Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions Co. Ltd. has been conducting capacity development projects for kindergarten teachers in Vietnam.
Due to the situation of COVID-19, all kindergartens in Vietnam closed in February 2020, and our main project, which is the teacher training was also forced to stop. But as the outcome of early countermeasures taken by the government, Vietnam has maintained 0 number of death due to the virus. Vietnam has also succeeded in preventing new cases of infection, and the number cases have been decreasing (As of July 20th, 2020). There was a report from the local staffs that “Life has returned almost to its original state”.
Therefore, the kindergartens reopened in June 2020. The situation has been slightly hectic with all the kindergarteners returning to campus, but eventually we were able to communicate and now the training have resumed. The training however, is basically conducted online with support from Vietnamese experts, instead of sending Japanese lectures to Vietnam to conduct the training sessions like before. Since there was the international trend of work styles to shift to online, the kindergarten staffs had no hesitation in participating online trainings, and this became a good opportunity for us to shift to remote style operation.
These events have also given us the opportunity to reconsider how we convey Japanese-Style Education. We realized that having Japanese trainers actually visit Vietnam is not the most important point, but rather efficiently learning the way of thinking of “Japanese-Style Education” is what matters most for the kindergartens. Within this dynamic shift of society, what we used to do cannot be conducted naturally as before. We will strive as a company to develop products to deliver effective teaching and learning opportunities.
We have also started to provide support in soft aspects (kindergarten teacher training), as well as hard aspects (advice on kindergarten design and playground equipment) to increase “Japanese-Style Education” infused kindergartens in Vietnam. We will continue to endeavor in conveying the strong points of Japanese-Style methods with all of our partners.
