HUBEI conference and summer camp !

Ok, unfortunately this hostel computer in Bangkok is not allowing me to add pictures. Maybe I'll try again in a second, but if it doesn't go through, you'll just have to read the book and use your imagination!


We arrived to Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province in central China, on the 23rd of July. The next day we would participate in another four-day education conference hosted by the American NGO, Education and Science Society (ESS), and make the same presentations to rural educators, principles, and members of the Hubei Education Bureau. I felt much more comfortable with my speech and powerpoint after having survived the first take in Haikou, so I was excited (and also relieved) to be presenting on the 3rd day of the conference.

Four of the ESS members that also came to participate in the conference were from Washington State and spoke nothing more than “thank you” and “one bottle of beer” in Chinese. Therefore, all the ACC FS students in my program were expected to serve as their translators at least once. On the first day of the conference, I was assigned to be the translator of an elementary school educator who had over 20 years of experience teaching in Seattle.

A picture of the four educators from the Washington.

The opening remarks of the conference were fairly easy to translate to him, mostly because everyone was just saying the same thing over and over again: “We are so honored to have this opportunity blah blah blah, we would like to thank blah blah blah, China has modernized so quickly and improved so much but can still get better blah blah blah.” This is my first experience translating on the spot, however, so it was tough getting used to the Need For Speed. I never realized how hard it can be to explain exactly what is being said in another language—very frustrating because I felt like I understood about 98%, but then I found I couldn’t share that information! Haha, it was a challenge, but very interesting.

After the opening remarks were made, a journalist tapped me on the shoulder asking if she could ask the “foreigner teacher” some questions and have me translate for her. I couldn’t really say no, so I did my best to help the journalist understand how American elementary schoolers are evaluated by teachers, the curriculum requirements and accompanying standardized tests, and teachers’ methods of disciplining children in the classroom. This was a crazy experience because both the journalist and the American teacher were looking at me so intently, even when I wasn’t speaking a language they understood. I sweat a lot, but I –hope- I did a fair job! Either way, as the middle man, my name wasn’t taken down so I’m off the hook right?

The next speaker was a very famous neuroscience/psychology professor from Taiwan, Professor Hong Lan. She was to be the main focus of this conference, providing insight into the way the mind works and effective ways of fostering healthy learning environments for children. In total she gave 5 different talks, topics ranging from sleep/dreams to language acquisition to male-female brain-size differences. The speech that I was forced to translate was about understanding the world from a child’s perspective and the importance of encouraging children to explain their answers, rather than scolding them if they do not answer correctly or ideally, etc. Translating this speech was reallllly rough because not only did this professor speak very quickly, she also had a slight Taiwanese accent and her powerpoint used all traditional characters, many of which I could not identify. When she started talking about different regions of the brain and the showing slides of different brain scans, I had to apologize to my American teacher because I had no better idea than he had.


In Hubei many of the Chinese participants in the conference were very excited to interact with us American students and took every opportunity they could for “cultural exchange.” For example, after the first night of our presentations (the topics that day were The Importance of Art/Pictures in the Classroom, Supplementary Arts Education in America, Health Education in American Public Schools, and How Teachers Use Games to Educate), one Chinese principal asked the four students who had just presented, “So, what’s your opinion on the American War for Oil?” Someone also asked, “Are there a lot of gay people in America? How are they received?” So, although totally unrelated to education or the powerpoints that we students had spent so much time preparing, this experience showed the curiosity and interest of many of the Chinese participants. Of course, we are hardly qualified to represent the views of all Americans (especially in our clumsy Chinese), so some of my classmates were frustrated that the topics strayed as they did. Personally I think it was a good and interesting opportunity for everyone.

Huijun and Bingbing answering questions written by the audience after they had finished presenting.

My presentation this time went quite well—no bug swallowing or anything. I think I spoke a little faster and didn’t sound quite as nervous. Two people also told me that it was a suiting and interesting topic for Chinese education. In addition to this, several other questions about American education system and teaching styles were asked, for example, “Do American schools include ‘Patriotism’ or ‘Morality’ classes?” The guy that asked this question actually found me after we had finished the entire session and asked for my email. He wanted to discuss with me the situation in Tibet and American understandings of Mao Zedong and modern China. Pretty awesome opportunity, I think!

