|
A Weekend With CAI By Muxin Li
I've perfected a morning ritual that will get me ready and out the door by 7 AM every Saturday. Every Friday night I set an alarm for 6 AM. When it goes off in the morning I just reset it to 6:30, moan about being awake so early on a weekend, and finally get up at 6:45 to get ready. I hardly notice that I'm changing out of my warm pajamas and into new clothes in our chilly, unheated apartment, because my brain decided to catch up with me later and is still in bed. I have the decency to wash my face and brush my teeth, because others should not have to suffer my morning breath. I put 5 RMB into my pocket for my breakfast, shoulder my backpack of lesson plans, and head out the door. Outside our subway station is an ever reliable cluster of breakfast snack sellers who can sense my arrival, glancing at me and silently urging me to purchase a jian bin salty pancake, a ham sandwich, an egg and lettuce bun, and would you like a warm cup of soy milk with that? Yes I would, it goes great with my breakfast that I eat in the subway for a thirty minute ride to Wudaokou station. By 7:50 I'm sitting in a beige van with sleepy eyed people nursing cups of coffee and friendly if albeit tired faces of young people who give up their Saturdays to be here, most of whom are more graceful and tolerant about being awake this early than I am. Every Saturday morning we get up from our warm beds, travel from near and far to Wudaokou station, and ride our beige van for an hour to two migrant schools where we teach basketball and interdisciplinary arts. Pengying and Shahe Shiyang Schools are two of the places where the nonprofit organization CAI holds its outreach arts education programs to young migrant children. These kids often do not have arts and sports programs in their normal schools. Through CAI, we hope to give them lessons on things they wouldn't learn inside a classroom, like cooperation, confidence, creativity, communication, and other valuable life skills.
I'm with the Shahe Shiyang school group, and as our van rolls in to our school, children wave, chat and eat their breakfasts, and form little clusters while watching us from the side. It is usually a sunny, brisk autumn day, and the chill helps wake me up. We corral our students into a classroom and begin setting up for class. Despite it being early on a Saturday, most of the children are happy to be here. It's strange to me because my childhood Saturdays were usually filled with cartoons, late mornings, and playing with my friends. Going to school was not a thing to be happy about. One student told me they were bored after our three hour classes were finished, and it made me wonder what they had to do at home if being at a school on the weekend was considered fun.
Our classes are divided into different subjects, including Mental Health, English, Art, Music, and an introduction game. Participation is necessary and we try to keep every student involved in the lesson. When Wei Ying Ying and I signed up to teach the English portion, I wasn't sure how we could keep the students interested. Our English lessons are quite short, only fifteen minutes long, and we're asked to cover as much vocabulary as possible. The first time we taught English together, it was on the day we were teaching emotions.
"Saaad," I said, holding up a flashcard with the word "sad" written on it and an emoticon of an unhappy smiley face. I was making a long face and using my best sad voice. The students repeat after me, mimicking my voice. We do this to keep things fun, and I think the children liked seeing an adult make funny noises at them. "Saa-aaa-a-a-ad," I repeated again. We do this three times per word to give them practice, while Ying Ying translated the meaning into Chinese. Then we move on to teaching sentences, having them recite a sentence again and again while playing a sit-down game. Repetition is the whole point of the process, it was their second language and they were young; we weren't able to give them anything complex like making up their own phrases.
When we have time, we include games to let them practice their newfound vocabulary. That day each student had to make a face of an emotion they felt, and ask five other people how they felt. It was difficult for many of them to make funny faces at each other. It was probably because it was our second class together, and perhaps many of the students didn't know each other. We often have students that drop out after a few classes, and still those who will drop in. The group was constantly shifting, one week we'd get 20 students and another week it'll be 15 and two of them will be new. We're told it's not our fault, often children's parents are be too busy to continue sending their kids to the schools, or families will pack up and move away without warning. It seemed like a difficult situation to grow up in, their lives weren't really that stable and it was more fun to be at a school on a Saturday morning than anywhere else they had to be.
That day as I watched the students giggle and shyly practice their English with each other, I thought about how none of those big problems really mattered here. Children are amazingly resilient, and it's one of those secrets about being a child in how you can be happy without needing to know what you were doing tomorrow or the day after. They were much more open and accepting of things they didn't know, had much more optimism towards discovering new things. While we were all here on behalf of them, on trying to prepare them for their lives ahead, I felt that somehow they were going to be okay. Perhaps the most I can do for them was show that adults aren't afraid for them.
After enough students have had their turns practicing their English emotion phrases with each other, it was time to end the lesson. I had a theory I wanted to try. There is a Japanese study that showed if you force people to smile, they usually feel better. There is also a saying that "you can cry or you can laugh," which I had always taken as a metaphor in how you can choose to approach adversity. But today I wanted to take the saying literally.
"I want you to all laugh as loud as you can!" I said to the class. Most of the students stared blankly at me, some of them glancing sidelong to each other with unsure smiles. "Come on, laugh as loud and crazy as you can! Go, 'HA HA HA!'"
I got a few snickers, there were some smiles; at least the audience didn't hate my act. I wasn't giving up, I kept at it, and I tried a bit harder. Some people were joining in, but they were doing very perfunctory "hahaha"s that you only use when you're pretending to laugh. I had to convince them to do more, to cast off all restrictions on behaviors and expressions, to make complete fools of themselves. An example needed to be made. I threw my head back, outstretched my arms, and I bellowed in my loudest, manliest voice, "HA HA HA HA!!"
I'm sure I could have starred as a megavillain in a Marvel comic with that laugh.
More giggling, and one of the students cracked a comment, "Teacher, how come you sound like a maniac?" It had to be said, and once it was said I couldn't resist it: I bent over and my real laughter poured out of me. Soon everyone had a genuine smile on their faces and many were truly laughing. I certainly felt much better, and I think they did too. English was over, and it was clear that one of their teachers likes to behave like an idiot, which I was happy to perform.
I'm sure that if I had asked them what the word "sad" meant in English next week, they will have no clue. It didn't really matter, I figured.
Read 2 Comments... >> |
CAI Blog
