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Chinese teacher in India swamped by questions
By Xu Wenwen |
September 6, 2011, Tuesday
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HANGZHOU college student Zhang Danjie spent his summer vacation teaching English at a Montessori School in the suburbs of Chennai in India, and now that he's back home his homework is answering students questions about China.
Zhang, 20, studies English in Zhejiang University of Technology at Hangzhou, and he applied for summer work from AIESEC (Association Internationale des Etudiants en Sciences Economiques et Commerciales), an international student-driven organization.
At the end of June, he was assigned to Siragu Montessori School, a remote school with around 400 children from kindergarten through 10th grade. The school is poorly equipped and furnished. Only students in the 8th grade and above can sit in chairs, while the rest sit on the floor, without even a mat.
He became its first foreign teacher.
Zhang taught in English and gave 20 classes a week to pupils from 1st to 8th grade. Since the school did not limit his teaching subjects, Zhang tried to expose students to Chinese culture and also explain about what his life is like in college.
He kept getting questions from pupils about China. At the beginning he tried to answer every question individually, but then realized he needed help.
"In India there's great curiosity about China, as well as misunderstanding," he says, noting that one child asked him if everyone in China practiced kung fu.
"My Indian pupils have endless questions about China," says Zhang, who taught in Chennai for five weeks. "They want to know how long the Great Wall is, how many languages Chinese people speak, how many provinces there are in China. They want to know about architecture, sports, food, customs and religion."
"I asked myself how could I satisfy their curiosity and erase misunderstandings when I leave India," he says.
So one day, when Zhang was about to leave India, he got the idea of having Chinese Internet users reply to the inquisitive young Indians by sending text and photos on the Internet.
The process starts with Zhang taking photos of Indian pupils holding up papers with questions in English. He uploads these to popular Chinese websites, asking for photos of Chinese people holding up papers with the answers. Then Zhang sends a parcel of photo replies to the Indian school. All questions and answers must be in English.
"It's my responsibility to answer questions, to help Indian children learn more about China and to help Chinese learn more about India," he says,
During the last week of his teaching, he started taking snapshots of 30 students from the 4th and 8th grades, whose questions were representative. Using the school's WiFi and his own laptop. Zhang uploaded photos to his homepage of Renren (A Chinese equivalent of Facebook), as well as two other popular websites. Zhang's posts were passed on and viewed thousands of times.
Many people left messages to Zhang, praising his creativity and initiative and saying he not only enlightens children in India but adults in China as well.
However, so far he has received only 20 photo replies. "Maybe people are afraid of losing their privacy because I asked the answerer to show their faces in their photos," Zhang says.
He says he will collect the answers, both with and without photos, and send them by express mail to India.
"As a foreigner, I am supposed to tell them that in this world there are many different cultures outside of small villages," says Zhang. "Maybe what I am doing is like sowing some seeds in the hearts of these children. Maybe they will be inspired by me and the photos and maybe they will explore the world after they grow up."
Zhang, 20, studies English in Zhejiang University of Technology at Hangzhou, and he applied for summer work from AIESEC (Association Internationale des Etudiants en Sciences Economiques et Commerciales), an international student-driven organization.
At the end of June, he was assigned to Siragu Montessori School, a remote school with around 400 children from kindergarten through 10th grade. The school is poorly equipped and furnished. Only students in the 8th grade and above can sit in chairs, while the rest sit on the floor, without even a mat.
He became its first foreign teacher.
Zhang taught in English and gave 20 classes a week to pupils from 1st to 8th grade. Since the school did not limit his teaching subjects, Zhang tried to expose students to Chinese culture and also explain about what his life is like in college.
He kept getting questions from pupils about China. At the beginning he tried to answer every question individually, but then realized he needed help.
"In India there's great curiosity about China, as well as misunderstanding," he says, noting that one child asked him if everyone in China practiced kung fu.
"My Indian pupils have endless questions about China," says Zhang, who taught in Chennai for five weeks. "They want to know how long the Great Wall is, how many languages Chinese people speak, how many provinces there are in China. They want to know about architecture, sports, food, customs and religion."
"I asked myself how could I satisfy their curiosity and erase misunderstandings when I leave India," he says.
So one day, when Zhang was about to leave India, he got the idea of having Chinese Internet users reply to the inquisitive young Indians by sending text and photos on the Internet.
The process starts with Zhang taking photos of Indian pupils holding up papers with questions in English. He uploads these to popular Chinese websites, asking for photos of Chinese people holding up papers with the answers. Then Zhang sends a parcel of photo replies to the Indian school. All questions and answers must be in English.
"It's my responsibility to answer questions, to help Indian children learn more about China and to help Chinese learn more about India," he says,
During the last week of his teaching, he started taking snapshots of 30 students from the 4th and 8th grades, whose questions were representative. Using the school's WiFi and his own laptop. Zhang uploaded photos to his homepage of Renren (A Chinese equivalent of Facebook), as well as two other popular websites. Zhang's posts were passed on and viewed thousands of times.
Many people left messages to Zhang, praising his creativity and initiative and saying he not only enlightens children in India but adults in China as well.
However, so far he has received only 20 photo replies. "Maybe people are afraid of losing their privacy because I asked the answerer to show their faces in their photos," Zhang says.
He says he will collect the answers, both with and without photos, and send them by express mail to India.
"As a foreigner, I am supposed to tell them that in this world there are many different cultures outside of small villages," says Zhang. "Maybe what I am doing is like sowing some seeds in the hearts of these children. Maybe they will be inspired by me and the photos and maybe they will explore the world after they grow up."
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