Another school year might be over for Hikaru Azuma, but his mom has no time to rest. With both a new teacher and new classmates of different ages and varying disabilities ahead in fifth grade, Sachiko starts preparing for the difficulties that come with sudden changes to her autistic son’s routine. Despite her best efforts, Sachiko meets with significant opposition from the new teacher, and the Azumas have to cope with Hikaru acting out as a result of the stressful changes at school. Moreover, when the time comes for the family to decide on Hikaru’s junior high, the local education administrators seem to think that a school for the disabled is the best fit for Hikaru, partly because of his recent behaviour. But Sachiko, who has done her research, knows this isn’t the case. Will she and Masato be able to convince the authorities and specialists that they know what is best for their son? (from the back of the book)
We all say goodbye to Gunji-sensei in the beginning of the volume. It’s been a bumpy ride with her as the Special Education teacher, but she does redeem herself in the end. I’m almost sad to see her go, mostly because I know that what’s coming next isn’t good.
After that it’s spring break, where Masato stars in a silly commercial promoting the mushrooms made by his company. It’s the only time Azuma-san shows up in this volume. Some her friends are visiting her when they see the commercial and she’s very embarrassed about it when they recognize it as Masato. Then she calls Masato up to yell at him. Azuma-san is very obsessed with outward appearances.
When spring break is over it’s time for Hikaru to start the sixth grade (OHMIGOD it’s his last year of elementary school guys! Let loose the excitement!). Hikaru, Miyu, and their mothers go to the school a few days early to meet the new Special Education teacher. They arrive and meet the vice-principal in the Special Ed classroom. I don’t know how long that particular vice-principal has been working at the school, but we see him a lot in this volume where he never really saw him at all before.
We are then introduced to the new young, male Special Ed teacher. His name is Akamatsu-sensei and he is hands-down the worst teacher Hikaru and Miyu have ever had. It’s not apparent right away how horrible Akamatsu-sensei is; actually, he seems like a great guy at first. He’s fairly young, maybe around Aoki-sensei or Nishiwaki-sensei’s age, and he seems to know a great deal about autism without Sachiko having to explain it to him.
Honestly it looks like Hikaru’s last year in elementary school (sixth grade already!!) is going to be a pretty positive one, probably up to Aoki-sensei standards… and then Honda-san notices a few things that no one else, possibly including the readers, picked up on. For one thing, she notices that Akamatsu-sensei doesn’t bend down to the children’s level when he speaks to them; he also seems to use big words just to show that he can use them. There are also signs that he doesn’t clearly understand Hikaru and Miyu’s autism, he starts comparing them to Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, for one thing, and he seems a bit disappointed when he’s told that they don’t have any super special talents.
There’s no time to dwell on this, though, because classes start a few days later. It’s April 6th and the first day of sixth grade for Hikaru. There will be two other students in Special Ed this year. They are both younger than Hikaru and transfers from mainstream classrooms. Before I get to them, I’d first like to mention that Akamatsu-sensei starts having a hard time from the beginning. He barely has all four children in the class alone with him for five minutes before he starts yelling.
I don’t think that Akamatsu-sensei is a bad teacher (even though I don’t like the man), but he has no business being in the Special Ed classroom. He’s a smart man and I have no doubt that he understands autism or any other disability he’s read about, but he doesn’t understand the children and he can’t handle them. It’s one thing to know that children in his class do certain things, but it’s another thing altogether to know how to handle these behaviours.
Akamatsu-sensei does a terrible job in teaching the Special Ed classroom because he expects all the children to learn the same way that the mainstream students do. What he fails to realize is that these four students are in the Special Education class because they don’t learn like the mainstream children do and need extra help. He also expects them all to work at the same level, which would be stupid even if they weren’t in Special Ed because all four students are in different grade levels anyway.
There’s something going on where the kids’ parents come in to view the class (like an open house or something) and Akamatsu-sensei is reading the children a story. He reads the story straight from a book without any visual aids or gestures or anything. There are three autistic children in the room and neither of them is paying attention because they’re unable to follow along. The only one who was listening was the dyslexic and Akamatsu-sensei gets mad at him for incorrectly writing something on the board. Then he tells the students to make a morning glory out of paper and gets mad when one of the new children doesn’t realize that he has to make a pretend morning glory (as opposed to making a real morning glory out of paper).
