WorldTeach - Hunan China Summer Volunteer Program Volunteer Stories

During freshman year of college, I took a class called "Bilingual Aesthestics," which investigated the bilingual mind and the bilingual individual in order to consider what the benefits were, if any, of bilingualism. In this class, we often discussed "defamiliarization," a term introduced by Russian Formalist critic, Victor Shklovsky. Defamiliarization refers to what an individual experiences when approaching something new and different which she or he does not fully grasp, but in a Kantian acknowledgment of the sublime, is able to appreciate the estrangement and in doing so, see aspects of a situation that someone familiarized would miss. Essentially, Shklovsky's point is that it is crucial for people to be defamiliarized from situations or else they would be numb to experiences and only live life as automatons. For example, the bilingual individual is able to appreciate different aspects of a first language by studying or speaking a second language and realizing the curiosities of both languages. The notion of defamiliarization extends into many different realms of experience.

I don't think I ever fully understood the concept of defamiliarization until coming to China with WorldTeach, where I was thrown into many unfamiliar and often difficult situations. I realize in retrospect that this opportunity to experience these situations with fresh eyes is what ultimately made them so meaningful for me. No experience illustrates better how defamiliarized I often felt in China than when I participated in a homestay at one of my student's homes in Wulingyuan.

When Collin, a student in one of my classes during the second session of camp at Wulingyuan, learned that the foreign teachers would be doing homestays at students' homes, he asked Rhonda, Claudia, Christina and me to his home immediately, and we of course accepted, not knowing at all what we were in for. I remember how in halting English, he shyly but excitedly asked us to come stay with him, and apologized prematurely for the size of his house and the economic background of his family. I remember feeling a little embarrassed during the conversation, mainly because Americans are not really accustomed to discussing and apologizing for their family's economic backgrounds. We really did not care and were just psyched that we would have the chance to see how one of our kids lived and excited by the prospect of being able to experience that lifestyle as well.

When Collin met us at the school gate the next day, he brought three friends in tow, two girls and one boy who was actually his neighbor. From day one of my time in China, I’ve been amazed by how affectionate children in China can be, and how many of them from the countryside essentially grew up together and treat each other like siblings. The bonds that these students shared were apparent to us throughout the homestay. We knew Collin lived on a farm of some sort, but I don't think we could have been prepared for just how rural and how large of a farm area we were about to visit. We took a mini-bus to the foot of a mountain and then began to hike towards his house. It turned out we were actually still a twenty minute walk and a few caves away from his house. We walked along the side of a river on a little path and ducked into a few caves. The kids, always affectionate and concerned for their foreign teachers' safety, grabbed our hands when we walked into the dark caves. We finally passed a bridge and then arrived at a small farmhouse literally in the middle of nowhere, surrounded on all sides by green. There were cornstalks and pear bushes everywhere we looked. Born and raised in New York City, it struck me then that I had never been anywhere like this before. Despite being surrounded by kids and fellow teachers, I got a sense of how peaceful it was and how alone one could feel on a farm. We walked into the house and the first thing we saw was a huge picture of Mao Zedong, in all his glory, on the wall. Collin walked into a backroom and emerged a few seconds later with baskets. Collin had said he wanted to show us what a farmer's lifestyle was, and I realized he wasn't kidding at all.

Learning how to choose which ears of corn were ripe enough to pick and which were rotted was a surreal experience as I don’t think I had ever imagined I would be schooled in such a task in China, or ever, for that matter. After filling our baskets, we returned to the house and peeled pears on his front steps, sitting and joking with the kids for a while. Then, we went to his backyard, where the neighbors had prepared some dinner for us and we all just ate together around a small card table, out in the open air. The neighbors and students wouldn’t eat until the American teachers had finished eating, which was such a strange experience because they just sat there and smiled and watched us eat and told us that we should just stab the baby potatoes rather than pick them up with chopsticks, which was pretty funny seeing as how I have used chopsticks my whole life, but to them, I was just a plain American who could not possibly know how to use chopsticks. After dinner, we gave the grandfather a thank you gift basket of fruits for having us. One of the fruits was a pineapple. I will always remember how puzzled and excited he was when we gave it to him because it turned out that he’d never seen a pineapple before. We showed him how to cut it and then he ate a piece and smiled immediately at the delicious sweetness of the fruit’s flesh. I thought it was interesting that even though we’d seen many pineapples during our time in Wulingyuan, his grandfather, living 45 minutes away in the countryside, had never seen a pineapple before, and I was glad we were able to introduce him to the fruit.

