11/1/2005 - Learning with Chinese Teacher is a First for Whitefield
Yunxia Zhao doesn’t see much difference between the students in her native China and the ones at Whitefield School, where she is an AFS Intercultural visiting teacher this fall.
True, her students, unlike some Whitefield middle schoolers, probably don’t wear t-shirts with the message “Everybody’s entitled to my opinion” or “No one deserves a kid like me.”
“But I think there are a lot of similarities,” Ms. Zhao said. While she had heard people say, before she came to the U.S., that American students are hard to control, “I think they are well behaved. They listen to me. I am their teacher.”
During a break in Mrs. Reynolds’ language arts class, Yunxia’s excellent English skills and friendly professionalism engaged the 17 or so seventh graders. They were given sheets labeled “fast facts” about China and instructed to read this information (“China is the largest apple producer in the world”, “China’s economy has grown faster over the past 25 years than any other economy in history”, “One of every five people in the world lives in China”).
At the end of the reading time, the students divided into groups to query each other on what they had learned. They competed energetically, having caught the excitement the dynamic, confident young educator from a totally different culture conveys. Even Mrs. Reynolds, when the bell rang, had to express her appreciation: “We’re lucky to have her.”
A world away
Yunxia (pronounced Yewn-cha and meaning “Cloud”) teaches English in a high school in Wuhu, located in Anhui Province. It is approximately 150 miles west of Shanghai and has a population of 700,000, which is small by China’s standards. Formerly a port on the Yangtze River and one of the earliest in the late 1800s to open to international trade, Wuhu is one of the province’s four largest towns. Today, manufacturing and tourism are a big part of the economy, she said. The inhabitants of Wuhu live mostly in apartments. Farms are about an hour’s drive away.
In her school of 4000 students and more than 300 teachers, Yunxia has 59 students in her classroom. She said the young people must pass an examination to attend the school, which is “the best in the area.”
Whereas her parents each grew up with five siblings, family life is different under China’s one-child policy today. Yunxia and her husband, a university teacher, have a three-and-a-half-year-old daughter. “I miss her very much!” Ms. Zhao said.
The young woman has an older sister, a kindergarten teacher, who also has one child.
Now in her seventh year of teaching, Yunxia said, “I wanted to be a teacher from a young age.” She frequently receives e-mails from her students in Wuhu and they chat on the Internet.
Of her selection to come to the U.S., Yunxia said, “I’m lucky to be here.” There are only 25 teachers from China now visiting the U.S. She said her school administrators in Anhui Province chose five teachers and she was one of two to go to Beijing for interviews, to take a written exam and meet the AFS leaders in person. “My school is also very happy” that she was chosen.
“It’s hard for Chinese to be here because of (the difficulty of getting a) visa,” she explained. “Sometime we can’t get it.” There is also the cost of traveling and living here.
This is her first time traveling outside China and it may be her only time, she said with a laugh, because of the difficulty. “We don’t have so many chances.”
What has surprised her most about the U.S. is “the population. In China I see people all around me. Here it’s quiet, people enjoy their privacy.”
What Yunxia has especially enjoyed so far is the friendliness and helpfulness of the principal and staff at Whitefield, especially her mentor teacher Diane Reynolds. She was surprised when on China’s National Day recently the middle schoolers had a half day off and she went with them on a field trip to a Jefferson apple orchard. “There were many Chinese flags on the classroom wall made by students,” she said, and Mrs. Reynolds prepared a meal of Chinese food for everyone to enjoy at school.
She has also visited “Big Eartha” at DeLorme Mapping in Freeport and the arctic exploration museum on the campus of Bowdoin College.
In exchange, Yunxia has shared many aspects of Chinese culture, including showing students the eye exercises that Chinese students do every afternoon to rest their eyes (they do physical education exercises every morning). In coming weeks she will demonstrate writing the Chinese language; teach games and numbers; and talk about the festivals, movies, and other features of her native land. She will also participate in a Chinese language instruction class at Erskine Academy.
Whitefield assistant superintendent Elaine Nutter, who finds Ms. Zhao “very perceptive”, said, “It’s a very courageous thing to do, to leave China, her family, her young daughter. I think [her coming here] is a very positive thing. We’re very pleased with the exposure the children have had to a different culture.”
AFS Intercultural Program
Yunxia Zhao’s placement in Whitefield came about because Bambi Jones, who runs Hidden Valley Farm in Whitefield with her husband David Moscowitz, travels frequently in China. Jones made contact through a friend with Larry Ralph, of Manchester, the visiting teacher coordinator for AFS International’s intercultural studies program for the southern half of Maine.
Ralph said Maine has had teachers from China for about 15 years, and there are two in the state for 2005-06, along with four Thai teachers. The teachers pay to come. Ms. Zhao, he said, is on a scholarship partly paid by the Chinese and partly by the Starr Foundation, a private foundation created by an American based insurance company. She also receives a stipend.
Those selected “are some of the best teachers in their own country,” Ralph said. Students here get to see “real Chinese speaking of real Chinese things.” What’s transmitted in the exchange is an understanding that “you do things differently but you’re still a good human being,” he said, and that different cultures have different views of what’s appropriate.
Of AFS International’s 55 foreign teachers in the U.S., half are in the Northeast. That’s because “the zealots in the program are located here!” Ralph said. In addition to Maine’s six visiting teachers, there are seven each in Vermont and New Hampshire, six in New York and two in Massachusetts.
In Lincoln County, he said, there was a Thai teacher at South Bristol Elementary School last year and “quite a while ago there were (foreign) teachers in Wiscasset. We tend to place teachers in elementary schools because those in middle and high schools have so much pressure to do content, it’s difficult for visiting teachers to get class time.”
Yunxia Zhao, staying with host families, will be in Whitefield until Christmas, at which time she will be placed in an Augusta school. After February break, she is scheduled to be in Edgecomb and will return home in June.
Ralph said if any schools are interested in hosting a teacher, they can contact him at 626-0779.
In the photo: Yunxia Zhao. Story by Lucy L. Martin, reprinted with permission from The Lincoln County News, Damarsicotta, Maine, USA, October 12, 2005
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