I could go on and on about how Akamatsu-sensei fails at his job, but I won’t because I don’t want this to go on and on. Just let me say that compared to him, Gunji-sensei is on the same level as Aoki-sensei. Yeah, think about that. Even Gunji-sensei was able to work with the children. Akamatsu-sensei was never able to get any real work done; he didn’t even take all the kids outside, not even to the gardens! He didn’t listen to what the parents had to say, even ignoring documentation from doctors (along with Principal Kouda, big surprise there). The Special Ed class was always in chaos when he taught and the year ended with virtually no learning taking place.
On to the new students! Iguchi Ryota is a fourth grader and was transferred to Special Ed from the mainstream class. He is very active and has problems with staying on task, paying attention, and personal space. He doesn’t have a diagnosis in this volume, but Shibusawa-san (from Sunshine House) believes that he might have ADHD and high functioning autism (possibly Asperger’s). Akamatsu-sensei yells at him a lot because Ryota is always knocking things over and forgetting things.
Kanemoto Tsubasa is the other new student and he was transferred out of the third grade mainstream class. He’s a calm, shy boy who doesn’t really cause any trouble for Akamatsu-sensei and can often be seen helping to look after Miyu. He has trouble reading and writing, but is completely normal otherwise. Like Ryota, Tsubasa doesn’t have a diagnosis when he enters Special Ed, but his mother does take him to a doctor on Shibusawa-san’s advice. Tsubasa is eventually diagnosed with dyslexia, but Akamatsu-sensei doesn’t believe Tsubasa’s mother when she tells him.
This volume isn’t all about how Hikaru’s last year of elementary school (!!) is probably just as stressful as his first; there are other things that happen outside of school. Like Hikaru being bullied. Yup, it’s finally happened. Hikaru is on his way home from school one day when he starts getting harassed by two junior high school boys. I just hated reading that part, the two boys are pulling on Hikaru’s GPS and nametag and trying to get money from him and Hikaru has no idea what’s going on. Luckily, Ishida-kun happens to walk by and sees what’s going on and gets the boys to stop. Unfortunately, Ishida-kun’s not enough to get the boys to stop completely. Sachiko goes with Ishida-kun’s mother to the school to get the teachers involved but no one will help. It’s pretty terrible that no one can control two 14-year-olds.
The events in the second half of the volume jump around a bit. It’s time to choose Hikaru’s junior high school and Sachiko and Masato have to practically fight the system to get permission to enrol Hikaru in the junior high they want him to go to. Hikaru also goes on a trip with some classmates but it didn’t go anywhere near as well as his first trip in Volume 3 (mostly because Akamatsu-sensei doesn’t know what he’s doing). There’s also some karaoke thrown in. And then Hikaru graduates elementary school.
It was wonderful to see Hikaru graduate. Compared to the entrance ceremony six years earlier it’s proof that Hikaru has grown so much since then. The book didn’t spend too much time on it because, well, nothing really happened. Hikaru graduated and then he went home. But Hikaru wasn’t the only one who graduated, all of his friends graduated too. So not only did Hikaru graduate elementary school, but he graduated with all of his friends. I so smiled big the whole way through that segment.
Hikaru’s time in this volume is pretty much over at this point, just a few other scenes of him (he’s learning to ride a public bus now). He also said a final goodbye to his yellow hat and backpack, so his elementary school days are officially over, this is important because his yellow hat has turned into something like a ritual to get him to school (since he was only supposed to wear it during first grade but ended up wearing it all six years).
The last big story in this volume is about Katakura Eri, a girl who went to school with Hikaru and who comes from an abusive household. She hasn’t really been featured in the series much until now and I don’t really know why she gets her own story in this volume, but whatever. I suppose it is interesting to see what she’s up to now since her family were kind of main characters in the first volume and we haven’t really seen them since.
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