The RCEF Blog 博客

Merrybelle Guo, a student at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, received a grant to travel to China and create storybooks with students and teachers at RCEF’s Guan Ai Elementary School. This is the third in a series of posts about her experience. Previous posts can be found through the following links: part 1, part 2.

So, as had been planned the previous day, I met Xie laoshi at 7 am in the school library. I was pumped for day 1 with the 4th graders, then Xie laoshi hit me with a big one: we were going to not only start the books, but finish them today, too! We settled on setting aside five classes for the storybook class, however, it ended up spilling into seven.

There were definite similarities in the 4th grade run through and the 3rd grade version of the storybook project, but there were also distinct differences. Most of these differences were attributed to the different class personalities and atmospheres bred by the two different teachers. Whereas the 3rd graders had had experience working in groups and presenting their ideas (some were even quite ham-ish about performing), the 4th graders were much more shy about voicing, let alone performing their creativity to the class. We had to quickly switch from the lesson plan group created and performed stories to a new tactic. Read the rest of this post

三周前趁着端午的间隙跑了一趟关爱，尽管只逗留了一天，而时隔三周后，这短短一天的关爱生活仍然历历在目……

我是6月8日中午抵达关爱的，当时我不仅见到了Diane，江鹏，Merrybelle和胡，也有幸遇到了Canada Wood的几位志愿者，大家在一起其乐融融地吃了顿中饭。饭后他们开始了辛勤的盖屋工程，而我也在Diane和Merrybelle的带领下围绕关爱转了一圈。由于当天是端午，大部分学生们放假回家，要到晚上才能返校。不过我也见到了家在当地的几个学生——三个棒小伙子。孩子们大方地同我招呼，然后陪Diane，Merrybelle和我一起参观图书室。图书室不大，里面的藏书既有供老师阅读的有关教育理论、教学方法的书籍，更多的是孩子们的读物，还有一套崭新的没有拆装的拼图。Diane因为有事离开，图书室里只剩下三个孩子，Merrybelle和我。孩子们对拼图表现出极大的兴趣，在和Merrybelle商量以后，我们拆开拼图的包装给孩子们玩。两个孩子和Merrybelle在那边津津有味地拼图，而我则和一位叫牛帅的小朋友在一旁玩起了脑筋急转弯。

从图书室出来之后，Diane又把我介绍给孙老师——杨校长的妻子。杨老师教四年级语文，同时也担任班主任。在和杨老师的交谈中，我对关爱有了更进一步的了解。关爱小学是杨校长和孙老师一手成立的，而在成立关爱小学之前孙老师还办过幼儿园。多年以来，杨校长和孙老师面对着种种困难始终不曾放弃对教育理想的坚持，他们这份坚持令人钦佩！而正是杨校长和孙老师的开明，才有了RCEF和关爱的合作。关爱学生的活泼虽然早有耳闻，但是见面后才发现他们和当年我上学时闷声不响的呆板形象的反差竟是如此鲜明。孙老师告诉我，关爱的学生最初也并非如此，但是在老师的积极鼓励和学生们的共同努力下，学生们都取得了长足的改善。由于关爱私立小学的性质，只有办出自己的特点，凭借更好的教学质量才能和公立学校竞争生源。可喜的是，孙老师告诉我这一两年关爱的毕业生质量逐渐得到认可，言语之间流露出一丝自豪与骄傲。

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Merrybelle Guo, a student at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, received a grant to travel to China and create storybooks with students and teachers at RCEF’s Guan Ai Elementary School. This is the second in a series of posts about her experience. The first part can be found here.

I suppose I should begin this post with an apology in the dearth of posts I’ve completed. Internet access in the library (my unofficial office for the week) has been made troublesome, though not impossible, since a very loud overnight thunderstorm a week and a half ago. Since then, much has happened.

Since the last blog, I have entered my third week here at GuanAi school and both the 3rd and 4th grade classes have already finished their respective batches of storybooks, but I suppose I should back up just a little bit. My first week in this outpost of incredibly lively children was officially spent listening in to other teachers’ lessons, trying out exercises that would be able to be built on by the curriculum I was planning for the following week, and teaching english children’s songs including “I’m a little teapot,” complete with dance moves. It was unofficially spent by impromptu art/drawing lessons, mass tickle maulings and being chased, tagged, saved, chased, tagged, saved again and again.. and again in games of freeze tag on the dusty play field behind the two story school building.

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Hammers were swinging at Guan Ai Elementary School as a team from the non-profit organization Canada Wood came to put together two donated wood houses. One will be used as an activity room and the other as much needed space for teachers to meet and work. Currently, teachers only have small drawers in their cramped dorms to store things and there is no office or meeting space as all the existing rooms are used up as classrooms or dorms.

The houses were built by students of Canada Wood College, a training program that teaches wood-frame construction. The hardworking staff, Brad, Steve, Dave, and Chen were assisted by local villagers, as well as RCEF’s Jiang Peng, Henry Hu, and volunteers Merrybelle Guo and Translation Committee Director Hua Zhenyu. Guan Ai students enjoyed watching the whole process and even got to play ping pong and try out stilts made out of extra wood. Here’s a letter Vice Principal Sun Huimiao wrote to Canada Wood:

Dear Canada Wood,
After you heard from the Rural China Education Foundation that Guan Ai Elementary School was pressed for space, you enthusiastically extended a helping hand and donated two wood buildings to us. Read the rest of this post

A week ago I arrived back in Beijing after a too-short trip to the Guan Ai school. It was my first chance to visit one of the schools that RCEF is partnered with. The warmheartedness of the teachers and volunteers that I meet there stays with me just as the sound of dozens of small voices singing in unison during the schools music class still rings wonderfully in my ears.