After this curious and delightful incident, we and the students watched music videos and sat on the roof talking to Collin about his family. Collin lived with only his grandfather because his parents were laborers in some distant city, and he explained that his father had built the house for his grandfather before leaving. Then, the students all taught us how to play mahjong, and finally, we headed to bed.

After breakfast the next morning, since there was no bus to take the teachers back to school in time for our Mandarin classes, one of the female students called her uncle who was a policeman to pick us up. Another thing I’ve noticed about China is how willing family members are to do anything at all to help out another family member, no matter the time or the inconvenience. It was a rather fun and hilarious experience to be sent back to Wulingyuan Middle School in a police car. After arriving back at school, I had a chance to think about the whirlwind events that had just transpired over the past day, and I realized that by throwing me into a situation I could never have imagined or expected, Collin did one of the best things anyone has ever done for me in China. I was defamiliarized to the fullest extent of the word, and as a result, I was able to reflect on my own lifestyle in America and consider what many of my students must experience and deal with on a daily basis.

For Collin and the other kids, it wasn’t strange to hike through caves and along a precarious river path to get home everyday, nor was it strange to freshly pick your dinner every night. For his grandfather, pineapples were completely unfamiliar. What was routine to them was novel for me, and this enriched my experience. I do not think now that I will ever forget the night I spent on that roof with those kids, just talking about their lives and then playing mahjong. I understand now, in the vernacular, what Shklovsky was saying: it’s important to stir things up a bit every once in a while—you’ll never know what new perspective it will give you on your own life, or at least what window it will open into another person’s life. I can only marvel at how so many unfamiliar things in China, from eating night snacks on the street to using squat toilets, have become normal and familiar as the initial joys of defamiliarization have transformed into the comfort associated with the normal and routine, though without the negative connotations that Shklovsky attached to the familiar. Throughout my time with WorldTeach, what China is to me has changed, and the homestay with Collin definitely played a large part in that change.

At the end of our first break, we decided to be adventurous and explore Chinese white water rafting. Floating down the river, we were treated to the sights of foliage hanging down sheer rock like feathery green beards; rocks dividing waterfalls into long rushing fingers streaming through the green; mist revealing and obscuring the fantastically pointed cliffs. The scene seemed timeless – until the water guns were pulled out. Men, from small boys to old grandfathers, sat in small bamboo-poled boats lining the river, waiting for the rafters, equipped with water guns. As soon as our neon orange life vests rounded the bend, our fellow boaters would whip out the meter long white and blue plastic syringes and gleefully douse us all as we floated past. After the first hour of one-sided water fights, each boat bought the guns in self defense and fell to fighting each other. Epic battles took place on that river-alliances, double-crossing, broadsided attacks… not the adventure I had looked for in "rafting," but adventure nonetheless.

At the very end of the rafting, our boat started singing 'Row Row Row Your Boat' on whim – and suddenly all the water fighting stopped. The battle cries and hysterical laughter turned into silence and the other boats listened with respect. When we finished our song, the next boat over sang one to us. It went back and forth, trading traditional Chinese songs for tuneless renditions of 'Leaving on a Jet Plane.' We ended on 'Hey Jude' – an instant hit which everyone sang together. We clapped, smiled and went on our way, bonded for a moment through water guns and the Beatles.

Other things I'm proud of from this trip:

– Spending time with my students outside of our class. I absolutely loved swimming with them in the river; I went every other day, if not every day for several stretches, and truly enjoyed having unstructured conversation. I was especially proud of my youngest students, who found the confidence to initiate basic conversation with me and hold their own. It thrilled me that they felt comfortable enough with me to hang out outside of class – a pretty scary thing, when you are just beginning a new language. We laughed a lot, and I taught the girls how to swim. Many of the students I felt closest to in Wulingyuan were not in my classes; our relationship existed at the river, and at the roller rink or food stands.

