This was an article I originally wrote for the Education Bureau during my second year in China. It was entered into a national writing contest for foreign teachers, and I received third prize. Photos of school were added later to enhance this post.
"Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire."
--William Butler Yeats
For all of us, there is much to learn. Chinese students understand this, and many attempt, in vain, to learn it all before they even become adults. As a teacher, particularly as a foreign teacher, I ask myself what knowledge I should try to leave with my students, and what will serve them most in the future. In my heart, I feel that the concrete data a lesson might contain is not always as important as the eagerness a student feels to absorb it, the interest it sparks in his mind, or the confidence it inspires when he realizes that he can, indeed, understand what I am saying for the first time.
I teach over 1,393 students. This is not a clerical error. Some pupils I see as little as once every two weeks; at most, one class I see four times a week. It is impossible to remember every student’s name, and I struggle to find ways to engage numerous individuals of varying English levels within a 40-minute time period. What’s more, I teach a class that is not tested on the college entrance exam, and therefore is not always viewed as a high priority in the short-term. Considering such circumstances, passive observers may wonder how it is possible to know if I have reached each student who is under my wing for their English tutelage, or what value there is for me when I cannot possibly get to know the majority of my pupils beyond a superficial level.
I have been fortunate enough to experience special moments when a student delivers an engaging speech, writes an exemplary essay, or shows a captivating performance. However, small moments motivate me as well, like when a student provides an answer far beyond my expectations, asks a thought-provoking question that inspires discussion, or recalls something I had assumed forgotten. Students have remembered my birthday, Chinese and American holidays, and other occasions with little cards and gifts. Yet, I notice that they often memorize happenstance remarks, like my favorite food or song, as much as they do details from their textbooks.
The latter, to me, is a window to a wider world. For many of my students, I am the first foreigner they have ever met, let alone conversed with. They are not terribly interested in formal vocabulary or grammar rules, because these they can learn from other teachers and books. They do, on the other hand, hold a curiosity about how I act and what I think. Like it or not, everything I do has the potential to be taken for typical of my countrymen, or even populations beyond my native borders. It is a delicate balance to provide both a good example and an authentic representation, simultaneously, of “American-ness.”
The world is a changing place. Knowledge is not set in stone. Facts and figures that students memorize now may be minimally useful in the future if or when perceptions of them change. Exams are a necessary evil only because we lack an alternative for objective measurement of comparative knowledge; what is truly valuable cannot be quantitatively gauged. Students need to learn how to think, how to engage in productive work with others, and how to accept or reject old and new views according to the situation at hand. If a teenager develops rapport with a foreign teacher during the high school years, the teenager will likely maintain an interest in independently learning another language as an adult – the very thing the teacher set out to instruct. If the relationship is sour, however, this inquisitiveness will quickly subside in favor of apathy or rancor.
A teacher may not always see the fruit of her labor, as the ramifications of what a student learns will often appear later in his or her life. Years afterward, a student will likely forget the word banks and grammatical structures studied in high school. He may – or may not – ever speak English freely in a natural setting. In the end, however, language is about communication. What a student will remember is how a foreign person treated him, whether or not they were able to convey their thoughts to each other, and how these interactions made him feel. These impressions are what will color his ideas about others who are different from him, and he will use these as a basis for future encounters with people of other cultures and nations.
Officially, it is my job to teach English. Life, nonetheless, is not so simple. If I can inspire in my pupils curiosity about the world, and an eagerness for new experiences, then students, far beyond their graduation day, will continue to learn far more than I will ever know.
"The greatest sign of a success for a teacher...is to be able to say, "The children are now working as if I did not exist." -- Maria Montessori
Note: I was privileged to have two highly influential teachers during my middle school and high school years. I continue to thank Odalis Manduley and Pamela Prince for all that they taught me about life – through both words and example.
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