when I was a junior in college I studied
abroad
I chose Beijing as my study away site
and my Chinese wasn’t very good so my
days were filled with does this sound
familiar to anyone
Chinese memorizing shumsa practicing my
Hounsou and taking Chinese history and
economics classes but my biggest lessons
that study away semester didn’t take
place inside the classroom one night my
study abroad program took us to see an
acrobatics show and during the
performance I had to get up and use the
restroom there I met a woman whose job
it was to hand out paper towels I
thanked her for the paper towel and I
asked her where she was from what had
brought her here she told me that she
was from a village in central China and
that she and her husband had come to
Beijing to make a better income than
they could farming they lived in dismal
conditions but what bothered her the
most was the young boy that she had left
behind in the village he was growing up
with his grandparents and she hadn’t
seen him in almost a year the spring
festival was coming up so I asked her if
she might go home to see him she said no
she couldn’t afford the train fare and
she was worried about losing her job
this conversation revealed to me a side
of society that I hadn’t yet learned
about in my classrooms and then my
textbooks probably couldn’t keep up with
printing and afterwards I couldn’t stop
thinking about her and her son and I
began to seek out more encounters with
rural migrant workers outside of my
university classes outside of the
dazzling skyscrapers and the shiny malls
that an otherwise dominated my study
abroad experience it wasn’t so hard
there were construction workers building
new university buildings II’s cleaning
the dormitories and vendors who sold me
noodles on the street and
talking with them I discovered that the
reality of the lady in the bathroom was
all too common almost all of them had
children so-called left behind in the
villages growing up separated from their
parents these initial encounters moved
me to do research on what life was like
for children growing up in rural China
who did they live with did they go to
school
what were their schools like and what
were their prospects in life I was
privileged to receive a full ride
scholarship to return to China after
graduation to delve into these questions
full-time and my research began in the
library
I looked up statistics and databases and
read reports and it was clear that rural
children were going to college at rates
far far lower than urban children
despite being 78% of the school-age
population and one in two of rural
students who started seventh grade
didn’t end up making it to the ninth
grade why was this the conventional
wisdom was that it was an issue of
poverty perhaps the local governments
didn’t have enough funding to build
schools for students to attend or maybe
their families were too poor to afford
tuition perhaps the students had to drop
out in order to support their families
but once I left the library and began my
fieldwork traveling to villages all
across China I began to hear a different
story the reports and the databases
weren’t keeping up with the fast
changing policies and dynamics on the
ground in fact the Chinese government
was abolishing tuition for grades 1
through 9 making school totally free
from elementary through middle school
and in many villages I saw a vertical
boom in rural school building
construction thanks to increased funding
from the government and charitable
donations so if tuition wasn’t the issue
and access wasn’t the issue than what
was outside of my apartment building in
Beijing there was a security guard or
Bowen who I waved hello to
every morning he looked awfully young so
one day I asked him where are you from
shouldn’t you be in school he told me he
was from a village and Hebei province
and that yes he had dropped out of
school the year before did you have to
come to Beijing to make money to help
your family I asked no no it’s not that
he said both my parents are migrant
workers too and our family’s income has
been rising every year I could afford to
go to school but I don’t want to I’m no
good at school yancha was a term that I
began to hear over and over when I
talked with rural students and those who
had recently dropped out they told me
that school was one in de Geste Abul
Shobha Jean she and two hopeless Miyoshi
Wong they felt like the 15 year old bond
that they were forced to regurgitate
information that they didn’t know the
meaning or the use of and their
intellect and their potential was
equated with their test scores so when
they had low grades they were labeled as
and they saw themselves as hopeless
cases and so given this he decided nope
to no longer waste time in the
prison-like environment at the school
and just enter society but so far for
this Bao anh in Beijing standing for
hours at a time in a tiny guard shack
wasn’t so much fun either I began to
hear stories like his over and over as I
travel through the countryside and a
rural middle school teacher in grades OH
put it like this students come in with
their own talents interests and a desire
to learn only those with extreme
determination make it through and most
break under the pressure those ones will
go to labour in the city or will stay
here as farmers but will not have
learned to do either I want to make the
