Compared to children in the cities, of course, they ARE, different! Translated…
The children in the mountains are different, because the schools, the communities are too, the schools and communities here, are totally, different than other places, because the schools and the community are very close by to each other. Close, not just the school’s buildings, close to the community center, but they’re, neighboring, each other, very supportive of one another, that sort of a, close.
“Hi, Manager Chang! Hi, guests!”, the children who came towards me greeted me. Guo-Chang Chang the head of the school’s student affairs, from Tongling Elementary School, leading us in, we’d made a pact with the school, that we’re going to, take the children in the school, before Mother’s Day, finishing the poems that they wrote, then, transcribe the stanzas onto the colorful cards, with the colorful pictures of windchimes the children drew. As the wind comes, the words on the cards started, flying around.
Teacher Bear and I were the “guests” the students here spoke of. And, that awkwardness of meeting up with strangers lasted, only about, ten seconds, the teachers from outside started, getting together with the students in the shortest time, because we shared the same topics: the blue skies, the creeks, the forests, as well as all the animals inhabitants there: the owls, the crested serpent eagle, the pangolins, the Japanese rhinoceros beetles………these past few years, we’d often gone up the mountains, to visit with the locals of the Tongling Community, we’d set up a owl artistic village with the residents there, and became, best friends with the critters living in the forests too.
Teacher Bear and I were the “guests” the students here spoke of. And, that awkwardness of meeting up with strangers lasted, only about, ten seconds, the teachers from outside started, getting together with the students in the shortest time, because we shared the same topics: the blue skies, the creeks, the forests, as well as all the animals inhabitants there: the owls, the crested serpent eagle, the pangolins, the Japanese rhinoceros beetles………these past few years, we’d often gone up the mountains, to visit with the locals of the Tongling Community, we’d set up a owl artistic village with the residents there, and became, best friends with the critters living in the forests too.
the experiences of children in the distant-region schools
The morning writing class of Tongling Elementary, with three adults, accompanying the thirty-three third, fourth graders, twenty-nine first and second graders, with a total of thirty students in the fifth, sixth grades. Although, it’s the whole school, there were no more………than, about a few hundred of students in all six grades totally, and, there are not even, twenty teaching staff here.
Although the school is quite small, but, there’s a huge “teaching staff”. All the experts in the community are all the students’ instructors, the neighboring grandpa taught the kids to make the grasshoppers out of the weeds, the local artists gave the students the experiences of pottery making, the bee farmers opened up the bee box, so everybody can get a closer look at the homes of bees…………being in the mountain, knowing, what’s, in the mountains. The principal of the school, Yun-Mei Jiang set up the classes using “saving Tongling’s nature”, to set up the lesson plans, from the middle grades, the kids started going into the local community to learn, in the higher grades, the students were taken up into the mountains to learn.
The community is developing its windchimes arts and writing seasons, principal Jiang went to chit chat in the local homes, saw the group of volunteers, rolling up their sleeves, painting the pottery windchimes colorful, of them, there were, the grandparents, taking their grandchildren along, to play. This sort of cross-generation connection, it’d moved Principal Jiang, she’d decided, to get the students in her school involved in the projects well. She’d not just, invited the skilled artisans to the school immediately, to work with the art instructor to paint the windchimes into full color, also designed the literature creations cards game, to allow the cards that were attached to the pottery windchimes to be, filled with, the children’s, imagination.
The Tongling Elementary is playing with literature, and it isn’t, the first time. In spring of 2018, to shoot the promotional short for “the Ajaowu Literary Festivals”, for the very first time, I’d entered into this school, and interacted with the children in literature. The school sent the first graders, Wei-En Chang and Yu-Yuan Liu as the key speakers, in the film, we’d discussed, “Who is spring?”, the lines from the presenters are, poetic, one child stated, “Springtime is Winter’s child”, the other stated, “no, springtime is the mother of summertime!” and I’d, concluded, “Okay, stop arguing, I’ll tell you a secret, actually, spring is an older sister who enjoyed the game of dress-up. Look at the wildflowers in bloom across the hills, they’re all, colorful couture of the springtime!” as the two young children had, messed up heaven knows how many times already, finally, the short promo was, made.
versus a classroom in the cities…
In a blink of an eye, these two young kids are now, in the, fourth grade, and this time, I had, a hard mission for them both, in two short classroom sessions, I was to lead them to discover modern poetry, and, had to, spark their creativity. I’d tossed the different sentence structures to the younger and older grade levels, I wanted to know, that learning in nature, what, did the children see, hear?
Chiu and Chen had heard, “Hear it, the rain opened up the, colorful umbrellas!” “Hear it, the wind opened up all the doors and windows of the skies”, Lu made the connections, “as I’d stopped, I’d found, the rain is, a large, symphony” Wang shared her thoughts, “I’d stopped, and discovered, that the school is, a haven of bliss for the children!” a lot of the students had been, brainwashed by the village’s bird mascot, “Come, let’s go into the nights, with the owls as our, company!” to Shi-Ji, “stopping, I’d found, that nature is, my forever, home!”
The children living in the mountains are, different all right, what they’d learned in and from nature, one day, they will pack it inside their luggage. In their lives in the futures, I hope that they will, slow down or stop, to, savor everything they are, taking away from this place.
And so, this, is the primary difference of children in the distant-regions and the cities, the children living in the distant regions are, closer to nature, and, farther away from the electronic gadgets, which means, that they would have to, find their own fun, getting creative from day to day, to get entertained, and, growing up in the distant regions, it helps the kids stay in-tune with nature, with their surrounding environments, become more environmentally, aware, and, there are, a wide variety of experiences they can have, compared to the electronic stimuli that the children studying in the cities are getting.
Life, the Obstacle Course 