Ten years, three questions

From my first encounter with overseas Chinese-language education fourteen years ago, when I became a Chinese teacher, to founding Xingzhi School ten years ago, I have never left the classroom. I firmly believe that a principal who does not master the subject and does not understand the students cannot run a good school.

When the school began and we were mapping out its future, I set down four guiding principles: let culture lead the way, teach according to each student, unite knowledge with action, and teach students how to fish for themselves. They were meant to guide us through the problems that overseas Chinese-language education so often faces, and to make children growing up outside China genuinely enjoy learning and using Chinese.

Over ten years those words have run through every part of my teaching, down to the smallest detail. The results show: my advanced students use Chinese fluently, write their own plays and perform them on stage, research a topic in depth and produce reports of several thousand characters, and plan trips to China for themselves and their families. They have won awards in the international Chinese students' writing competition ten years running.

Before coming to Sweden I worked in China for seventeen years across public administration, news media and policy research, and travelled to every province on the Chinese mainland. That experience has unexpectedly become vivid material for my lessons. I like telling the children stories, discussing current events with them, and listening to what they think and feel. They look forward to my classes, and there is a light in their eyes. That mutual meeting is a real comfort.

In ten years of running the school I have found colleagues with genuine conviction, built a capable team, and shaped a brand with real quality. "The teachers truly care" and "you actually learn something here" are the finest words students and parents can give Xingzhi. I am proud of that.

From an accidental first encounter to a lasting commitment, overseas Chinese-language education has opened a second half of my life quite unlike the first. In ten years my own teaching materials have grown past a hundred gigabytes. Add more than a thousand issues of our newsletter, hundreds of videos, and at least two hundred thousand characters of my own writing. I still do not tire of it.

Once, invited to share my experience of teaching classical Chinese poetry with colleagues from Chinese schools in several countries, I mentioned that after preparing each lesson I ask myself three questions: Am I satisfied? Do the students enjoy it? Could it be better?

These ten years have, in effect, been my answer to those three questions.

To turn what you love into your work, to teach for life, learn for life, and be happy for life. How fortunate!