– Practicing leading conversations that would feel natural even though completely premeditated. In class, one of the worst feelings is talking just for the sake of talking; repeating sentences that have little meaning and no relevance. I worked hard to make class time have the illusion of 'English chatting time,' so the kids would feel like they just happened to be in a classroom while they were talking with me. Some days I had more success than others- the age of the kids, and the size of the class, often forced me to implement a more obvious structure to the lesson than I would have liked, but we had moments of success – the best being when we were talking about holidays, and suddenly the kids were tag teaming their sentences, trying to explain the Communist Party, or why people visit the graves of their relatives. Yes, I feigned more ignorance than was truly accurate, but it was so gratifying to see them stretching out of pre-learned pat phrases, putting together new sentences in a jumble, trying to make me understand.

It was one of our first nights at our last camp, and we were instructed to put on a “performance” about the American holidays. I was instructed to teach the students about Christmas. Having the youngest students at the camp I naturally thought to myself, “What is one song or activity that they might understand about Christmas?” Before I could begin to teach a performance, I had to educate them on Christmas.

As I strolled into the steaming hot classroom at 7:30 pm, with sweat dripping down my face, I began to teach the students about Christmas. I drew some pictures on the board, hoping that this alone would convey Christmas. I drew a house, a Christmas tree, reindeer and a sleigh, Santa and the toys, and many other Christmas-related pictures. The students starred at me, blankly, something I had become a professional at recognizing, and thought to myself, “That is it, I’m acting this out.” I blew up my cheeks, squatted a little and held out my arms creating an image of a very, very fat person (Santa). I then walked to the imaginary chimney and climbed in. I wriggled down the chimney and rolled onto the floor. Looking sweaty and disheveled, I began to walk around the class with a sack of toys thrown over my shoulder, still holding the fat man image. I asked each of the students if he/she had been good that year. If they said “yes” I gave them a toy, if the student did not answer I said, “You must have been bad, no toy for you.” The students found this very funny, and by the end every student was responding ‘yes.”

They got it! The students actually knew who Santa was, and what he was doing with the sack on his shoulder. I was thrilled. Acting like a complete fool had helped the students learn about Christmas. As I walked back to my room thinking about the success of the students a young girl student of mine stopped me. She had a sincere smile on her face and she was starring at me, in awe she said, “You were lovely,” and she was gone. I was very confused. She had just used the word, “lovely” to describe me, a sweaty teacher, imitating a fat man squeezing down a chimney. It was then that I realized that acting like a fool in my eyes, was in their eyes not a fool at all but instead a great teacher. I reflected on the many students I had had over the course of the summer and I realized that my best lessons always involved me acting, playing and laughing with the students. Maybe I was making a difference.

Zhuzhou’s Nanfang School did a good job of keeping us busy. So busy in fact, that I’ve been having such full days with little time to relax and keep for myself. From the all day activity full camp schedule to the extremely hospitable home stays, I feel so happy and light to finally have nothing to do. Sam commented on how well this summer job prepares us for real work life compared to other summer jobs where most interns are given menial work. I agree with him thoroughly. I don’t think I have worked this hard even in school. Christina Li and I both concluded that teaching is a job of entertaining. That is hard work. Impress to teach, at least with the high school level. But, I like it because it’s a challenge that I think is good for me in developing skills that will work for me in my future ambitions. Acquiring knowledge and teaching (or sharing) it in an entertaining way is always useful.

The fondest memory I have of the Nanfang school is coordinating the festival performance. The kids here are quite talented. It was easy to teach them songs and understand them when they spoke because their pronunciation and motivation is great. My class was given the task of memorizing and performing the United States Declaration of Independence. As I watched them perform that night, I thought of the time when I had to learn the same words in high school. These kids were adorable as they wore beards and acted out the name signing of our country’s “Founding Fathers.” Talking with their Chinese English teacher, she said her students learned a lot of useful information from that experience. I am glad that I had the opportunity to share this important part of American history with them.

