Such a group of children
The children here are the most exposed to the volunteer teaching career, and when I first came here, I thought it must be a group of cute and studious children, so I was full of expectations for the supposedly difficult volunteer teaching life. But over time, I got along and found that my understanding of children was too one-sided, they were a group of colorful children.
Competent
Most of the families in the mountains have many children, each family basically has three or four children, and there are six or seven or eight families in many families. Compared with the intensive cultivation of children in the city, it is good that children in the mountains can eat enough and wear warmly. This semester, many parents of children in the fifth grade have gone out to work, and several children are alone at home with their young siblings to school, walking for more than an hour every day to school, cooking and feeding chickens for themselves and their younger siblings when they come home from school, washing clothes on weekends, and doing some simple farm work, such as planting potatoes and planting corn.
On the weekends, when I visited a village farther away here, no children were at home, the older children were planting potatoes and digging the ground, and the younger children were herding cattle and plowing. ... When I looked at their thin shoulders carrying a basket full of turnips and large bundles of firewood, it was false to say that I did not admire them. Once in class, when it came to making sentences, I asked the first-graders, "What are you going to do?" The answer received: "I will do the laundry." "I can cook." "I'll feed the pigs." "I grow potatoes." ...... At that moment, I really felt: this is a group of very capable children!
Musicality
Life is hard, but you still have to go on with a smile. Every day, the small campus is full of their laughter and laughter, even if the previous class was criticized and cried by the teacher, but the next class is still full of smiles to meet the class. Once, the study situation in the class was particularly bad during that time, and I couldn't help but criticize them, and the words were a little heavy, but I saw that they were still laughing and giggling, and they were even more angry. A child said to me: "Teacher Chen, we will change, but happiness is a day, unhappiness is also a day, why not be happy?" "Yeah, it's simple, and we know it, but they're the only ones who can do it." The stories that happen to them at a young age are no less than those of us adults, and we are always immersed in the grief of the past and can't extricate ourselves, really inferior to them.
Export into "dirty"
If you think that the children here are all kind, lovely, and capable, you are wrong. They are often exported as "dirty". Not for a certain person or deliberately saying those dirty words, but the current environment and some influence of the Internet, most children do not know what those words mean, see on the Internet to feel novel, learn to say everywhere. There are also adults who may not set a good example in front of them and let them learn. But under the explicit prohibition and example of the teachers in the school, they realize that their mistakes will change, so it is also important for the teacher to lead by example.
There are really many, many characteristics in them, which is a big reason why I can stick to volunteer teaching, because it makes you feel that the same work every day has become colorful.
2022 Spring Volunteer Chen Yin
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