Totto-Chan

About

After being expelled from first grade for disruptive behaviour — she wouldn't stop talking to the street musicians outside the classroom window — little Tetsuko is enrolled at Tomoe Gakuen, a school housed in decommissioned railway cars and run by a headmaster who believes that the best way to educate children is to let them be exactly who they are. He listens. He trusts. He builds a school around curiosity rather than obedience. Tetsuko Kuroyanagi's memoir of her unconventional education became one of the bestselling books in Japanese history — a story so warm and so convinced of children's fundamental goodness that reading it feels like being given permission to remember what school could have been. A book about the kind of teacher who changes everything — written by the child who was paying attention.