Another fond memory I will have years after this experience is that of the students. Their mischievous confidence using phrases and slang such as “piece of cake” whenever I would give an assignment was fun to see. I also loved teaching and playing the game “darling if you love me…” in which a student would try to get the others to smile. The looks some students gave from trying not to smile were hilarious. Some of my students would fill air into their cheeks while others would break into prayer. Overall, I hope that they enjoyed their time with me as much as I enjoyed my time with them.

We had a talent show/learn-an-American-song day yesterday. These Chinese kids like their Backstreet Boys and Titanic. They were so excited about learning the Titanic. We had an hour to teach them the song. So in between the teaching we would play more upbeat music from the Eagles and Bryan Adams and Michael Jackson. During "Billy Jean", I had them all stand up, because I could feel their itch to dance. If not them, I wanted to dance. Then I started doing the twist, and they were like, "what?" looking at each other across the room. I just kept trying to do some real popular dance moves that everyone in America knows. Only one boy in the back was dancing. He was snapping his fingers from side to side on either side of his body. It was sweet. Then slowly, another girl started copying what I was doing. And then they all started following. Once I got the entire group going, I taught them the "tootsie roll," "the robocop," "the disco moves," and the "cabbage patch." The same girl who started dancing at first started leading the Macarena. That was probably the most fun I had teaching since hearing a bunch of Chinese kids screaming, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

What will I remember most from my trip to China? Tutoring Grace is one thing that pops into my mind. The girl is a genius. I met her randomly one day, I think through her friend who came to talk to me for some reason. Chinese kids tend to talk to me about very strange things:

“Jim. I must ask you,” one boy interrupted me during one conversation I was having with another kid. “Do you like the NBA?”

“Yea,” I said, wondering why this question was important enough to stop my other conversation.

“Who is the tallest player in the NBA?”

“Yao Ming.”

“The tallest player is the devil.”

“What?”

“The tallest player is the devil.”

I had no idea what he was talking about.

“No,” I said, “the tallest player is Yao Ming.”

“Yes,” he said, before running away to talk to friends. “Alright, then…” I said to myself before resuming conversation.

Another student came up to me one day: “Jim, what do you think of divorce in America?”

“I think there are too many divorces. About 50% of American marriages end in divorce,” I told him, knowing I was feeding his desire to hear me say how China was better than America.

“Yes. There are less in China,” he nodded, smiling self-assuredly at me before walking away.

So anyway, I happened to be talking to Grace’s friend when she introduced me to Grace. “Hello. Nice to meet you,” she said in a near-perfect American accent.

“You speak really well!” I told her immediately.

“Thank you,” she said, again in her near-perfect accent.

I wouldn’t let her leave me. I had to talk more with this 15-year-old with the perfect accent. I found out that she wants to take the SATs and study medicine at Columbia University. I was floored by her ambitions, yet the truly calm, self-assured tone of her voice told me she was not lost in a fantasy world. Any 15-year-old Chinese girl who can speak English as well as she can (I could speak at a normal speed with her, and use pretty much any word I wanted to and she would understand), without having been to an American or international school (she grew up in the normal Nan Fang public school system) is truly something special, as my experience dealing with possibly thousands of Chinese students up to that point had taught me. It turns Grace is the only girl in her 5,000 student school who plans to take the SATs (at least she thinks she is). She learned her English from an American English teacher she once had years ago. An older man, he would have Grace to his home for lunch every day and they would speak in English.

I can only imagine what she will be doing with herself someday in the future, practicing medicine in America as she plans on doing today. Considering that she will probably score about a 2300 on her first practice SAT (admittedly, with my help defining the words that she does not know for her as she solves the problems), I suspect she will achieve her goals. She knows more about American colleges than I do today.

As ambitious as Grace is, what I love most about her is the fact that she’s one of the most modest, calm, relaxing people to be around that I have met in China. Not a physically attractive girl, she nonetheless possesses one of the coolest and most reassuring senses of self confidence that I have seen. When I took her with me to buy flowers for the women who work at the school and who took care of me when I fell ill with a fever, Grace insisted on paying for the flowers as a gift to me for tutoring her two hours per day during my time here at Nan Fang middle school. Her best friend Shania is one of the nicest students I have met during my stay here, and Grace is truly gracious to her friends. I love spending time with her, and I love making her smile her little, calm smile every afternoon when I find a humorous way to explain the answer to an SAT question or the meaning to a new SAT vocabulary word.

