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Most of the friends I have here are related to schools. They are either my co-workers or my students’ parents. This afternoon, I had lunch with a friend who has been a parent volunteer at my school for 12 years. Her oldest and youngest sons were taught by me when they were in grade 1, 2 and 3. Her youngest son finally finished the grade 5 this year, which means that she will no longer be around at my school. It is very sad to lose these parent volunteers. Fortunately, I have made friends with many of these parents so we still can go out once a while for social gatherings.
Shortly after I got home this afternoon, I got a phone call from another parent whom I met through Chinese school. I taught his daughter in my Mandarin class twelve years ago when their family first landed in Canada from England. They were originally from Beijing, China. Over the years, I have kept in touch with most of my students and their families from the Chinese School. His daughter was one of the younger ones in the class. While many of my Chinese students just graduated this year from universities, she still has one more year to go. She is determined to follow her parents’ footsteps to study health science (nutrition). The parent told me that I had made an impact on his daughter because she always talks about me and I am the only teacher that she would visit whenever she comes to town.
I really appreciate the compliments from this parent. Our conversation brought back the memories of my days of teaching in my Mandarin class at the Chinese School. It was not an easy task to teach at a small Chinese School in a suburban city like mine. I remember I had about 20 students ranged from age five to age thirteen (kindergarten to Grade 8) in the one and only Chinese Mandarin class in town. My students all came with different language abilities depending on the families. Some of them were born here to parents from Hong Kong, so Cantonese would be the family language. Some of them were from China or Taiwan and had extensive conversing and listening abilities. Others were either born here with no Chinese cultural experiences at all or Canadian kids who just wanted to learn the language. It was not easy to teach a group of students with multi-levels and multi-ages. I simply had to take it like teaching ESL students with different abilities and cultural backgrounds.
I remember that I taught traditional Chinese characters to all the students regardless where they came from. After each instruction on writing strokes, I would also show them how the simplified character would look like. I always told my students that they needed to know the origin and progression of the character formation. If they know the traditional characters, it would be easy for them to recognize their simplified formation. It was my belief that I had to do everything possible to show them both ways of the character formation. It was not that difficult for them to learn since all of them were really smart. The difficult task was really how to make the learning interesting and fun for those students.
My students, as well as many Chinese kids overseas, lacked motivation to learn the language. I couldn’t blame my students for not showing motivation because they were learning a language they didn’t not have opportunities to use or practice outside the classroom. Some of their parents don’t speak the language either. I did try my best to make each and every lesson fun and interesting. I had different activities and stories all the time in hope that they at least absorbed just a tiny bit of Chinese language and culture from each lesson.
The debate at the time was about the pronunciation symbols. The teacher before me was from Malaysia and taught the traditional phonetic symbols (the one practiced in Taiwan) to the students. When I took over, I realized that for most the students, who had no prior immersion experience in Chinese and whose parents had no knowledge of the phonetic system, it would be extremely difficult for them to learn the traditional sounding system. So, I decided to convert the sounding system to Pin-Yin, which is a Romanized-alphabetic phonetics system from China. The only reason I did not use the Yale sounding system was because many of my students were from China. It made sense to me to pick something that they had already known rather than teaching another new system. (Even though, from linguistic point of view, I often question the reason for using “q” for the sound of “tsi” and “x” for the sound of “si” in the Pin-Yin system. Anyway, I would leave that debate to the linguists.)
I know it is always controversial when it comes to the written language and political stand points at oversea Chinese Schools; especially, at that time we were facing the pressure of 1997 when China was ready to take over Hong Kong. Many people from Hong Kong rushed to immigrate to Canada. I came from Taiwan, the Republic of China, and I know I have a very strong political view of my own. Many of my students’ parents were from Hong Kong and China, but I had to maintain that the school is no place for politics. As a professional, if I want to have a very cooperative group of parents who are willing to hand over their children to me, my focus has to be on education only rather than politics. I was the person in charge in my class, so I had to make it very clear to all parents about my philosophy of Chinese language development. Basically, I just wanted my students to learn in an enriched language environment that was free of political bias from any partisan. I had meetings with parents before hand to explain to them about my philosophy for the class. They were quite agreeable. (I just assumed they were because no one made any complaint afterwards.) I was really relieved to know that all parents could agree to leave that kind of hassle outside the classroom.
The only issue I had with some parents was when we received free textbooks from the Chinese Cultural Centre in Toronto. Some parents had concerns about using those textbooks from Taiwan. If the Chinese embassy at the time offered free textbooks to our school, I would have no problem of accepting them either. (To be honest, I don’t really care where the textbooks came from as long as the contents are appropriate with an educational value.) In a democratic society, taxpayer parents are the bosses. So, I had to communicate with them to come to an agreement on the textbooks. Anyway, after checking over the textbooks, they agreed to let the children continue using the textbooks. That was a relief.
