One of the perks of teaching overseas is that sometimes, while your ex-colleagues in the UK are still slogging their way through the last months of term, your academic year wrapped up in the middle of June and you’re on the beach relaxing.

Of course, it comes with the inevitable price of returning to work earlier, too - this week to be exact.

And in the post-Covid world, going back is more difficult than it has ever been before.

Different regions, same problems

I currently work in Vietnam at a wonderful international school in the vibrant Ho Chi Minh City.

Despite being unable to see my family this summer, I am fortunate enough to be in a country that has managed to fight against the spread of Covid-19 in the first wave quite efficiently with strict border and quarantining measures and effective contact tracing.

We were able to go back to face-to-face teaching for the last six weeks of term, ending the year on a more positive note with optional masks in classrooms, a high level of student attendance and an excellent graduation event.

After the first few weeks of trying to switch off, I began to face the reality of what the return would look like.

Unfortunately, the dreams of coming back to something that resembled normality were dashed when Vietnam recorded its first community transition in 99 days towards the end of July.

And sadly the cases are continuing to rise with the first three Covid-19 deaths announced at the time of writing.

What will teaching look like?

I have every faith in the country’s ability to combat this with the same national fervour and collective determination that succeeded before.

However, on a personal level, the prospect of another wave has called into question how physically, emotionally and mentally prepared I am to face going back.

Like many, my own mental health took a hit as the pandemic took hold, and the recovery process is going to take longer than a seven-week summer break. 

It’s particularly difficult when you don’t know what the future classroom will look like. Will it be back to online learning? Or face-to-face teaching but with strict hygiene rules in place? A blend of both?

Taking a mental break

In some ways, perhaps subconsciously at first, we have been using the holidays to prepare. 

We avoided airports with the fear of crowded places full of travellers still fresh in our minds. Instead, we hired a private driver and a car, went hiking in the tranquil Southern Central Highlands of Vietnam and treated ourselves to a beach-side bungalow on the south-east coast.

We even adopted a Vietnamese rescue dog and moved from an apartment into a house in a compound to avoid sharing a lift with 200 people each day and potential building lockdowns enforced by the military and government.

Despite the sharp increase in humidity as the height of the rainy season looms, I have tried my best to run a few kilometres each day, swim several times a week and decided to try out boxing classes for the first time.

Four futures

School-wise, this past week (after five weeks of quite gratefully doing nothing) I’ve put aside the more mundane chores of organising my folders in favour of giving the odd hour here and there to developing more creative resources and units.

I have engaged with my wonderful professional learning network of international teachers on Twitter to fuel my enthusiasm for refreshing our curriculum and text choices.

Furthermore, my school has put together a contingency plan for the four different possible learning contexts - all in school, some students in school, online learning or transitioning back to face-to-face learning - to be ready for whatever happens.

Everything we have learnt during the past few months has been documented and will continue to be adapted as we move towards an unknown future.

It won’t be easy, though.

Accept and adapt

The threat of further waves poses the unavoidable reality of a return to online teaching and restrictions on our work and social lives for the next few months at least.

However, if I was going to give some words of encouragement about how to cope with a return, it would be to remember that you’re not alone in feeling this way.

Video calls with friends and family at home, face-to-face support from colleagues in-country and even reaching out to teachers in different countries who are at various stages of dealing with the virus have all been essential strategies to remind myself I will be able to manage the challenges of the next academic year.

And if we’ve all managed to adapt to the phenomenon that was teaching in a pandemic before summer - whenever yours may be - we can almost certainly do it again.

Rebecca Markham is an English Language and Literature teacher at an international school in Vietnam. She has been teaching internationally for two years.