Midterms are approaching rapidly, and with stress and expectations piling up, many students are devoting more and more of their time to studying for their language exams, with the exception of the students in the school’s Japanese courses. This year, world language midterms were canceled for all students taking Japanese as their language due to circumstances that began in late October.

The original Japanese teacher, Mrs. Noguchi, left for maternity leave on October 20th, and until December 17th, all students taking Japanese sat in their classrooms with nothing to do and nothing to learn. In the nearly two months without teachers, students used the time to study, finish assignments, talk, or in the case of the students in Japanese 2, use old Nintendo systems to play games together in class.

Mrs. Miyashita has temporarily taken over until February and teaching has begun again. Despite this, the school has chosen to cancel Japanese midterms due to the complications of those two months without teachers.

According to an email sent to parents of Japanese students on November 19, the school did make efforts to find new teachers in that time though. Since the beginning of Mrs. Noguchi’s leave, the school searched for a replacement teacher through posting the position in their personnel database, putting ads in the newspaper, posting the position to local Japanese teaching groups, contacting local universities, and even speaking with retired Japanese teachers according to a letter sent out to students. At one point the school managed to find someone interested and gave her the necessary training, but she opted out before she was supposed to begin in the middle of November.

Mr. Henry also commented, saying: “we had been searching since we knew that she was going to be going out on leave, I know for a fact it started very early in the school year, I would say September or October, and I had a conversation with Mrs. Noguchi in around October about filling the position.”

“So it looks like it was first posted September 16th, so right p;at the beginning of the school year, and we sent out an email that she’d be back Monday February the 14th, which is coming up which is good.”

Now with the class fully resumed and students learning again, the focus is shifted onto midterms. Many students in Japanese say they are relieved to not have midterms.

Japanese 1 student Syeda Bokhari said: “I feel relieved because there are no midterms for Japanese 1. It is not unfair to students taking other languages because they had their teachers and were taught all the necessary material that they needed for the midterms anyway, so they don’t have to worry about anything.” 

AP Japanese student Robbie Maisch feels similarly: “I’m kind of happy because I don’t think I would have had the information to be able to do AP level, and it’s another midterm that I don’t have to do which is nice, so yeah, I kinda like it, but it is kind of weird because an AP class not having midterms, that’s very strange.” 

Japanese 2 student Joe Ruzicka said: “I think Japanese midterms being canceled is fair since we haven’t learned that much because of having no teacher, and also because the first two months of Japanese 2 was review from Japanese 1 with very slow progress.”

In terms of students outside of Japanese, many share that sentiment.

Spanish 2 student Grace Vieira said: “I don’t think it’d be fair to them to have a midterm because their teacher wasn’t there for most of the year and barely any work got assigned.” 

Italian 2 student Nikki Chirichillo said: “I don’t think it’s unfair because the Japanese kids didn’t have a teacher for half of the year, so although I wish we all could just not have one, I understand.”

In the end, the choice to cancel Japanese midterms all came down to the administration, with Mr. Henry also saying: “We felt like if all the sudden students had to take a midterm without a teacher there would be a reduced chance of putting students in the best position of being able to take an exam, because of the gap in the transition between Mrs. Noguchi and Mrs. Miyashita, so to all the sudden expect you to take this midterm, that wouldn’t be the most prudent thing to do.”

While Japanese students will not be taking midterms, they are expected to take finals which will account for the grade of midterms as well, and Mrs. Noguchi is expected to return on February 14th.