Hakuo Senior High School - Junior High School

At 5 p.m. JST on July 4, 2020, an online exchange session was held between Hakuo Senior High School - Junior High School and Lycée Jean-de-La-Fontaine (high school and junior high school).

Amid overseas travel restrictions due to COVID-19, an online teleconferencing system was used to conduct an international exchange session with Lycée Jean-de-La-Fontaine (high school and junior high school), a school with which Hakuo Senior High School formed a sister-school partnership in 2019.

To prevent the spread of the virus, Jean-de-La-Fontaine students (two students) studying at Hakuo Senior High School - Junior High School joined the session from the school while roughly 60 others participated from their homes.

In the meeting, students used Japanese and French to share promising ideas for future exchange between the schools, while also talking about the impact COVID-19 has had on their countries and discussing specific ways to handle the virus going forward. The discussions among the students were so spirited that the meeting ran over.

With the virus making face-to-face exchange difficult, the online exchange appeared to provide a meaningful opportunity for students to strengthen friendships and better understand one another. Despite the program going over time, students continued chatting with a reluctance to conclude the exchange that ended on a harmonious note.