From March 2nd to March 6th, with the support of the Stone Project of Beijing Chenxing Education Foundation, 10 faculty and students from the Institute for International and Area Studies(IIAS) of Tsinghua University went to Jiayi Village, Jihua Township, Rongjiang County, Qiandongnan Miaodong Autonomous Prefecture, Guizhou Province to carry out support activities, focusing on the activity of " Delivery of Teaching classes to the Rural Areas" for Jiayi Village Primary School.
During the activity, faculty and students delivered more than 70 lessons to more than 350 students in Jiayi Village Primary School, with a variety of content forms, including Chinese lessons, English lessons, reading lessons to see the world, drawing lessons and after-school homework tutoring for 6 grades. In addition to the lessons, the teachers of Jiayi Village Primary School also discussed teaching and shared their experiences with faculty and students of IIAS. Faculty and students also held a unique "Big Hands Holding Little Hands" sports meeting with the teachers and students of Jiayi Village Primary School to promote friendship and share the charm of sports in basketball, football, table tennis and badminton. Besides, the faculty and students of IIAS also visited the needy students funded by the Stone Project, carried out Red Party and League Activities, visited the site of the Red Army garrison in Jiayi Miao Village, and learned the spirit of the Red Army.
Excerpts from the reflection of faculty and students
Through this volunteer teaching trip, I realized that the development of education in remote mountainous areas still has a long way to go, and it cannot be changed overnight or with a few mission trips. Volunteer teaching activities can only sow the seeds of dreams in the hearts of children, but they cannot solve the fundamental problems of local education. I believe that the dilemma of local education development mainly stems from the following aspects:
1. Lack of attention from parents. Most of the children are left-behind children, whose parents work in other places, living with grandparents, lacking companionship and addicting to mobile phones. Parents have no expectations for their children's education, and generally feel that it is good to grow up safely, and do not pay attention to their children's education, and reasons such as funds and distance can easily become reasons for interrupting their children's education.
2 Teachers are in short supply, lacking in teachers with professional backgrounds, and one teacher needs to be responsible for the teaching of multiple classes. The school has laboratories and computer labs, but there are no teachers available to teach, so they can only be left unused or converted into offices and utility rooms. Teachers live in a hard condition, and the teachers at Jiayi Primary School are all school-based, and mobile phones are the only medium of communication with the outside world, so it may be difficult to attract young, professional teachers to teach.
- Dai Rongxuan
This activity not only made me feel the reality of unbalanced educational resources, but also deepened my understanding of the responsibilities and missions of young students in the new era, and deeply felt the significance and value of sending classes to the countryside. By delivering lessons, we are not only imparting knowledge, but also passing on love and hope. Our arrival has made the children feel the love and attention from the society, like a seed sown in their young minds, stimulating their enthusiasm for learning and making them aware of the beauty and infinite possibilities of the world. Although our companionship is only short-lived, I believe that this love and care will take root in their hearts and become a strong backing for them on the road to growth!
- Gong Ting
Despite our arrival will have an impact on their daily lives, I remain convinced that this is a rare experience that will change their lives for the better. According to the principal, most of the parents in the village have no plan for their children's education, they think that their children will grow up just fine, and there is nothing wrong with going home to farm. The children speak Hmong in private, and only occasionally speak Mandarin during classes. The teachers have no communication with the outside world as the school is their home, so they need to see how the outside world educates in order not to be forgotten by society. The fact that modern society has broken with traditional ethics has brought about a lot of pain, but it also has a positive significance: modern society has made it possible for people to have more possibilities in life, and people can recognize and realize their own desires, which is a benefit of modern society. Anyone with a good heart and a belief in fairness would agree that anyone should be able to recognize and realize their desires, but the children here are unable to do so due to a lack of resources and limited conditions. That's what we're here for: we make it possible for them to do the same, and we give them a window into the world that shows them that it's not impossible to reach out to the world beyond.
- Guo Zelong
If anything exceeded my expectations, it was probably Principal Yang and Principal Zhou's interpretation of the significance of our mission. They mentioned many times on different occasions that our arrival (especially the female teachers) brought more possibilities to the lives of local girls. Child marriage still exists in the area. Due to their cognitive limitations, girls are prone to think that a certain man is good for them and marry him, and their lives are then bound to their families and they are reluctant to go back to school to receive an education. In my class, after hearing my story of going out of the mountains and then giving back to her destiny through development studies, a girl said, "I want to be like my teacher, to get a master's degree or a doctorate, to see the wider world. I hope that at least this level of significance can be realized, rather than just adding a "public service footprint" to the CV of a teacher educator.