fields their school I want them to learn
how to take the riches of the land and
turn it into something valuable I want
them to develop the
talents they have into something that is
useful to them and it was in encounters
with rural teachers like this and rural
students and parents that uncovered for
me what is the underlying problem in
rural education school II is in
preparing rural students for their real
lives
it isn’t fostering the life skills that
can empower them to improve their own
lives and their communities so it begs
the question are just additional years
of more of the same kind of schooling
what rural children and their
communities need or is a different kind
of education needed in response to this
question some friends and I decided to
try out some alternative educational
experiments ourselves we put on summer
camps in rural villages that taught
classes which were engaging the student
centered and involved students in
hands-on learning
but these summer camps had a short-term
impact and we as outsiders were not
rooted in the communities where the
students are from but here I had another
lucky encounter a local principal named
swim kamio-san Wascher heard about our
summer camp and came out to meet us
volunteers it turned out that she also
cared about making education more
meaningful and centered on rural
children’s life needs under her
invitation we began to work in her
village elementary school year-round and
she organized her teachers to join with
us together in developing new kinds of
curriculum that could connect learning
to life one example is that in a social
studies textbook there was a chapter to
teach students about the dangers of
smoking but instead of just reading
about it fourth through sixth graders
conducted research in three villages
around the school they carried out
interviews with local villagers about
their smoking habits and then they took
the data back and crunch the numbers
analyzing statistics like
of people in that village smoked and how
how much money do they spend on
cigarettes per year how many
refrigerators our computers could they
have bought with that money instead and
then afterwards they conceived of an
anti-smoking campaign and went back to
the three villages and gave
presentations about their research
findings to the residents students
reported feeling greatly empowered by
this project in another example students
raise chickens up at school this was an
activity that ended up exercising their
analytical thinking decision-making
collaboration and communication skills
they had to interview local farmers
about raising chickens and then designed
a chicken coop and calculate the amount
of material they would need to build it
and they debated amongst themselves
whether to use chemical or organic feed
eventually ananas levo ting for organic
and brought their eggs to the market to
sell they had to experience what it was
like to set up a stand to price their
wares and to bargain with buyers these
projects stand out for three reasons one
the students got to choose the topics
they were interested in working on the
students not the teachers drove every
stage of the process and to the projects
integrated skills from different
subjects reading math social studies art
and they taught students to apply skills
and knowledge to solve a real-world
problems and number three they were
community based this these projects drew
upon the local resources and expertise
that was available in the surrounding
communities this was thanks to swimmer
and the other teachers who used their
local knowledge and their gwenci
to facilitate the students to be able to
go around the villages knocking on doors
and interviewing villagers to know which
chicken farmers were the best and would
be willing to come into the school and
share their knowledge with the with the
students outsiders can bring new ideas
and encouragement to rural teachers but
in the end it is they who have to digest
the methods and decide how to adapt them
to be effective in the local context
it’s not easy to be an innovative
teacher in rural China the students
parents live far away the test system is
the only one used for evaluation and
teachers receive very little training
and support so it is important that we
identify cherish and support these
individual rural education innovators
who are rooted in rural China for the
long term and who are developing new
forms of education that are responsive
to their rural students life needs
getting to know them learning from them
about what the needs are in their
communities and supporting their growth
and development are ways that we as
outsiders can turn in an initial
short-term encounter into an ongoing
partnership for long-term change here in
the academic building in Shanghai at
large and in the places that we live and
study away we’re surrounded by
opportunities to turn person-to-person
Encounters into new sources of learning
we might discover a problem or a
question that activates our curiosity
and our empathy and we can take that as
a sign to seek out more encounters to
test out our initial assumptions about
what might be the situation like the
students in rural China we can connect
learning to life NYU Shanghai says make
the world your major
and I would add to that go beyond the
textbook encounter your own education
thank you
abroad
