictly mandatory. We have the freedom to skip practices after school if we have proper excuses. Some of HIS students used to go to Japanese public schools and they say that coaches don’t tolerate students who skip practices often. On the other hand, when we tell coaches that we are skipping a practice, they usually approve. We thought that there is a different educational norm between typical Japanese schools and HIS, as a result, both ways of thinking should be respected.

In this article, we did a “compare and contrast” of extracurricular activities between HIS and Japanese schools. Of course, there is a possibility that we know little about Japanese schools so we’d like to know more. 

放課後活動に関して私たちが持っているもう一つのユニークな習慣は、練習への参加は厳密には必須ではないということです。適切な理由があれば、放課後の練習をスキップする自由があります。HISで日本の公立学校に通っていた人たちによると、コーチは練習を頻繁にスキップする学生を容認しないと言います。一方HISでは、練習をスキップするとコーチに伝えると、通常は承認されます。

典型的な日本の学校とHISの間の教育規範が異なることは当然で、両方の考え方が尊重されるべきです。この記事では、HISと日本の学校の課外活動を「比較対照」しました。もちろん、日本の学校についてほとんど知らない可能性もありますので、もっと知りたいです。