Turning the classroom into a playground

Long before I joined the school I already had a strong connection to it — my own child has studied here throughout, and many of the teachers are friends who share my outlook. The way the staff pull together, and their sheer energy, made me want to be part of it.

Only once I stood in front of a class myself as a Chinese teacher did I really grasp the responsibility, and how demanding it is: preparation has to be meticulous down to the details, and meeting children and parents calls for patience and sincerity. Curiously, all my experience of getting on with children comes from my own son. We treat each other as friends, often mess about, and say what we think. So I see every child at the school exactly as I see my son: just as mischievous and lovable, just as full of their own ideas.

That is precisely why my lessons are always relaxed and full of humour. I do not like lecturing. I would rather throw out a series of interesting questions and let the children think freely, argue enthusiastically and answer without fear. Their answers vary enormously, sometimes seeming entirely beside the point — but I know that behind every answer lies their own thinking. I never judge with a simple "right or wrong"; sometimes I follow their line of thought further and we arrive somewhere more interesting still. Every time laughter fills the classroom I can feel those small minds turning faster, and that is exactly the picture I want to see.

I love the time I spend with the children: learning new things together, playing games, laughing out loud at some small discovery, puzzling over some small problem side by side. They learn Chinese and Chinese culture from me, and I get back a great deal of joy and honesty — and have learned, besides, how to enter a child's world more fully, meet them as equals and talk with them frankly.

It gives me particular satisfaction that under my guidance two students in my class won gold at the eighth global Chinese recitation competition, and that I was named an "Outstanding Guiding Teacher" as a result. Another student took second prize in an international creative writing competition for young people of Chinese heritage. These results are evidence of the children's own work, and they have given me a real sense of achievement and happiness as a teacher.

Looking back on these years, my conclusion is that it is better to be the one who gets children thinking and speaking than the one who lectures until everyone nods off. Give children room to think and talk, and they will hand you back no end of surprises. What they give back is also a mirror, showing our own shortcomings clearly. Seeing your shortcomings and examining yourself is how you improve — only then do the wheels of teaching roll steadily in the right direction.