I chose Beijing as my study away site
and my Chinese wasn’t very good so my
days were filled with does this sound
familiar to anyone
Chinese memorizing shumsa practicing my
Hounsou and taking Chinese history and
economics classes but my biggest lessons
that study away semester didn’t take
place inside the classroom one night my
study abroad program took us to see an
acrobatics show and during the
performance I had to get up and use the
restroom there I met a woman whose job
it was to hand out paper towels I
thanked her for the paper towel and I
asked her where she was from what had
brought her here she told me that she
was from a village in central China and
that she and her husband had come to
Beijing to make a better income than
they could farming they lived in dismal
conditions but what bothered her the
most was the young boy that she had left
behind in the village he was growing up
with his grandparents and she hadn’t
seen him in almost a year the spring
festival was coming up so I asked her if
she might go home to see him she said no
she couldn’t afford the train fare and
she was worried about losing her job
this conversation revealed to me a side
of society that I hadn’t yet learned
about in my classrooms and then my
textbooks probably couldn’t keep up with
printing and afterwards I couldn’t stop
thinking about her and her son and I
began to seek out more encounters with
rural migrant workers outside of my
university classes outside of the
dazzling skyscrapers and the shiny malls
that an otherwise dominated my study
abroad experience it wasn’t so hard
there were construction workers building
new university buildings II’s cleaning
the dormitories and vendors who sold me
noodles on the street and
talking with them I discovered that the
reality of the lady in the bathroom was
all too common almost all of them had
children so-called left behind in the
villages growing up separated from their
parents these initial encounters moved
me to do research on what life was like
for children growing up in rural China
who did they live with did they go to
school
what were their schools like and what
were their prospects in life I was
privileged to receive a full ride
scholarship to return to China after
graduation to delve into these questions
full-time and my research began in the
library
I looked up statistics and databases and
read reports and it was clear that rural
children were going to college at rates
far far lower than urban children
despite being 78% of the school-age
population and one in two of rural
students who started seventh grade
didn’t end up making it to the ninth
grade why was this the conventional
wisdom was that it was an issue of
poverty perhaps the local governments
didn’t have enough funding to build
schools for students to attend or maybe
their families were too poor to afford
tuition perhaps the students had to drop
out in order to support their families
but once I left the library and began my
fieldwork traveling to villages all
across China I began to hear a different
story the reports and the databases
weren’t keeping up with the fast
changing policies and dynamics on the
ground in fact the Chinese government
was abolishing tuition for grades 1
through 9 making school totally free
from elementary through middle school
and in many villages I saw a vertical
boom in rural school building
construction thanks to increased funding
from the government and charitable
donations so if tuition wasn’t the issue
and access wasn’t the issue than what
was outside of my apartment building in
Beijing there was a security guard or
Bowen who I waved hello to
every morning he looked awfully young so
one day I asked him where are you from
shouldn’t you be in school he told me he
was from a village and Hebei province
and that yes he had dropped out of
school the year before did you have to
come to Beijing to make money to help
your family I asked no no it’s not that
he said both my parents are migrant
workers too and our family’s income has
been rising every year I could afford to
go to school but I don’t want to I’m no
good at school yancha was a term that I
began to hear over and over when I
talked with rural students and those who
had recently dropped out they told me
that school was one in de Geste Abul
Shobha Jean she and two hopeless Miyoshi
Wong they felt like the 15 year old bond
that they were forced to regurgitate
information that they didn’t know the
meaning or the use of and their
intellect and their potential was
equated with their test scores so when
they had low grades they were labeled as
and they saw themselves as hopeless
cases and so given this he decided nope
to no longer waste time in the
prison-like environment at the school
and just enter society but so far for
this Bao anh in Beijing standing for
hours at a time in a tiny guard shack
wasn’t so much fun either I began to
hear stories like his over and over as I
travel through the countryside and a
rural middle school teacher in grades OH
put it like this students come in with
their own talents interests and a desire
to learn only those with extreme
determination make it through and most
break under the pressure those ones will
go to labour in the city or will stay
here as farmers but will not have
learned to do either I want to make the
fields their school I want them to learn