Years later, I don’t know if all of my students still remember what they learned in my class over those three years. Once a while, when parents tell me about what they think of me as a teacher or when my students have advanced themselves to another level, I would smile and tell myself that at least I once contributed a little part to that child’s education. It is rewarding to be a teacher!
Shortly after I got home this afternoon, I got a phone call from another parent whom I met through Chinese school. I taught his daughter in my Mandarin class twelve years ago when their family first landed in Canada from England. They were originally from Beijing, China. Over the years, I have kept in touch with most of my students and their families from the Chinese School. His daughter was one of the younger ones in the class. While many of my Chinese students just graduated this year from universities, she still has one more year to go. She is determined to follow her parents’ footsteps to study health science (nutrition). The parent told me that I had made an impact on his daughter because she always talks about me and I am the only teacher that she would visit whenever she comes to town.
I really appreciate the compliments from this parent. Our conversation brought back the memories of my days of teaching in my Mandarin class at the Chinese School. It was not an easy task to teach at a small Chinese School in a suburban city like mine. I remember I had about 20 students ranged from age five to age thirteen (kindergarten to Grade 8) in the one and only Chinese Mandarin class in town. My students all came with different language abilities depending on the families. Some of them were born here to parents from Hong Kong, so Cantonese would be the family language. Some of them were from China or Taiwan and had extensive conversing and listening abilities. Others were either born here with no Chinese cultural experiences at all or Canadian kids who just wanted to learn the language. It was not easy to teach a group of students with multi-levels and multi-ages. I simply had to take it like teaching ESL students with different abilities and cultural backgrounds.
I remember that I taught traditional Chinese characters to all the students regardless where they came from. After each instruction on writing strokes, I would also show them how the simplified character would look like. I always told my students that they needed to know the origin and progression of the character formation. If they know the traditional characters, it would be easy for them to recognize their simplified formation. It was my belief that I had to do everything possible to show them both ways of the character formation. It was not that difficult for them to learn since all of them were really smart. The difficult task was really how to make the learning interesting and fun for those students.
My students, as well as many Chinese kids overseas, lacked motivation to learn the language. I couldn’t blame my students for not showing motivation because they were learning a language they didn’t not have opportunities to use or practice outside the classroom. Some of their parents don’t speak the language either. I did try my best to make each and every lesson fun and interesting. I had different activities and stories all the time in hope that they at least absorbed just a tiny bit of Chinese language and culture from each lesson.
The debate at the time was about the pronunciation symbols. The teacher before me was from Malaysia and taught the traditional phonetic symbols (the one practiced in Taiwan) to the students. When I took over, I realized that for most the students, who had no prior immersion experience in Chinese and whose parents had no knowledge of the phonetic system, it would be extremely difficult for them to learn the traditional sounding system. So, I decided to convert the sounding system to Pin-Yin, which is a Romanized-alphabetic phonetics system from China. The only reason I did not use the Yale sounding system was because many of my students were from China. It made sense to me to pick something that they had already known rather than teaching another new system. (Even though, from linguistic point of view, I often question the reason for using “q” for the sound of “tsi” and “x” for the sound of “si” in the Pin-Yin system. Anyway, I would leave that debate to the linguists.)
I know it is always controversial when it comes to the written language and political stand points at oversea Chinese Schools; especially, at that time we were facing the pressure of 1997 when China was ready to take over Hong Kong. Many people from Hong Kong rushed to immigrate to Canada. I came from Taiwan, the Republic of China, and I know I have a very strong political view of my own. Many of my students’ parents were from Hong Kong and China, but I had to maintain that the school is no place for politics. As a professional, if I want to have a very cooperative group of parents who are willing to hand over their children to me, my focus has to be on education only rather than politics. I was the person in charge in my class, so I had to make it very clear to all parents about my philosophy of Chinese language development. Basically, I just wanted my students to learn in an enriched language environment that was free of political bias from any partisan. I had meetings with parents before hand to explain to them about my philosophy for the class. They were quite agreeable. (I just assumed they were because no one made any complaint afterwards.) I was really relieved to know that all parents could agree to leave that kind of hassle outside the classroom.
The only issue I had with some parents was when we received free textbooks from the Chinese Cultural Centre in Toronto. Some parents had concerns about using those textbooks from Taiwan. If the Chinese embassy at the time offered free textbooks to our school, I would have no problem of accepting them either. (To be honest, I don’t really care where the textbooks came from as long as the contents are appropriate with an educational value.) In a democratic society, taxpayer parents are the bosses. So, I had to communicate with them to come to an agreement on the textbooks. Anyway, after checking over the textbooks, they agreed to let the children continue using the textbooks. That was a relief.
Years later, I don’t know if all of my students still remember what they learned in my class over those three years. Once a while, when parents tell me about what they think of me as a teacher or when my students have advanced themselves to another level, I would smile and tell myself that at least I once contributed a little part to that child’s education. It is rewarding to be a teacher!
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