During our first meeting with the teachers, Hua Laoshi stood out from the rest. With her reddish hair, pale skin and high cheekbones, she looked more European than Chinese. I later found out that she was born in one of China's distant Eastern provinces. She has since then married a Beijinger and settled down in Beijing. While she retains her hometown hukou (residential) status, the hukou status of her husband grants her daughter a Beijing hukou. This invaluable status means that her daughter can attend a public Beijing school. During one of our conversations, Hua Laoshi pointed out that an influx of migrants into the Beijing public system would make it even more difficult for her children to compete for already competitive spots at good public schools. I understand her mindset: it is that of a concerned parent in China’s ever-cutthroat environment. Her 16-year old daughter attends tenth grade in a Beijing public high school, and is aiming to attend university. An increase in the number of eligible migrant students would not help her cause. I find it very interesting how openly and effortlessly Hua Laoshi acknowledged the inequality between migrants and locals. She knows that there is injustice, but like most of us, she is unsure of how to solve it. I guess she is lucky to have been able to provide a way out for her children through marriage. Over the past two weeks, I’ve come to really appreciate and respect Hua Laoshi. Not only is her English accent is one of the best I’ve heard in China, she is also very willing to learn, and open to suggestions from the volunteers. From our frequent conversations, I can tell that she is very dedicated to her students, and cares deeply about their futures. I’ve talked to the kids in my class, and many of them feel it as well. To the simple outsider, however, Hua Laoshi may seem like a strict no-nonsense teacher. Like the typical Chinese teacher, she punishes harshly and rewards lightly. If the student performs poorly on a test, she would sometimes make an example of that student for the entire lesson. Last week, after the results of the English Unit 9 test were released, she made one of the students with low scores stand up for half the lesson and lectured the class on every possible explanation of that student’s failure. She then made several students in the class stand up to offer suggestions on why that student performed poorly. I didn’t know how to feel for the girl at first. Maybe the students are used to public criticism. Maybe they expect it, and have become desensitized to it. Maybe they don’t even see it as punishment, but as a sort of correction. Although the other students tried to defend her and be courteous in their criticism, they did it with the attitude of correcting a math question. I think this mindset is crucial to surviving in the Chinese classroom. Students must learn not to take things too personally, and view every punishment as a learning experience. With any other teacher, this type of discipline can be a form of long-term damage, or even the catalyst for long-term hatred towards the teacher. With Hua Laoshi, it’s a different story. Even though she raises her voice in class, the anger dissipates when she leaves the classroom. I saw her other lighter, more motherly side when we were practicing with the kids for the English Competition. She spent a full two hours listening to the kids sing Love Story and recite the lines of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. (I know that none of the other English teachers did that for their class.) At some points she was singing along to Taylor Swift, and laughing aloud to the comical imitations of the dwarves. The kids seemed quite glad to have her there—it must have meant something, for their teacher to dedicate such time and energy for an extracurricular activity. Even I felt her excitement and passion. I was inspired. I wanted to work hard. From out of class interactions, I can easily see that Hua Laoshi has good intentions with any type of discipline she employs. She wants her students to succeed, to understand that it's in their best interest to study hard. She praises hard work, and recognizes the good in the academically weak. With most of her students, she is lenient as long as they work hard. For instance, she spent ten minutes praising the penmanship of two of her weakest students in front of the class. At one point during one of our English practise sessions, she invited one of the poorer students in our class to perform a song for us. He likes singing sentimental music, she told me. His voice was gorgeous. She later told me that because of her limited ability to pay detailed attention to all 36 students, she focuses primarily on the students who are close to passing (scores in the 40s and 50s) a certain subject. Passing is 60%. If their scores are in the 20s or 30s and works really hard, she lets them be, and places greater emphasis on their other attributes. Although strict, her mindset seems to embody what the Calligraphy teacher told us the first week here: there's good in every student, you have to look beyond academic ability. My interactions with Hua Laoshi have definitively challenged my original perspective of Chinese teachers. I thought them all as strict, efficicent robots for the often ruthless, exam-centered Chinese education system. Clearly that is not so. I look forward to spending the next two months working with Hua Laoshi. She’s been at Dandelion for seven years - I know there’s a ton I can learn from her. |