How COVID Has Affected RC in China
RC activities in my Region were affected by the coronavirus as early as the beginning of February, when they were planned to start again after the week-long Chinese New Year holiday. Two days before the Chinese New Year’s Day, the city of Wuhan in central China was ordered to be under a strict lockdown due to the rapid spread of the virus. As the situation became more and more serious in the following days, people across the country were asked to stay home and not go to any gatherings, big or small.
I felt frustrated because our plan for RC activities for the whole year would be greatly affected and the local Community leaders and I had put great effort into that plan. Fortunately, the frustration did not hold me too long. After thinking together with another RC leader, I figured out that the first thing we needed to do was offer weekly online gatherings for our leaders and teachers, which we had been doing once a month before.
GATHERINGS FOR LEADERS AND TEACHERS
Some leaders and teachers attended our first one-hour online gathering on the evening of February 6. Others attended their first gathering on February 8 in the afternoon. The weekly gatherings continued for about two months. We focused on our connections, “news and goods,” and self-appreciation. We had mini-sessions and shared thoughts about what we could do as Community leaders. I encouraged people to lead similar online gatherings (support groups) for their own Communities. Most of them tried it and enjoyed their experiences very much. For the very new Communities, another leader and I led the first gathering so the new leaders would be confident and familiar with how to lead such a gathering and able to do it by themselves.
Some people have wished the gatherings could be longer. However, many of our RCers are mothers with young children and cannot afford a longer time, so we plan for the gatherings to be no longer than an hour, even though they often end half an hour later. (We check if any people need to leave after an hour, and if so, they can leave then.)
IMPROVING OUR FUNDAMENTALS CLASS OUTLINE
Most RC teachers have a flexible schedule due to working from home or having to stay home with their children because schools and preschools are closed. So we used this opportunity to invite all the teachers (some did not come) to discuss and improve the outline for our eight-week fundamentals class. It took five weeks to finish the job, meeting for an hour once a week. Both new and more experienced teachers found it helpful. They could better understand the outline. They became much clearer about not only what and how but also why. I am pleased to have had that chance to retrain our teachers. I believe they will now be better qualified.
FAMILY WORK
Over the past twenty years, family work has been the focus for our Communities. Most people who have learned RC in the past few years are parents of young people. Being with their children twenty-four hours a day, because they have to stay home, is a big challenge. Yet it can also be an opportunity to learn online how to listen to children using special time.
I had taught my first four-week special-time class late last year, and I started our first two four-week online special-time classes in late February. Two experienced RC teachers taught them with me so they could teach their own special time classes after gaining experience. We were happy with our first try.
We continue to offer the classes but with some improvement. For the first two classes we did not mind [take into account] the children’s ages. After that, we thought it might be better to have one class for children ages three to ten and another for children ten to eighteen. We did the following classes that way, and it turned out [happened] that we were right.
The classes all have no more than six parents, so each parent can get enough attention. I think we may continue to do these online special-time classes. They can be a good beginning for Communities that don’t yet have any teachers experienced enough to do playdays and family workshops.
ONLINE FUNDAMENTALS CLASSES
Fears kept most people from social life even after the situation became rather relaxed on the mainland in late March. Also, according to some new information, the virus may not ever disappear. Therefore, people need to consider the social distance policy as being long-term. All this pushed me to discuss the situation with the leaders, and we decided to prepare to move our fundamental classes online.
We invited our most experienced teachers, and those who wanted to try online classes, to think together about how to move the classes online so they would have similar effects to those taught face-to-face. Our five one-hour meetings started on April 6 and ended on April 15.
The first online fundamentals class began on May 17 and the next one on May 27. Both of the teachers were in the planning group. Their assistants are teachers who were not in the group but would like to gain experience so they can be more confident in teaching online classes later. Now two more teachers have planned their online fundamentals classes, to take place in June.
In general, the virus seems to have changed everything. It has forced us to learn to do things in ways very different from what we’d been familiar with, so I have been kept much busier than I had expected. I am pleased with myself that I’ve survived all the challenges so far, with the support and company of Community leaders, teachers, and other RCers as well as support from our RC family worldwide.
China
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for Regional Reference Persons
(Present Time 201, October 2020)