I’m So Not Qualified for This (I can't believe you trust me with your children)

I have two major jobs here at the Chinese YMCA of Hong Kong. One is to help in a family center with things like program management and making their branch more attractive and accessible to international patrons and interns. The other is to teach English at one of the YMCA’s Colleges (High School-ish).

Let me pause here to highlight another major difference between the Y here and in America: THEY HAVE (MANY) FULLY FUNCTIONAL PUBLIC SCHOOLS. Good schools. English immersion schools. You can see where I’m going with this, yes?

Most of the schools here run summer sessions for kids to work on their English, Math, or Sciences (And by the way their vacation is only from Mid-July through September 1). The kids I’m teaching are planning to enter the College in the fall, and are taking this English course as a sort of jump start. It also helps the school year faculty see how advanced their English is so they can be placed accordingly come September.

I teach with 3 other interns; The other American, a Taiwanese boy, and a Singaporean girl. The school also gave us two assistant teachers who are godsends, as they speak both fluent Cantonese and English. Our kids are between 10-13 years old, and we teach 3 sections a day for 1.5 hours each.

We’ve chosen to base each of our 3 units around an animated movie that features a foreign culture (one of the school’s goals in addition to the kids learning English is for them to learn about other non-English speaking foreign cultures). So we picked Big Hero 6, The Lion King, and The King & I. We’re currently in our second session of classes, and we’ve already seen how all the units play out, so here’s a general recap:

Day 1: Big Hero 6. We meet the new kids and play ice breakers, then watch a section of the movie. Then we go over some vocab from the movie, and learn about the setting. THEN we make candy sushi. That’s my job. It’s great.

Day 2: Same concept, but The Lion King. The kids get a Tanzanian mango drink and chocolate covered bananas (supposed to be plantain, but hey, either way they think it’s strange and exotic and sort of gross).

Day 3: The King & I. This is where it gets interesting. The goal is to teach the kids about Imperialism, so we play a game in which we give one team an unfair advantage over another, then debrief with the kids about it before applying the same concept to real world politics. When asked if it’s “fair” for one country to take over a less powerful country under any circumstance, there was usually a fair mix of yes and no, which we were surprised and mildly concerned about until we asked the kids who said “yes” to explain their answers. Some said the more powerful country could bring peace to the other country. Some said social health could be improved. Some said they'd read a lot of media articles saying that it was politically necessary.

Some kids has obviously never considered the concept of Imperialism before, and sat silently in their chairs while their world got a little smaller, and a whole lot more complicated.

This is my favorite day because we get to see how the kids react to new ideas and philosophy concerning the human condition. The “I understand” look has a lot of different variations, but each one is infinitely more satisfying than the last. So, in conclusion, teaching is awesome, the kids are adorable, smart, and curious, and I get to eat a lot of chocolate and candy sushi. I have very little to complain about.