One of the strangest things about living in China is hearing about American domestic news. The time difference is such that I find out about an event as soon as I wake up, but am unable to get more information throughout the late morning and afternoon, since it is late evening/very early morning EST and reporters are done for the day. I counted down the minutes at school until I could rush home and check to see what areas of the east coast were devastated by Hurricane Sandy, since my internet at school wasn't working. Sophie and I refreshed and refreshed and refreshed current events websites waiting for the election results during our lunch break. The bombings in Boston were no different.
The night before our class, (so the morning of the Boston marathon) Sophie and I were wracking our brains, wondering what we should do with our seniors this week. Our lesson planning time has become shorter and shorter as we've become better teachers, or perhaps as we've gotten more apathetic (I choose the former.) Our friend Liz was waiting to hang out with us after we were done. We had started a few weeks ago on the topic of "cities." First, we did the history and music of NYC (thanks to Sinatra and Jay-Z, for making guest appearances.) Then we asked them to tell us about the pros and cons of living in Nanjing. Later, we asked them to create a perfect city.
"I taught them the word utopia last week, what if we did something with that?" I offered haphazardly. No bad ideas in brainstorming.
"Too hard," said Sophie. "We did perfect city, what about perfect world?"
"We could play them Imagine by John Lennon," I suggested; our younger kids were learning "Yellow Submarine."
"They can discuss what is wrong with the world and how to improve it." said Sophie. Thus, our lesson was born.
The next morning, I read about the bombs. I felt numb. I have family and friends in Boston. I've thought about living in Boston. I have such happy memories there. What could have possibly happened? But I had no time to research, as class was about to start.
The class went over pretty well. China has different laws and therefore different conceptions about violence: no ordinary citizens own guns or bomb making equipment (legally.) There are issues with knife violence, but Chinese people simply don't worry about terrorism in the same way Americans do, for plenty of reasons that are both related and unrelated to gun control. But hearing my students realize on their own that a world in which weapons were banned, a world in which starving children had enough food to eat, and a world in which discrimination (I had to teach them this word) ceased to exist was a world we could work together to create, was really uplifting.
I had my entire class sing "Imagine" that day. Hearing them sing made me feel more at ease. The other Chinese English teachers said that the students rarely have opportunities to discuss the current world in which we live. The teachers asked for our lesson plan, so that they could repeat the lesson in future years. Not only was that a huge compliment, but I hope they really do continue to teach current events. I never realized that something so vital to my education was not integrated into the Chinese system. I really do hope the teachers use this lesson next year, because the only way to improve the world is to first acknowledge that there are problems that need fixing.
No comments:
Post a Comment