A British teacher with 8 years of teaching experience,

teaching English at a private university in Japan 

 23 June 2020 

Life before Covid-19 

I was going into my third year teaching at the university, I had the same classes and the full expectation everything was going to be easy-breezy, and obviously it wasn’t. I teach Business Communication freshmen students, and I get all levels of proficiency. All students have to come with an iPad, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they know how to use them. I use Google Classroom in all my classes, Google Docs for all the assignments, and Google Sheets.  

I teach eight 90 minute lessons with freshmen and then I have an additional two lessons teaching the third and fourth year students my special ‘pop-culture’ class and their level is usually quite high by then. 

How things have changed because of Covid-19 

In my second year my planning went from something ridiculous, two/three hours planning one lesson to a half hour ‘fix-up’, but obviously coming into online teaching, I was back to Square One. We had meeting after meeting, and often there was just a throw of resources at the teachers but it wasn’t really suitable for what we were doing. Their buzzword was ‘adaptability’, ‘just adapt, you can just adapt everything’, which was absolutely not true in any way, shape, or form. Planning time even now is terrible, I’m better, but I’m still trying to find a way to make it a very communicative class which, when you’ve only got breakout rooms to work with on Zoom, is difficult. 

The teachers themselves have been really organised. 

I think some in my university would argue we had enough training because they did offer things like ‘how to use Zoom’, ‘this is Google Classroom’ etc., but often it was run by other teachers, so it wasn’t actually upper management, we were creating our own guides for each other. I think what we needed training for was how on earth to make a lesson plan suitable for your first class. Instead it’s been sort of a trial-and-error for everyone. The teachers themselves have been really organised, there’s a Google Classroom going, where teachers can contribute guides they’ve made or activities that have worked well and we have a Line group for tech issues.  

Our class time is definitely not 90 minutes now, it ranges. On a long day it’s probably an hour, and on a short day it could be twenty minutes where I’m just introducing what they need to do after Zoom. I think students are probably getting more input than they realise and than they get usually because teachers are so conscious that we’re in an unsure time. Like other universities, students started writing to the uni and saying ‘we shouldn’t have to pay these fees if we’re not using the campus’ and ‘online teaching isn’t the same as face-to-face teaching, we’re not getting the same input’. When we heard that it was really disheartening actually, because the students didn’t know what we had planned, so I’m definitely more conscious they have as much face time with me -and also with each other as well- and work that they can get doing. I think they see it as just work though, so even when we have a twenty minute class, if I then have five tasks for the students to do they will always just read that as homework and I’ll be like ‘no, it’s not homework, it’s part of class because we’re still technically within our ninety minutes’. 

I’m definitely glad we’re doing online teaching. I think my uni did a good job in being very clear saying ‘we’re just doing the whole semester online’. There’s little things I enjoy, like I really enjoy the idea of having face-to-face Zoom class time for what’s necessary and for the remainder of the time letting students go away to do the work. 

Teachers are always underappreciated, but I think during this time -whereas I thought this would make people realise -the parents, the students, management- ‘oh my God, our teachers do an incredible job and I don’t know how they’re doing it amidst all of this’, instead it seems to be a case of ‘oh yeah, the teachers are doing just fine, like they always do’. 

 I do feel that the uni has abandoned teachers a little bit. I get the sense that management are like ‘you clearly know what you’re doing, the students aren’t complaining, so everything must be fine’. I think the uni and the students take it all for granted which is frustrating. It would be nice if the students especially knew just how much hard work and effort was actually put into everything. Teachers are always underappreciated, but I think during this time -whereas I thought this would make people realise -the parents, the students, management- ‘oh my God, our teachers do an incredible job and I don’t know how they’re doing it amidst all of this’, instead it seems to be a case of ‘oh yeah, the teachers are doing just fine, like they always do’. 

I feel like a Mother Goose with about 50 little goslings. 

I think Japanese students will happily come to you about problems outside of studying and ask for your advice, and now they do the same but you’re also guiding them through things that have nothing to do with your class. I feel like an on-call technician/teacher/parent. In the beginning I was getting emails every hour from several students all the way through the day and it was little tech-related things. I feel like a Mother Goose with about 50 little goslings. 

Challenges and greatest concerns 

I think a lot of teachers feel like it’s a wasted year at the moment, because we know that it’s probably not going to be made use of, which is kind of heart-breaking. 

I do get concerned that literally this has become my life and I have nothing outside of that. I have research ideas I wanted to plough on with and honestly there’s no time for it. I’m concerned that if we do this for another semester this will just be a year of never-ending planning and that when we go back teaching face-to-face it’ll never get used again, so I hope the uni thinks about having online classes as well. I think a lot of teachers feel like it’s a wasted year at the moment, because we know that it’s probably not going to be made use of, which is kind of heart-breaking.  

I always worry, personally, that I could have done better. I know I’m a perfectionist, so I’ll often look back on materials and activities and instead of seeing this as ‘I did the best I could have in this situation’, I end up just tearing myself up over it, which is kind of demotivating. 

Opportunities 

I think students have bonded much better this way because a lot of them exchanged social media details, creating their own communities outside the classroom. I’ve definitely improved in instructions -written and spoken- because in the first week I realised ‘I clearly wasn’t very clear about pressing that specific button which is underneath the battery icon on the iPad screen’ -all of these tiny things I usually wouldn’t think of because I just point to them for the students. 

Looking to the future 

I do hope that come the end of this blended learning doesn’t just finish. I really hope that we’re able to incorporate this a little bit more 

If we’re back on campus next semester and teaching face-to-face, I think it will be really strange and I genuinely think that face-to-face social skills are going to take some work. And it’ll be interesting because now students think they have a lot of work, but it’s a case of balance, so I’m not sure how they’ll deal with in-class work that they can’t just do whenever they want plus homework. 

I do hope that come the end of this blended learning doesn’t just finish. I really hope that we’re able to incorporate this a little bit more, maybe things like Zoom, keeping that as an option for office hours or duties, so you don’t have to physically always be there.