After a morning at the market, lunch at our favourite noodle restaurant and some crochet experiments, Nita and I made some books. I taught her several methods with a needle and thread as well as a folding book that students could make and use for writing or revising. With rain on and off all day it was lovely to sit inside and be creative, reminding me of wet autumn weekends in Scotland. We had a cosmopolitan meal in the evening with cousous, chilli con carne, pizza and cucumber salad followed by chocolate mousse. Nita has three days off as virtually all the teachers in her school have been sent away while the senior students sit their university entrance exams. This means she'll be here until Tuesday, when she will have to make the one-day bus trip back to her school, south-east of Kunming.
For those of you who haven't read about Nita before, she graduated from Simao Teachers' College with a diploma in English language teaching in 2007. She was an active, capable students, never afraid to think a little bit differently. She was assistant editor of Sunflower for over a year and was always keen to take part in extra-curricular activities. After leaving Simao she studied at university in Kunming, graduating with a Bachelor degree in 2009. Since then she has tried a number of jobs, finally ending up in a senior middle school, where she has been for nearly a year. The school leader is an idiot by most educational standards and, despite suicides, murder and various forms of death-by-ingorance in the school last year, he refuses to change anything about his draconian management methods. The students and teachers are in the classrooms from 7 am (having started morning excercise/reading at 6:30) until 11 pm with short breaks to eat - only eat. nothing more. The children have no sport and no free time. When they do 'escape' they go wild. Nine teachers left last year and Nita and her current colleagues are all on the look out for new jobs. I encouraged her not to leave until she finds one, knowing what it feels like to face imminent unemployment. What's more, I believe that Nita can make, and has already made, a positive difference in the lives of the students she has taught and mentored. She talks to them, listens to them and refuses to give up on them though I know this has been a struggle for her. What's more, Nita says herself that she has learned so much from this challenging job.
For those of you who haven't read about Nita before, she graduated from Simao Teachers' College with a diploma in English language teaching in 2007. She was an active, capable students, never afraid to think a little bit differently. She was assistant editor of Sunflower for over a year and was always keen to take part in extra-curricular activities. After leaving Simao she studied at university in Kunming, graduating with a Bachelor degree in 2009. Since then she has tried a number of jobs, finally ending up in a senior middle school, where she has been for nearly a year. The school leader is an idiot by most educational standards and, despite suicides, murder and various forms of death-by-ingorance in the school last year, he refuses to change anything about his draconian management methods. The students and teachers are in the classrooms from 7 am (having started morning excercise/reading at 6:30) until 11 pm with short breaks to eat - only eat. nothing more. The children have no sport and no free time. When they do 'escape' they go wild. Nine teachers left last year and Nita and her current colleagues are all on the look out for new jobs. I encouraged her not to leave until she finds one, knowing what it feels like to face imminent unemployment. What's more, I believe that Nita can make, and has already made, a positive difference in the lives of the students she has taught and mentored. She talks to them, listens to them and refuses to give up on them though I know this has been a struggle for her. What's more, Nita says herself that she has learned so much from this challenging job.
RSS Feed