Translated…
A children’s English school found me, to talk about the possibilities for me and them to work together, the caller, the manager, Johnny, he’d first commended me on how hard I’d fought, to bring theatre performances to the children who were raised in worse background environments, then, he’d told me, that his school shared the same values as mine, he’d hoped, that through the learning of English, the kids can start thinking about the arts and their own lives too. “Children’s English programs are NOT just children’s English programs, if we’d combined the mime performances, and design a class based off of that, it will be very interesting. While my limited brain capacity was still contemplating the connection of the two possibilities, Manager Johnny was already worked up, hollered into the phones, “Then, let’s turn education around, Mr. Yao!”
not my photo…
I’d arrived at this teaching institution a few days after I’d gotten the calls, it was in the evening, the small entry to the building had a bulletin board with kids’ headshots, everybody was making a smiling face, and right by each and every one of their photos, there was an idiom in English, like “You Can Make Your Dreams Happen”, and “Keep Learning and You’ll Get Smarter”, etc., etc., etc. And, as the man in charge, Johnny came out to greet me, a group of children with their red clown noses, carrying the balloons followed him out. The five clowns of children set up a simple performance formation, and used their exaggerated looks, as well as loud voices called out to me, “Welcome to XX English Learning Academy, Mr. Yao!”, this action had, shocked me. The man in charge told me, that this, was the result of the children’s last semesters special session with a clown teacher teaching them about movements of their bodies, “after the Clown training sessions, the kids started using more gestures when they spoke in English. They’d also learned to make the balloons themselves, we worked hard, to incorporate English with an assortment of artistic courses here.” I looked at a boy, of about six or seven in the group, with the loosely tied, oversized red nose, already, falling to beneath his nostrils, and he’d still worked hard, waved around those animal cartoon balloons. “The kids today are getting in touch with a ton of a variety of things, so, the normal sessions can no longer satisfy their desires for learning anymore. We’d kept trying, to make the teaching of English more interesting, so the lessons can all come alive for the children.” While Johnny the manager was projecting the footages of how variate the activities became, I couldn’t help, but untied the boy’s red nose that didn’t belong to him. “Say thank you, Noel”, the manager smiled and gestured the boy, I was so shocked, to realize, that this young boy had the name borrowed from French, originally meaning “Merry Christmas!”, I’d told that child, but apparently, Johnny or Noel didn’t get this joke, and didn’t know how to respond either.
After the hour-long meeting, I’d stepped outside this English learning academy, and it was right at the time when the kids are set off home, the dozen motorcycles by the road were all from parents, picking up their own young. But, the children with their backpacks couldn’t quite leave yet, they’d needed to take a small printed article, and walk over to the recitation area in the hallways, with their microphones, toward the roads, and recite their articles from top to bottom. The leveled round wooden small stage had a billboard that said, “Champion”, it brought out the sharpened contrast of how small the volume of voices that came out to these children, I was curious, as to what the parents who are off in the distance, waiting for their children would think? Are the parents proud, seeing how their young were able to read aloud in English in public, or, are they thinking, that the tuition paid is money well-spent? Who, did this sort of method of teaching satisfy anyway?
here are the multitude of lesson plans
Turning education around, may be a phrase the Johnny had borrowed from what was trending now, and, it’d had that pretty exterior like what he’d spoken about, the multivariate ways of education, life education, artistic as a whole, crossing the boundaries, etc., etc., all had pretty coverings, but too delicate to go into the specifics too. before I left, I was curious, went back to the doors, to search for Noel’s photo, being buried in the crowd, still in his last year of kindergarten, he’d had his own specific idiom in English, “Failure is the mother of Success!” Holy! I was so shocked that I’d hollered, and, my voice was way louder, than the children who were still reciting those verses close by. Why, would, a six or seven-year-old child need to understand what success and failure is, and whose success or failure would it be, if the child didn’t know?
And so, the director of this place just THOUGHT that he was, turning around education, by incorporating an assortment of activities for the children in the learning academy, without ever ONCE considering, that the things he’d wanted to teach the children might be age-inappropriate, and that, would be something that was overlooked here. But, you gotta give it to the man, because his heart IS in the right place…
Life, the Obstacle Course 