A Teacher's Journey from America to Japan: The Challenges of Engaging Students During a Pandemic

Elizabeth Michael

COVID-19 is creating a new normal which includes major changes in how people go about their lives. I believe the shift from in-person teaching to the online platform has been evolving, and now its time has come (to the discomfort of some). I identify as a millennial; I am comfortable with technology.

Before coming to Japan, I was an English teacher at a public technical high school in America that, due to the pandemic, had abruptly shifted to emergency remote teaching (ERT). This shift created a challenge for teachers and students. In my voice-over slideshow presentation, I will be discussing the challenges I encountered and how that differs from my experience teaching at a women’s university in Nagoya, Japan.

When my university in Nagoya made the shift from 100% in-person to 100% online, I found that ERT translates relatively well for conversation-style English classes. In my American classroom, I began to wonder if the nature of the curriculum and the lack of equity in the access to technology caused the disengagement I was noticing through chronic absenteeism of students from the virtual classroom. Would attendance have been less of an issue if equal access to technology and lessons on the use of online platforms had been taught in a hybrid model (in-person and virtually) as the shift to virtual learning could be the future?

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