My Proud Teacher Moment

In preparation for an inspection by the Public School Bureau officials this Monday (October 27th) students and teachers alike have been dusting, sweeping, cleaning, primping, pruning, washing, wiping, and tidying the entire school so that it is picture perfect for the inspectors. This included filling up the empty bulletin boards around the school. My contact teacher, Elli, decided, without my knowledge, to have her 5th grade students draw pictures over the weekend of what they learned in my class that week.

I had ambitiously tackled “taking care of the environment” as my lesson plan that week after I listened to several students list “rubbish” as “something you can find at the beach” during my previous lesson on different types of environments. Surprisingly the kids were really interested and, with a little translation help from Elli and a great recycling song by Jack Johnson, they got the more difficult concepts like pollution and recycling.

I’ve discovered pictures and live props are marvelous things with these younger kids. I may have shocked them a little with pictures of an oil covered duck and a deformed turtle with a plastic ring around its shell, but any time I can get a “waaaahhh” out of my students at least I know they are paying attention (n.b. waaahhh = wow). They also loved my homemade recycle can especially when I threw my iPod, my cell phone, and my camera into the recycle bucket to demonstrate the recycling of electronics. For some reason they are amazed every time I pull out some sort of electronic. It can’t be because they’ve never seen it before because electronics are everywhere here even if they are knock-offs. I think maybe it’s the fact that these things make them realize I am human even though I am a teacher and a foreigner. I had a similar experience when I showed them my suite case, a t-shirt, a pair of shorts, and my tennis shoes when I did a lesson on travel. Although my clothes received a laugh instead of a “waaahh”, and I don’t really care to know why for reasons of self-confidence.

So Elli shows up Monday afternoon with a stack of pictures the students had drawn about “taking care of the environment.” She told me that she thought I had taught a great lesson, and wanted to depict the lesson on the bulletin board for the government inspectors. I could care less about government inspectors, but I was so excited that she thought highly enough of my lesson to assign her students homework pertaining to it. I am not allowed to assign homework or give grades, so it was a real reward to see the students put so much effort into what they had learned.

I don’t know if they will retain this information or put it to good use, but at least they have seen the pictures and heard the words associated with taking care of the environment. In fact, in some ways I believe China is doing a better job than the United States in their efforts to protect the environment. Most of these changes are recent and due to intense world pressure, but the changes are visible. For example, you have to bring your own bag to the grocery store or pay extra for the plastic ones. You also have to bring your own toilet paper and napkins to public places and restaurants, and it is rare to find paper towels to dry you hands off after washing them in the bathroom. Another example is that almost all Chinese people turn off their air conditioner when they are not in their houses. One of my friends even got laughed at by her Chinese coworkers when she mentioned that she left hers running all the time. In the stairwells of most public buildings the lights do not turn on until it senses motion, and the escalators do not move until someone steps onto them. Finally, there are almost always recycle cans attached to the trash cans.

These are just a few small examples of the good things. The bad things, however, are just as noticeable if not more noticeable. There is trash everywhere! I can hardly go anywhere without seeing trash on the ground, and although there are recycle cans next to the trash cans, I think most Chinese people just throw whatever they want into both. Also, although the stores decrease the amount of plastic bags they use, the products they sell in the store are sometimes ridiculously wrapped as to use as much plastic as possible. For example, I bought a pack of hard candies near the checkout. I had to unwrap the outside layer of the tubular package, then unwrap a second layer of clear plastic, and then unwrap each candy individually. By the time I finished that pack of candy, I had enough plastic to make my own plastic bag. Another obvious pitfall to the environment is the number of cars everywhere. Every Chinese person does not own a car, thank God, but the number who do own a car is growing all the time. It’s still not as bad as the U.S., but there is potential for disaster.

I hope that disaster is avoided in the future by knowledgeable citizens who understand the impact of their actions on the environment, and I guess in a small way introducing ways to protect the environment to 600 primary school students is a start. Although, I can’t see the future, I can see that bulletin board and hope.