Keep your glass half full – literally. I was surprised to discover that while entertaining guests, the Chinese aren't exactly moderate drinkers. It didn't take long to figure out – just keep the glass full. But also, applying that little saying was very essential to surviving my time in China. Squat toilets, broken A/C, and bugs straight from National Geographic wasn't exactly the way I envisioned my summer. I wouldn't have lasted a week if I let my lifestyle get me down. But somehow I had to deal with it, and when I took everything in stride, it wasn't bad at all.

Everything tastes better spicy. Nothing hot had passed my lips before this summer. I had possibly the wimpiest tongue in China. Why be so masochistic? How unadventurous I was then – spicy isn't torture, its just makes things a bit more interesting. This trip has been about trying ridiculous things, not because they're even remotely fun, but because they're there and I can. It made everything so much more memorable, and that in itself is fun.

When somebody asks if you can dance, think twice before you say "yes." Chances are, you'll end up trying to conga with one of your students, in front of the entire class. As much as my students hated display of any kind, they also loved forcing each other into fairly awkward public performances. However, watching these kids leave their comfort zone, being able to have lots of romping fun, was one of the things I loved most.

Don't sweat the small stuff. Okay. It’s impossible to not be sweating in China. But a lot of things happen when you're teaching that leave you with an uneasy feeling. Someone didn't know what "happy" meant, and another spent the lesson collecting pencil shreddings. It’s frustrating to come thousands of miles from home and not know how or if you're even making a difference. But if you let this stuff bother you, you'll never see the light. Instead, focus on what teaching methods work, and do more of it. Out of the 120 kids and 116 lessons I taught this summer, (oh, I've counted), I know something clicked for someone. Their enthusiasm in class makes the distance, the hard work, and even all the bugs most definitely worth it.

I’m going to miss these kids so much – especially the Nanfang kids. I can’t really pinpoint why or how or what makes me feel such a palpable connection. I’m ashamed to say that I still don’t know everyone’s name despite having known them for two weeks now, but even so, I love every one of them (or almost :-P). Every kid is so different, so individual in personality. They may have grown up in China, a world away from my own childhood and upbringing, but not so deep down, they are every thirteen year old middle school student the world over.

WorldTeach has shown me that teaching primary and secondary school students is not my calling in life. Teaching is too much like performing. I’ve never been one for public speaking, for cavorting in front of people in an effort to crack a smile or a laugh, but here, I have done that and more. Without a common language to communicate in, our language was hand gestures, bizarre facial expressions, unintelligible pictures on the blackboard, running, dancing, proposing, interviewing – well, that and those handy little electronic dictionaries that every other student owns.

Teaching has definitely been an experience that’s stretched my abilities (particularly my acting and non-verbal expression skills, though I’m afraid they’re still pretty miserable; I was the kid in middle school that didn’t get an A in drama class because I was so hopeless :-P). From the moment I walk into the classroom until the whistle blows signaling the end of class, I have to be in a different mode – teaching/acting/performing mode if you will. There’s no time to sit back and relax or let my guard down for a moment – it’s a constant push to hold their attention and entertain them.

In one of my classes here, at every free moment, Mr. Hou (the Chinese teacher) would call out, “Free talk with the foreign teacher!” and I would subsequently get mobbed by the class. They would quiz me on every topic imaginable – from Taiwan to the Backstreet Boys. After discovering that I was a biochemistry major, one student asked me to write American chemical equations on the board – I tried to explain that American and Chinese chemical equations were probably pretty similar (perhaps even identical!), but he would not be fazed. :-P

Our teaching group has one class of kids that we call the “rowdy class,” and I happen to have them after lunch everyday when they least want to be in class. The boys there are so goofy and so cute. One student Mike follows everything he ever says in class with “Xiao Yi Si” (no big deal) in that characteristic lilting Zhuzhou accent, accompanied by an arms-out shrug and facial expression that screams, “Yeah, you know I’m good…” J Of course, he used the same expression after he boosted himself up on the doorframe and crawled in the tiny window above the door to open the door for us when we were locked out one day after lunch – in which case, it was totally warranted.

