Special Support Classes Help Both Students And Teachers; Recognizing And Meeting Diverse Needs A Vital Skill

A sign outside a classroom at Totsuka Elementary School in Yokohama, where spacious rooms are used by small individual support classes, is seen on Dec. 18.
8:00 JST, January 18, 2025
Classrooms are filled with children with diverse characteristics. Some excel in academics, while others struggle; some are skilled in sports, while others are not. Despite the variety of students, the typical classroom has only one or two teachers. How can teachers discover and nurture each child’s individual strengths? Perhaps the answer lies in the approach taken by special support classes, which cater to special-needs students.
Special support classes are small groups designed to provide learning tailored to the condition and degree of each child’s disability. In Yokohama, such classes emphasize “individualized support” and are called “individual support classes.” They meet the needs of children with intellectual disabilities, autism, emotional disorders and other conditions, and are established in every public school in the city.
In December, I visited the individual support class at Totsuka Elementary School in Yokohama. Out of approximately 1,000 students, 94 attended individual support classes. In a second-grade classroom for children with autism and emotional disorders, a morning meeting was being led by one of the students. After they watched a video about an upcoming “toothbrushing inspection,” the teacher reminded the students to bring their toothbrushes from home. This sparked questions such as “Do I have to bring my own toothpaste too?” or “My toothbrush is electric; is that okay?” Their questions were entirely logical, making it hard to notice they required special support.
Since each child’s disabilities vary, individual support plans are tailored to their needs in these classes. If there is a class of eight students, there are eight different plans. Teachers prepare worksheets and schedules customized for each child. For example, in a class for students with intellectual disabilities spanning grades one through six, some children worked on multiplication worksheets, others on fractions, and some practiced complex kanji. A few even attended science lessons in regular classes.
One notable aspect was that each class ended with “My Time,” a period when students could freely engage in activities they liked. Serving as motivation to complete tasks, My Time allowed students to discover their own interests and preferred ways of learning. In one classroom, a teacher encouraged a fifth-grade boy tackling his fraction worksheet, saying: “You’re almost done. Once you finish, you can read your favorite book.”
Another boy in the third grade loves origami and can fold intricate dinosaur models requiring over 100 steps. Although he struggled with reading, he could spend hours looking at origami books. He showed remarkable spatial awareness, the ability to create three-dimensional objects, and perhaps, perseverance. Similarly, there were children whose love for gaming led to strengths in computer programming. Principal Tamami Ohtani, 65, said, “We work with parents to find and nurture these strengths.”
Children with disabilities are not the only ones who can benefit from individualized education tailored to children’s traits and personalities. Historically, Japan has had individualized education for a long time. During the Edo period (1603-1867), educational facilities called terakoya, where the children of common people could learn to read, write and calculate, allowed them to work on different tasks. In more recent times, a 1971 report by the Central Council for Education emphasized promoting education that values individuality as a national policy. It defined the role of primary and secondary education as focusing on both essential common skills and the development of rich individuality.
Yukitsugu Kato, a professor emeritus at Sophia University and a pioneer in individualized education, criticized traditional uniform teaching methods during a keynote speech at the 2020 conference of the Japan Society of Education for Individual Development. He pointed out that in the uniform teaching, the same learning task is pursued in the same place and at the same time and in the same manner, expecting all the children in the class to reach the same conclusion. However, children have different levels of readiness for learning, they learn at different paces, and the learning materials suited to their needs are different. Interests differ from child to child, and some children may not be interested in common learning tasks. As a result, some children are always left behind, and dropouts are created.
Based on research into such concepts, the Central Council for Education released a report in January 2021 titled “Toward the Realization of Reiwa-era Japanese Education.” The report emphasized smaller class sizes and fostering “individualized and collaborative learning” to unlock every child’s potential amid rapid societal changes.
Individualized learning can be broken down into two approaches, depending on whether a given subject emphasizes skills or facts.
The first approach is to customize instructional methods to each individual. For common tasks that are essential to master, educators identify where individual students are stumbling and tell them what to do next. This method is said to be suitable for acquiring basic academic skills in “instrumental subjects,” such as Japanese, math and English.
The other method is to envision various goals according to individual interests. This method is called “individualization of learning,” and is considered suitable for “content subjects,” such as science and social studies, where the goal is to understand and acquire knowledge.
The expertise and skills developed in special support classes — tailoring learning to children with diverse disabilities — are effective for all students. A book titled “Hajimete Tokubetsu Shien Gakkyu no Tannin ni Nattara,” or “When you become a special support class homeroom teacher for the first time” was published in August last year. The book uses manga to tell the fictional story of a teacher who feels stuck after a decade of teaching but experiences growth when he is assigned to manage a special support class.
In one scene, a senior teacher tells him, “Children in special support classes make you notice things you’ve overlooked before.” Her words serve as the catalyst for his significant growth over the next two years. The author, Yasunori Kawakami, a teacher at a school for the disabled, concludes, “When you become a special support classroom teacher for the first time, consider it a step in your growth that will change your life as a teacher.”
At Totsuka Elementary School, all teachers, including regular class homeroom teachers, undergo training in special support education every April. Principal Ohtani explained that being a special support teacher sharpens one’s ability to understand students deeply, a skill that benefits all classrooms. She reflected, “If I had started my teaching career in special education, it might have made a big difference.”
At the end of December, the education, culture, sports, science and technology minister asked the Central Council for Education to consider flexible curriculums that include children with diverse characteristics, whether that means truancy or exceptional talents in specific fields. The goal is to create a system in which children can thrive regardless of the school they attend.
Rich individual strengths may have been discovered and nurtured in large part by the dedication of parents who believe in their child’s potential, and by miraculous encounters with excellent teachers. However, every child, regardless of disability or the school they attend, should be able to find their own strengths and favorite ways to learn.
One way to achieve this would be to require all teachers to have experience in special support classes. By ensuring that the richness of individuality is fully nurtured, schools will become places where children can learn safely and happily, discover their diverse talents, and as a result create a vibrant and energetic society.
Political Pulse appears every Saturday.

Makoto Hattori
Makoto Hattori is a staff writer in the Education News Department of The Yomiuri Shimbun.
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