Guan Ai Celebrates Teachers’ Day
Wednesday, September 10th marked China’s 24th annual Teachers’ Day celebration. The day is set aside each year for students to show affection and gratitude for their teachers. At Guan Ai Primary School, the teachers were given the afternoon off to enjoy some much-needed rest and relaxation. During this time, RCEF staff members worked with students to prepare celebrations for when their teachers returned.
Sara Lam and I worked with the 6th grade class to put their celebration together for Yao Laoshi and Guo Laoshi. We prepared an English song to teach them. I brought my guitar and Sara wrote the lyrics on the board to teach the students. They quickly learned the lyrics and melody so we led a brainstorm session to come up with other gifts and performances to prepare for the afternoon. The majority of the students decided to make sculptures and several groups prepared songs to sing. One eccentric student even decided to spend part of his afternoon conducting various science experiments with local insects to present his findings during the celebration.
When the teachers finally returned around 7pm, the students presented their gifts and took turns performing. In addition to the group performances, several boys decided to sing solo songs for their teachers. I was pleasantly surprised. As an American educator, I can never imagine my students in South Texas volunteering to sing a song for me in front of their classmates.
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Wei Ji Ma says:
Added on September 17th, 2008 at %1:%Sep %pYou write “As an American educator, I can never imagine my students in South Texas volunteering to sing a song for me in front of their classmates.” This is an interesting observation (and the same would hold for Holland, where I grew up). Western children would be ridiculed when they would do such things. What do you think is different in Chinese children or in Chinese culture?
Kiel Harell (blog author) says:
Added on September 17th, 2008 at %1:%Sep %pI haven’t figured out what makes these students so much different from my former students yet. I don’t remember any kids singing in their regular classes individually during my time as a teacher or my time as a student in the U.S. I was in a choir class in middle school and even then kids would freak out if they had to sing in a small group, let alone a solo performance.
The kids here seem to like school. I think that plays into it some.
Steven Liu (blog author) says:
Added on September 18th, 2008 at %1:%Sep %pIt’s the magic ingredient: love!
All kidding aside though (I’m not saying there ISN’T love here), I think Chinese people in general are a lot less reserved about performing (singing, dancing) than kids in the west might be. I remember during SVP06 that Nancy King made a similar comment about how incredibly willing the guys in Student Volunteers for Rural Support (SVRS) were to dance (CHANG-chang, chi-CHANG-chang!).
I just think that singing and dancing (and even doing so badly) are activities that will make you a social leper here, unlike back home. I personally wouldn’t dare dance in London. Because I’d probably get stabbed by some moody teenager…
Wei Ji Ma (blog author) says:
Added on September 18th, 2008 at %1:%Sep %pAh, interesting! Yes, the SVRS students were very spontaneous. So what makes Chinese people less reserved about singing and dancing? Are they more tolerant of differences, or does it have to do with a greater appreciation of immaterial things? Or is being nice to and supportive of each other more of a societal value? I also noticed that most mainland Chinese are simply unable to be sarcastic, maybe that is related.
Sara Lam (blog author) says:
Added on September 19th, 2008 at %1:%Sep %pThere are probably different factors that contribute to this, but I think one major reason is that Chinese kids care less about what their peers think about them. There is still peer pressure here, but a lot of kids are more concerned about their teachers’ opinions and parents’ opinions than their classmates’ opinions of them. Whereas in the US and to a lesser extent in HK, I think kids are extremely preoccupied with their reputation and popularity, especially in the upper elementary grades and up.