how to take the riches of the land and
turn it into something valuable I want
them to develop the
talents they have into something that is
useful to them and it was in encounters
with rural teachers like this and rural
students and parents that uncovered for
me what is the underlying problem in
rural education school II is in
preparing rural students for their real
lives
it isn’t fostering the life skills that
can empower them to improve their own
lives and their communities so it begs
the question are just additional years
of more of the same kind of schooling
what rural children and their
communities need or is a different kind
of education needed in response to this
question some friends and I decided to
try out some alternative educational
experiments ourselves we put on summer
camps in rural villages that taught
classes which were engaging the student
centered and involved students in
hands-on learning
but these summer camps had a short-term
impact and we as outsiders were not
rooted in the communities where the
students are from but here I had another
lucky encounter a local principal named
swim kamio-san Wascher heard about our
summer camp and came out to meet us
volunteers it turned out that she also
cared about making education more
meaningful and centered on rural
children’s life needs under her
invitation we began to work in her
village elementary school year-round and
she organized her teachers to join with
us together in developing new kinds of
curriculum that could connect learning
to life one example is that in a social
studies textbook there was a chapter to
teach students about the dangers of
smoking but instead of just reading
about it fourth through sixth graders
conducted research in three villages
around the school they carried out
interviews with local villagers about
their smoking habits and then they took
the data back and crunch the numbers
analyzing statistics like
of people in that village smoked and how
how much money do they spend on
cigarettes per year how many
refrigerators our computers could they
have bought with that money instead and
then afterwards they conceived of an
anti-smoking campaign and went back to
the three villages and gave
presentations about their research
findings to the residents students
reported feeling greatly empowered by
this project in another example students
raise chickens up at school this was an
activity that ended up exercising their
analytical thinking decision-making
collaboration and communication skills
they had to interview local farmers
about raising chickens and then designed
a chicken coop and calculate the amount
of material they would need to build it
and they debated amongst themselves
whether to use chemical or organic feed
eventually ananas levo ting for organic
and brought their eggs to the market to
sell they had to experience what it was
like to set up a stand to price their
wares and to bargain with buyers these
projects stand out for three reasons one
the students got to choose the topics
they were interested in working on the
students not the teachers drove every
stage of the process and to the projects
integrated skills from different
subjects reading math social studies art
and they taught students to apply skills
and knowledge to solve a real-world
problems and number three they were
community based this these projects drew
upon the local resources and expertise
that was available in the surrounding
communities this was thanks to swimmer
and the other teachers who used their
local knowledge and their gwenci
to facilitate the students to be able to
go around the villages knocking on doors
and interviewing villagers to know which
chicken farmers were the best and would
be willing to come into the school and
share their knowledge with the with the
students outsiders can bring new ideas
and encouragement to rural teachers but
in the end it is they who have to digest
the methods and decide how to adapt them
to be effective in the local context
it’s not easy to be an innovative
teacher in rural China the students
parents live far away the test system is
the only one used for evaluation and
teachers receive very little training
and support so it is important that we
identify cherish and support these
individual rural education innovators
who are rooted in rural China for the
long term and who are developing new
forms of education that are responsive
to their rural students life needs
getting to know them learning from them
about what the needs are in their
communities and supporting their growth
and development are ways that we as
outsiders can turn in an initial
short-term encounter into an ongoing
partnership for long-term change here in
the academic building in Shanghai at
large and in the places that we live and
study away we’re surrounded by
opportunities to turn person-to-person
Encounters into new sources of learning
we might discover a problem or a
question that activates our curiosity
and our empathy and we can take that as
a sign to seek out more encounters to
test out our initial assumptions about
what might be the situation like the
students in rural China we can connect
learning to life NYU Shanghai says make
the world your major
and I would add to that go beyond the
textbook encounter your own education
thank you
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