- Huang Aidan
Just a few days may not bring too much knowledge, can not replace the hard work of the front-line teachers who are rooted in the mountains, and can not change the reality that under the exam-based education system, it takes great efforts to get out of remote areas with little educational resources. However, telling children what is out there, letting them know that there are people out there who want them to go out, bringing some hope for the future of the children in the mountains, and bringing them some strength to go out, is a small contribution we can make.
- Huang Shan
The root of the problem of changing the fate of children in the mountains still lies in changing the overall level of local economic development. Our country's long-standing policy of poverty alleviation is very correct and great. The central government has been able to focus a lot of resources on remote areas and bring about some practical changes, such as providing development ideas, such as docking more external economic and cultural human resources, so as to bring a better level of economic development to the local community, thus attracting and retaining better teachers to stay in the local community to teach and educate, changing the backward concepts of the local parents, and thus fostering the local community's strength of more sustainable development. Let the children's imagination of their future jump out of the narrow planning of wage earners and working girls, have more expectations for their future, and work harder to create a better future.
- Li Yuqing
The volunteer teaching made me reflect on a few things; I realized that those in society who are still in a decent situation have an obligation and responsibility to help the marginalized in any way they can. It is very easy for elites to live in huge bubbles, selectively ignoring the difficulties of others and simply attributing their poor situation to a lack of effort. When we move away from abstract numbers and look at each individual's life in concrete terms, I don't think anyone with a conscience would cold-bloodedly assume that poverty is due to a lack of effort. As it happens, Chile, the country of my study, is experiencing such a dilemma, where the elite and the masses are unable to empathize, and when there is a lack of solidarity in a society, where the privileged are unable to empathize with the needy and are unwilling to offer a helping hand, the end result is that a thoroughly disillusioned populace takes to the streets, leading to instability, and everyone within the country bears the consequences of this.
- Wang Shi’ao
In the course of my mission trip, I gained an insight into the daily life of Jiayi Village. Beautiful terraced fields, asphalt mountain roads and highways make up the scenic landscape of this mountain village. Although the network is smooth, the logistics is relatively inefficient, which is a common problem in remote mountainous areas. But what worries me most is the problem of left-behind children and the severity of the problem of early marriages of girls. Teachers at Jiayi Primary School are not only concerned about the children's academics, but are also trying to understand and solve the children's respective family life difficulties, and are working hard to keep the children focused on their academics and free from these problems. In this process, I realized that to improve these problems, it is necessary for all sectors of society to work together, especially to balance the relationship between teachers' personal development and children's right to education, and to ensure that every child has equal access to education, while also improving the working and living conditions of rural teachers, so that everyone in the rural education community can reap the benefits of happiness.
- Xiao Qijia
The children's knowledge is limited by their environment, and they live and learn with limited supplies, but I don't think they are necessarily less gifted than children outside the mountains. At the same time, teachers in remote areas have a much heavier role and responsibility, and do not always have the synergy of family education. For the first time, I deeply felt that the fight against poverty is indeed a systematic battle, and it is also a policy that can really benefit people in remote areas. How to enable remote areas to enjoy more of the benefits of national economic development and to make educational resources more balanced is a question that leaves us to ponder together. I also hope that I can make a limited contribution to the development of remote areas and children's education in more ways.
- Xu Shuai
What we need to think about is how to realize the long-term and sustainability of this kind of support, because only a long-term and sustainable impact can change the trajectory of these children's lives. Our tutoring program lasts only two days, and next year there may be a new wave of tutors. With short class times, long intervals, and large staff changes, how can we have a sustained impact on the children in one of our classes this year and keep an eye on their development over the long term? The solution I have given myself is to keep in touch with the teacher of the class, and from time to time send videos of myself introducing different places or encouraging the children to the teacher, and ask the teacher to pass them on to the children; in addition, I will try my best to participate in the next year's mission trip and teach the same class, so as to have a greater continuity in the educational process.
- Zhou Yan