The title of this piece comes from the ending of the song they were singing. I had a great chance to memorize the melody and a few of the words because they sang it again and again for close to an hour. The energy that they gave to the song time and time again was the determination that they gave to their schoolwork when they recited their lessons outside of class until it was too dark to read their books. They sang that song with the same rambunctious energy that helped them wear me out in the playground when we played a crazy mixture of freeze-tag, red-rover, and kill-the-carrier after a full day of school. It’s the students and the raw energy of learning and excitement that filled the country-air and classrooms that I won’t soon forget.

It was my first time in the Chinese countryside, which I guess would make sense since I grew up in semi-urban America, so I had no idea what to expect. When I arrived with JP and Principle Yang at Guan Ai’s front gate after a short ride from Yongji, I did a short check of my surroundings and didn’t find anything too out of place, though I was wondering why the farmers would leave perfectly good wheat on the road for the cars to run over. Read the rest of this post

Merrybelle Guo just finished her junior year at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. She received a grant to travel to China and create storybooks with students and teachers at RCEF’s Guan Ai Elementary School. This is the first of a series of posts about her experience. The children love her and she’s been a bright addition to the school. In the picture, she’s the one in the green shirt.

The first surprise of my adventure with a small rural school in the southwestern most corner of Shanxi province happened on the train ride over. What I thought was going to be a 5, 6 hour train ride max, turned out to be a 9+ hour experience where I ended up being my seat mates pillow. Despite the prolonged anticipation and fear of having missed my stop and even leaving the province, the arrival was definitely worth the wait. My first evening could hardly have been deemed normal as just after the sun set for its nightly rest, pop music began blaring from loud speakers placed on the village’s main road, also just in front of the school. A projection screen was set up and I ended up watching a movie about SARS with many of the elementary school’s and the village’s denizens in a movie theatre open to the stars.

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中文翻译在英文后面。

The earthquake was so strong yesterday we even felt tremors in Shanxi Province at Guan Ai School. At about 2 in the afternoon, Jiang Peng and I were sitting in the library on a long wooden bench. When it started shaking, we kept thinking the other person was rocking the bench. Then we saw the windows rattling and with a nauseating sensation realized what was really happening. We rushed out just as Principal Sun started banging on the bell. The kids all came out of the classrooms and gathered in the yard waiting for aftershocks. The mood was anxious but there were no hysterics and the students were asking lots of questions. There hasn’t been an earthquake here in all of the teachers’ lifetime.

Today, we moved the TV out into the front yard and the whole school watched the evening news together. The 200 students were very attentive. Jiang Peng then talked with them about what caused the earthquake, what to do during an earthquake to stay as safe as possible, and read to them the symptoms of earthquakes of different strengths. Based on this, the students guessed that we experienced a quake in the range of magnitude 4. Some older students who had learned about earthquakes before in 自然课 (”Nature Class”) shared their knowledge with everyone. There were a lot of questions, some of them quite creative. For example, “Could we airlift the Indian Plate somewhere else so it stops causing all these disasters (this earthquake, the 2004 tsunami)?” Principal Sun then asked them to share their feelings about the earthquake. The first volunteer, a fifth-grade boy, said he felt 失去亲人的痛苦。A third-grader said he wanted to organize a 救员队 and yet another said we should collect all the used paper and bottles around the school to sell for money to donate to the quake victims. Read the rest of this post

RCEF的小额基金项目为民间机构和公民发起的农村支教项目提供小额资助。以下是我们的资助对象之一“贵州阳光志愿者之家”在苗族和布依族村庄里的支教经历

在整个运作的过程中，有很多感人的故事令我们记忆犹新。在总结评估会议上，这样的一些事情引起了大家的关注:

1. 在“人生之旅”这一个环节，有学生因为对参与规则理解的失误急得哭了，而后在志愿者的引导下，他认识到了自己的错误，在整个活动中取得了最好的成绩。晚上我们开完会议之后，他带着一帮孩子每个人手里捧着一个橘灯来到我们住的地方，恭敬地送给我们每个人一个橘灯。我们问到他今天为什么哭泣。他给我们的答案是：通过今天的活动，我真的懂了沟通的重要。
2. 当团队经费严重不足的时候，所有队员每人拿出自己准备回家过年的钱，共渡难关。在当时，没有电，无法与外界取得联系，大家只得同舟共济共渡难关了。
3. 当团队成员闹矛盾的那个晚上，会议主持人在工作会议结束之后发动大家每个人都说出自己的心里话，每个人都说得热泪盈框。那份难得的纯真之情，实在令我们终身难忘。
4. 由于今年的项目遭遇特大凝冻灾害，在我们返程的途中，山高路滑，又下着雨雪，团队在弹尽粮绝的情况下作出返程的决定，实在显得有点悲壮。但在我们徒步行进的六个多小时的征途上，大家相互鼓励，相互帮助。在饥寒交迫的间隙，团队中的男生为了不让女生们冻着，拨开大雪找来材火，供大家在休息的时候取暖。一路上送行的学生们的泪眼、路边的小火堆、让我们摔到无数次的泥淋路、看到如救命稻草般的汽车那一刻的欢喜、九对一但最终谈判输了的车票价格谈判、令人心胆俱裂的颠簸，所有这些给我们每个人都留下了永恒的记忆。