How the emergence of COVID-19 has affected school life in rural Japan
The emergence of COVID-19 has brought much of the world to a standstill however I must admit, I thought it would have little impact on the rural area where I live in Japan. The situation changed in late February when all of the schools in Japan closed one week before the official end of the school term in March.
Schools in my area briefly reopened for the start of the new term in April but the announcement of the nationwide state of emergency in Japan led to them closing again just as a precaution. This period has undoubtably led to some changes that will continue for the foreseeable future and in my schools, the first change began with this year’s graduation ceremony.
An unlikely graduation ceremony
When we got the news that school would be ending a week earlier in February, me and the other teachers where all very surprised. My 6th grade elementary school students were soon graduating and would be heading off to junior high school. I wanted to use their last lesson to help prepare them for their move as I had done with students from the previous year. However, this wasn’t to be.
For my 3rd grade junior high school students, it was a different story. The last lessons in February would have been the last time that I would ever see or teach them. After their graduation in March, they would all leave their friends behind and go on to study at different high schools. It was a very emotional time for them.
I was lucky enough to see them for the last time at their graduation ceremony in March and although I was so happy to see them graduate, I also felt disappointed at the same time. Due to the early school closure in February, the students had very little time to prepare for this year’s graduation ceremony and as a result I feel that the graduation failed to capture the emotion of the previous years ceremony.
When my 3rd grade students in 2019 graduated, the ceremony itself felt like a full-on theatre production. Leading up to the ceremony were weeks of preparation and everything from the graduation songs to how to bow when receiving their certification from the principal were rehearsed endlessly.
Ceremonies of all kinds are taken very seriously in Japan but this year, the priority had to be the safety of the students. As a result, only the graduating 3rd grade students and their parents were in attendance, unlike previous years. Everyone in attendance was required to wear a mask and the students sadly had to sing their graduation songs while wearing their masks.
Last year, the graduation songs nearly reduced everybody to tears. This year however, you could hardly hear the students voices partially due to the masks but also because their general mood was very low. I could tell that they were disappointed that their 3 years in Junior High School was going to end this way.
After the ceremony ended, I had the opportunity to say goodbye to the students as they left the school for the last time. Some of them even wanted to take some selfies with me so if nothing else, I do hope that they remember some of the good times that we all had together in the classroom.
A School without Students
It was now the end of March and there was still some time before the start of the new term, so I used this period to focus on lesson planning. In elementary school, the 5th and 6th grade classes were due to start learning English from a new textbook and I had a lot of new material to get familiar with.
If I am to be honest with myself however, I did struggle during this time.
Any period where I have had to go into the school when there is no teaching, I have found it very difficult. In addition, I found it hard being in school knowing that the virus situation was starting to affect my friends and family back home. I remember one moment in particular when a teacher asked me if the virus situation was worse in the UK than Italy and I defensively said that it wasn’t. Little did I know that the UK would go on to have the highest death toll in Europe.
A new term “begins”
In April, the day that I was most looking forward to finally came, my junior high school’s entrance ceremony. Seeing my elementary school students in their new smart junior high school uniforms was a nice moment. Just as the previously year, it had dawned on me that I would have been the only familiar face to them in their new school, so it was nice to see them excited to see me.
For the ceremony, only the new students and their parents were allowed to attend. This was so that the seats could be more spaced out as there was even more caution over the virus at this time. There was an antibacterial hand spray that everybody had to use when they entered the hall, and everybody again was required to wear masks throughout the ceremony.
When the time came to take the entrance ceremony photo, the students, parents and teacher for each new class all bunched up close together, mask-less, as they posed for their class photo. I was honestly very surprised by this as it meant that any precaution taken by wearing masks and by sitting far apart was completely negated by how close everybody got for this picture. Even more worrying was how this also happened at other schools in my area. I feel that it would have been best for the pictures to have been left for another day.
Working from home
In the week that followed the entrance ceremony, it felt as if school was going to continue as normal when the situation changed seemingly overnight. It was clear that the virus was now spreading across Japan and thankfully my city hall allowed me to work from home even though all of the other Japanese teachers were still expected to continue going into school as normal.
During this time, me and the other teachers in my area have been busy creating video lessons for the students so that they can continue to learn English while at home. Each video features us acting out scripts that focus on the various English grammar points from the English textbooks. At the end of each video, we then ask some simple questions based on the script for the students to answer.
I do hope these videos have helped the students in some way and if not, at least seeing me being awkward on camera can provide them some quality entertainment while they are at home.
In addition to creating teaching materials for the students, me and the English teachers have also been creating lessons for the 30,000 residents of our region in the form of prerecorded radio shows where we focus on one English phrase or concept per broadcast.
While we are recording them, it is always hard for us to imagine how they will sound when they are played on radio. When we do hear them however, it is always interesting to hear how it all comes together once funky sound effects and fancy music have added into the mix. Again, I can only hope that these recordings are at the very least enjoyable, if not useful for all of the listeners.
Going forward
The junior high school where I work at is looking to introduce a phased return to teaching starting from 18th May. However, things will not immediately return to normal. Initially, half of each class will come in on each day to allow for social distancing within the classroom. There is currently no word on when elementary school will resume but I am excited to see some of my students again.
This has certainly been a strange time, but it does feel like things are going to start returning to some normality now, at least in more rural areas like where I live. It will also be interesting to see how social distancing is implemented in schools across Japan in the weeks and months ahead.
The real challenge now is for students all over the world to adapt to this new reality and make up for the lost lesson time. I do believe that these challenging times will help to make all of our students stronger in the long run. I only hope that this period does not impact their school memories too much because as we all know – life after school doesn’t get any easier!