May 5, 2010. Photos from Minhoo.
A journalist from China’s foremost English Newspaper. An auditor from ‘big four’ accounting firm. An intelligent software programer. A trilingual translator and social enterprise entrepreneur. A senior manager of corporate culture. A talented textile engineer. None has exactly overlapping areas over than the district they live and work at. And it was the spirit of volunteerism and sense of duty of social responsibility that brought this group of energetic young people to PTE.
Right after the Spring Festival, the 10 week long Teacher Training Program started at PTE’s rented conference room one afternoon every week. With extensive reading materials and intensive preparation at home, in the 3 hour training session, every future teacher has to take turns to stand in front of the rest to experience the humiliation of making mistakes, to overcome the stage fright and sufferings from embarrassing moments, and finally to enjoy the feeling of being a successful teacher capable of handling different subjects and audience.
It was one thing to learn from books/training camps; it was completely, well, a disaster to step into a migrant school classroom the first time thinking it couldn’t be very different from the rehearsals and too ‘bad’ an experience. For Wang Ying and a couple other volunteer teachers, they knew better to take the teaching with the imagined ease any longer after the first encounter. After that 40min session, they would still stubbornly praise the kids for their ’smartness and enthusiasm’. But the coarse, even slightly swollen throats gave out the true message that these children have to be tamed before they would listen and actually learn anything in class.
In the following weeks, volunteer teachers and PTE staffers would redesign classes
and try different methods to grab their attentions and teach them how to effectively washing hands or what are the three transmission methods for HIV before losing them to each other’s shouting competition. From 5 students to over 20, each week, we are catching more students and helping them to change wrong notions about bacteria and disease or knowingly rectifying a bad hobby.
With real experience from classrooms and training received in workshops, our volunteer teachers would turn to be the toughest or even the best for the most often neglected subject that is Health education among chinese schools.