That class also a kid named Leo, the epitome of the cool middle school kid. He’s got the stylishly disheveled hair and braces (because those are cool in middle school J), and he always sits in the back corner of the classroom. When we do activities in class, I always explain the directions to the entire class first and then walk around the room to make sure everyone understands what to do. As soon as I approach his little corner, before I can say a word, he rushes to assure me, “I know, I know.” On the day I taught describing people and family members, Leo informed me that he had a “beautiful mother and handsome father,” and as a result, “me – handsome boy.”

The children in China make me feel like a celebrity! At first I did not really feel like a celebrity since I am an Asian American, but through time I did.

When our group of seventeen diverse looking people traveled together, I felt like a rejected celebrity in China. We were all sitting on benches at the train station waiting for our train to come. In a row there were Jim, Erica, me, and Peggy. They were all blonde except for me. Then, a little kid decided to walk around and take pictures. He went down our row, took a snapshot of Jim, a snapshot of Erica, totally skipped me, and then took a snapshot of Peggy. I thought it was funny and felt rejected at the same time. At that point, I felt offended because I was still an American despite the black hair and I felt like I was just as interesting as the blonde haired people. Later through time, after working at the camps, my view totally changed.

During our time here, we said good-bye to three groups of students. The last two days of camp was always chaotic. Each teacher had a challenge saying good-by to their own students, but despite that we all had to deal like being a celebrity. It was not unusual to have students we did not know run into our trail on the way to your destination and ask for an autograph and email. After awhile it kind of became annoying because it was a delay on what we had to do. I remember many times being stopped on my way to class because students I did not know wanted me to sign their books. There were plenty of times I felt bad for telling them I just could not sign it because I had to go. At other times, I would see a teacher with a crowd of students with notebooks waiting for signatures, and totally went the other way so I would not get bombarded. I remember wondering why they wanted my email because they do not even know me. What can the possibly say? That was when I knew how celebrity felt and at times it was not fun.

Although there were times where I felt a little annoyed, I later realized that this might be one of the rare occasions these students would be able to meet Americans. Although, we might not think it is very special, it is very special to the students. That is why making them happy and teaching them as much ask we can for the short time we are here is very important. Plus, it is very rare for us to be treated this way back in the States and we should be grateful for it.

After an early day on the Yangtze, I was ready to get on the bus to Wuhan and take a nice four-hour nap. I sat down, took out my iPod, and glanced at the little box of crackers that was given to every passenger. I looked around, uncertain as to whether I should open it and eat one, or discreetly put it in my bag. My question was answered, however, when the man next to me handed me his box and said in Chinese, “Here, I have eaten many of these!”

This sentence was the first in a four-hour conversation—in Chinese. It started off with the usual: I explained that I am from the United States and would be teaching in Wulingyuan and Zhuzhou; I have studied Chinese for three years; this is my second trip to China; I am twenty-one years old. It turned out that my new friend was twenty-six years old, graduated from college in Wuhan, and worked for a company that analyzes “blood gas.” I looked at his business card, and he proceeded to tell me about his name and family. He then sheepishly revealed that he was the second child, and that his family had to pay 300 yuan as punishment in 1980.

As the bus ride continued, we discussed sports, movies, and music. He was fascinated with my iPod (and very fond of James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful”) and shocked to discover how much it costs to buy one. We then compared American and Chinese credit cards and money, as well as annual salaries, house prices, and car prices. After taking out some quarters, he asked how much each was worth. In the end, we exchanged six quarters for 10 yuan.

If I were at home in America, the previous discussion about salary and prices would have been exceedingly uncomfortable. However, when I am in China, it is an appropriate and interesting conversation.

When in the United States, I will ask a Chinese friend how much her eye-catching purple pants cost, and will not hesitate to give cashiers at the Roxbury, New Jersey Chinese supermarket my home phone number. I also find myself going to the store and saying, “Hey, I’m hungry; how about an ice cream?” (or soda, or cookies, or coffee). The only thing I don’t realize is that I am no longer in China and that things really are a little bit different.