Here are some pictures from our presentation session:


Another question posed was, “Many Chinese students currently lack the ability complete tasks by themselves and always need the help and/or approval of teachers. Can you give any suggestions as to ways that teachers can encourage students to develop this ability?” This was kind of odd for us to answer, given that we are not teachers, and even our 3 day experience teaching at a summer camp in Lingao couldn’t really shed much insight. We did our best though—I said that fundamentally this issue is related to students’ self-esteem, because if they are confident in their own answers and other abilities, they won’t feel the need to seek ask the teacher as many questions. My suggestion was to always encourage kids by saying things like “great!” or “fantastic,” because such comments would always elicit a huge smile from the kids in Lingao, and sometimes they would even whisper to each other, “Teacher just said we are fantastic!”

After the conference ended, we went to Xiaochang, an impoverished and relatively new county about an hour and a half from Wuhan. We had another 3 day summer camp, teaching the same classes (Geography and Art for me) to 5th and 6th graders. The kids in Xiaochang were interesting, but unfortunately, when compared with Lingao, less surprised and enthused about some of my activities. I was also somewhat startled when, in 5th grade class 4, a student’s cell phone went off and he excused himself to talk with whoever it was. Especially in Art class, I would offer to give the students some markers/colored pencils that I had bought in Beijing, but the kids would say, “Oh, um, well, I have my own, thanks.” In geography class, there were also some big time Wiz Kids, who knew where everything was on the Chinese AND American map; when I asked them how they were so smart, they said, “We have our own maps at home.”

Some of the students were really creative though, and really got excited about presenting their completed maps to their classmates. For example, one group who was presenting about tourist attraction in Hubei really took on the role of a tourguide, offering supplementary information and really selling the locations! Also, quite a few kids really got into being ‘meteorologists’ and telling us the weather of some of the major cities in Hubei.

Once again, though, there was always the bad occasional bad class. Always seemed to happen in Art for some reason… the creative energies that I was trying to unleash were just too much sometimes, I guess, hahah. One class in particular, when playing the “art pass” game, turned into a big fight. The gender boundaries are pretty divided in Xiaochang, and the boys and girls are rarely willing to work together or even sit together. So when the activity started, all the girls were drawing pretty young ladies wearing dresses and big houses with trees and birdies… but then five minutes later when the piece of art arrived to the guys, one student thought it would be funny to draw poop all over the house and trees, and even made it look as if the little princess had pooped her dress. Of course, once this happened the idea spread like wildfire and suddenly I had seven 11 year old boys drawing large piles of shit everywhere. Soon enough a girl stood up and ripped her original art piece out of the hands of her classmate and started hitting him over the head and everyone started screaming. I put a quick end to it by telling them 如果你们会是这样子的，你们就可以离开！我没想到你们这么缺乏合作的精神！把所有的画画还给老师！ “If you’re going to be like this, then just leave! I had no idea you guys lacked such an ability to work together! Give all the art pieces back to me!” At that point we still had 15 minutes left of class because the activity was cut short, so I had to think quickly about what we could do. Then I remembered a favorite game from elementary school, Heads Up 7 Up. Luckily they understood the directions that I spat out without thinking, and they had a fun time playing that for the last couple minutes before the bell.

The students all gave us lots of gifts and held a final performance for us before we left their county. It was pretty wild—lots of crazy, but well-rehearsed, dancing performances.



Well, those are some of the most memorable experiences with the ACC teaching class and giving the large presentation. After we finished the 2nd day camp, we went to the 3 gorges dam and Mulan mountain lake (yes, Mulan like the Disney movie)! Honestly though, both of those places weren’t all that interesting, and I’ve already written a novel here.

I arrived to Thailand yesterday, which has been really fascinating so far. I will make a post soon about some of my experiences here before going over to Malaysia next week!