By Lucy De Souza
The Ross School graduate who grew up in Sag Harbor on being a global citizen, helping underprivileged Chinese students to speak English and the need for community service.
How did you find the program that allowed you to teach English to under privileged children in China?
I’m a part of this group out in San Diego called Chinese Service Learning and we were at the end of the year banquet with all of the people who worked with it and helped throughout the past year. At the banquet, I met a teacher who just happened to tell me about her going to China and teaching English for a few weeks. It’s through Tsing-Hua University in Beijing. We go into rural villages of all corners of China — from provinces in the Northwest to inner Mongolia in the Northeast and Southern provinces as well as Tibet. So I said, yeah, I want to go, let’s do it.
Why specifically were you interested in China rather than any other country?
Well I studied there for a semester before at Peking University and that’s when I first realized the passion I have for China and studying and understanding the diplomatic and government relationship between the United States and China. With that, I studied for four months and I learned political Chinese reform, U.S.-East Asia relations, Chinese ethics and the Chinese language as well as the history of China. It was so intriguing how important they are as a country in this 21st century.
Would you have ever expected going on such a unique journey or was it always something that you wanted to do?
I never grew up thinking I want to go help people in under privileged nations. The first time I did something like that was when I first got to San Diego. In a way to get involved and get active within the University of San Diego and the community, I took a role in organizing a community service trip to an orphanage twice a semester. We’d bring about 20 to 30 students and we’d have fun with them for the whole day…Then I went on a two week trip to Jamaica where we helped the community. We taught at the school, helped build a soccer field and donated laptops through another organization I was involved in called STEPS, Student Technology Exchange Program. [Later on] my professor said, hey do you want to go teach in China? I thought that was a great opportunity to not only serve fellow citizens of the world, but also as a fun, interesting opportunity to go to again.
How old were the students that you taught? What were they like?
Twelve to 15 and it was a middle school… The first class, when I got there, they were all just staring at me. They just stood there looking at me so attentively and you could tell that they had so much respect for teachers, let alone me as a foreigner. So right away they were eager and so enthusiastically wanted to learn…I know I wasn’t the best behaved middle schooler, so when I came to them I expected something similar. But they showed such subordination to me and the other teacher, Michael. They had so much respect and were very polite.
When you first began teaching, did you feel comfortable in the situation?
Well, I was under prepared. I didn’t really realize how serious it was that I was now in charge of 40 kids. And I thought, the whole trip there, oh I’m going to teach them the ABC’s. When I got there, the kids were proficient except for their spoken English. They were horrible just because they don’t habitually speak English. There is no one who speaks English around them. I was the only English speaker they ever met and a lot of the teachers have accents. They can learn the grammar very well, they can learn the vocab very well, but they don’t even know how to say the word out loud. But after the first class, the first hour, I realized here’s what I have to teach them. They already know their ABC’s, I’ll teach them other things. I felt a lot better about the situation.
Once you knew what they needed to learn, how was the day scheduled and what did you teach exactly?
It was about six to seven hours a day. Classes would start at 8:00 and we got out at 5:30, but we had some breaks in between. We would spend seven hours a day with that one class and they didn’t learn anything else but English. [We’d teach them] how to hear and how to say words. Like with their body parts, we would do Simon Says…they would get the body parts down in English and do the pronunciation correctly as well as having fun. Another thing is we would say, “How are you?” and instead of “I’m fine, thank you,” we would teach them to say “I’m awesome, I’m amazing, I’m wonderful, I’m fantastic.”
What was the hardest challenge when working with them?
The hardest challenge with working with them was the weather conditions and the conditions of the schooling room; it was hot and there were many flies around. You would try to be very positive and upbeat and flies would be attacking you all the time. They were open rooms and windows and obviously there’s no A/C or anything like that. Otherwise, the students were really energetic and really eager to learn and very few of them were shy…This one kid Tom, [instead of taking breaks] would talk with me and learn more English. We’d go over the lesson we just went over…going over the sounds and pronouncing the words correctly. He never took an actual break, he just spoke English for the whole seven hours of the teaching. It was great seeing him so motivated.
What advice do you have for people who really want go overseas and work with people who are under privileged?
Do it and don’t think twice. Be prepared that it’s not going to be like a hotel out here, it’s not going to be like Sag Harbor, but the people you [meet] will be just as spirited. The more you venture out the better I say…I think as long as you’re willing to go to a place where you’re not going to be able to sleep on a comfortable bed, you can go.
Do you have any future plans to go back to China or other places in the world?
Not currently. I’m working on hopefully getting a job that would call for me to go back to China, whether it’s in government or private sector. But I’m always looking and I’m always willing to go on a moment’s notice. Global citizen, I aspire to be.
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