Quaker Ethos of Service / クエーカーの奉仕の精神

　This year I am member of the school service committee. This committee is made up of a teacher from each year group plus the principal. Our service program at school is well-established so we mostly spend our meeting times reviewing how best to carry out the programs in the school year.

　The service program for the seventh grade students focusses on vision impairments. The students learn how to read braille and they even make a braille booklet. They really spend time making sure to make the braille text correctly and then decorate it beautifully. Then the homeroom teachers makes a book and displays all students work in their class for the year. Later on in the year they spend an afternoon moving through a designated course in groups of three. First, the students attend a lecture at the school by a visually impaired individual who explains what it’s like to be visually impaired. They take turns being blindfolded and then trusting their group mates to carefully lead them through the course. The idea behind this is that they not only gain a better understanding of how accessible or inaccessible our society may be for visually impaired people, but they also learn how to be of assistance to visually impaired people. Friends School, being a Quaker school, sees a lot of value in acts of service and I’m glad that at a junior high school level we do activities like this to help them be more sensitive to those around them for whom our society may not be made.