The students of Mino Jiyu Gakuen High School start out their day with an online survey that requires them to take their temperatures. It’s a task that the school’s teachers never imagined themselves doing when they landed their jobs.
Since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced a nationwide shutdown of schools in late February, however, the teachers have had to re-imagine their roles entirely. A big part of the change has been having to make a sudden shift to digital forms of teaching.
“All grades and courses are communicating with students online but in different ways,” says Derry Kelleher. He’s a teacher at Mino Jiyu Gakuen in Osaka Prefecture, where a state of emergency has been in place since April 7. “We use a platform called Classi to contact them and give exercises.”