Teach the little ones

By Cynthia Chu
September/October 2009

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For years, it has been my wish to teach English to poor and needy children here in China. There are two groups: those living in the mountains and the migrant workers’ children. Without the means of transportation to get to the mountain villages, the migrant children were my feasible option, but I did not have the name of a contact to make this a reality.

Cynthia has just begun an additional ministry working in an after-school program with Grade Three students.

Last year someone handed me a card with emergency phone numbers such as for the police or fire station. During a recent cleanup, this little card popped up and on it was a phone number for the local government education bureau. I tried calling and after a few referrals, reached the right person who connected me with a school for migrant children. In a large bureaucracy such as China it is important to know what government office or worker to talk to in order to get things done. Not long after, the bureau found me a school nearby and I spoke with the vice principal.

On my first visit to the school the English teacher, Hattie, discussed with me convenient times and classes to teach. We agreed that I’d start with half an hour a week on Thursdays as an after-school activity with Grade Three students. There are 50 students in a class, so she asked me to teach half the class one week and the other half the following week. She also gave me the textbooks they used so that I would have an idea of what the children were learning.

March 5, the eve of my birthday, was my first class. In my eight years in China I have been teaching English to university students. This was my first time teaching young children and I was unsure of how I would relate to them. The first thing I did was introduce myself. I then walked around the room greeting everyone and shaking every tiny hand. The children were very excited and couldn’t wait for me to come around to them. Except for two or three, they were able to respond to my questions of “What is your name?” and “How are you?”

Scarboro lay missioner Cynthia Chu (left) has been missioned to China for eight years teaching English to university students.

After that little warm up, I reviewed parts of the body with them before launching into a drawing game. I divided the class into two teams and members of each team took turns at the blackboard drawing a body part that I randomly called out. When I called out “Hand!” one team connected the hand directly to the trunk of the body so that later when I called out “Arm!” they had to erase part of the hand before they could insert the arm. We all had a great laugh at the drawings.

The students were ecstatic about the game. As soon as I called out a word, all little hands shot up, wanting to be selected to go to the blackboard and draw. Next, I asked them to colour each body part a particular colour. That created another bout of fun. One child confused the English words for red and brown and another for purple and blue. Of course, the human figure on the blackboard ended up with green arms, purple legs, and so on.

When class was over, the children rushed out of their seats to hug me. If Hattie hadn’t barked at them, they would have knocked me over. It was a remarkable day. And I thanked God for the wonderful gift.

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