Back to writing classes. I have learned a lot this semester; far more than last semester. I remember the first week of classes, I left one class a little intimidated, thinking, "Shit, these kids are really smart. I need to be on top of my game." Overall, they are a really fun group of students to spend time with. I have 4 classes of regular English major freshman and class 5, which is the "experimental class," aka the smart kids. I see 1-4 once a week and 5 twice a week. They all have their characters and I know as a parent you can't have favorites, but class 5 is my favorite. A few weeks ago they invited their foreign teachers (3- me, Penny, and Sam) on their Friday afternoon outing with another major class to HuangLongXi, an old town 30 minutes away. We had a picture scavenger hunt and then walked around tasting snacks and taking pictures. It was a great time.
The hardest part about this semester, besides reading so many papers, has been reconciling the style of instruction I have received in writing and teaching a n English class to Chinese students in China. They couldn't be more at odds. These students would never consider reading their paper aloud in class or talking about what they are writing. They would never have a discussion about the writing style of Jo Goodwin Parker's essay Poverty (that is until week 8 when I forced class 5 and they talked about it a little. But 900 papers later, I have realized that they are getting it (ok, I realized this around paper 453 to be exact). All the writing I am making them do, despite their whining and moaning and apparent dying in their chairs, is not only making them a lot better, but I secretly suspect most of them enjoy it. A few have told me that no other teacher they have had has ever read their essays like this, nor has any ever had them write so much. If I didn't think it was working, I wouldn't be killing myself reading so many. (Side note: the homework was cut way back when I realized that one assignment equaled 150 papers to read in a week. We go every other week assignments now, to everyone's improved health)
The image I have of a writing professor is a mixture of Hashimoto and Professor Jules Hilbert from Stranger than Fiction. The result is strange assignment prompts on small pieces of paper and comments written in blue ink in their paper's margins. I wish I had a big coffee maker in my room to have my endless cup of coffee in my hand...... "Harold, if you pause to think, you'd realize that that answer is inextricably contingent upon the type of life being led... and, of course, the quality of the pancakes."
And now I will let the students of classes 1-5 tell you their stories. OK, not their stories, but their thoughts on Sweepers. Here was their second assignment:
Writing
Class Assignment #2 Sentence
Length
Tell me about sweepers. Tell me about the people who sweep the
streets in the morning, or the people who sweep the hallways, or the people who
sweep the basketball courts, or anyone who sweeps anything. Tell me a story about them, a story about a
sweeper you know, what would happen if we didn’t have any sweepers, tell me
about their brooms, tell me about what they sweep. You can write anything, just be
interesting. Use different sentence
lengths—see what you can do with them.
And here, with some of their mistakes remaining and some edited, were some of their responses. It failed to occur to me that the party/China mentality on the under privileged/lower class of workers is to always say how we should respect them more and give a story about how great they are, but a few caught the spark of creativity and kindled it on their page. Here they are:
When I was in middle school there was a
special boy in our class/ Unlike many
other classmates, he didn’t have pocket money to buy what he wanted and always
wore simple clothes. When we talked
about our moms or our families, he always went away or didn’t say
anything. We didn’t know why. One day, after school, my classmate and I
went home. We saw him talking with a
woman who wore orange clothes and a cap.
The woman was holding a broom, sweeping the street. She wore a mask to avoid inhaling the dust. I noticed the broom; it was big and at least
at that moment I couldn’t hold it and wave it to clean the street. We guess the woman must be his mother, we
didn’t say hello to them and didn’t tell him about what we saw.
Although
their income isn’t high, their condition isn’t good, they still work. Everyone is equal. Every job is also equal. If I have a mother like this boy, I will also
think my mother is the best.
Coco Class 2
The sun is just rising. If we wake up, we will see a group of
hardworking people cleaning up roads.
They are sweepers.
They
must get up early every morning. No
matter what season it is. It is so hard
to use their weapons to beat the enemy of our land. Their weapons are brooms. They hold them tightly to keep us from kinds
of germs. So we have bright roads.
Fog
envelops the earth when winter is coming.
We can’t see anything in the hallways, especially in winter
morning. It is so dangerous for sweepers
to clean the hallways. There are so many
cars and the run fast. Sweepers just
stand on the roads and clean up the roads.
Sweepers
play an important role in our life, like people need water to clean
themselves. We need sweepers to clean
our roads. But in China, most people
look them down. They don’t know what an
important character the sweeper is. We
should respect everyone who works hard to make our life beautiful, peaceful,
and kind. The sweeper did it.
Jannye
Class2
Before I start, I want to tell you a story,
and please read it silently.
One
day a little boy with his mother was going to the park. The boy was eating ice cream. Its very delicious. When he finished it, he looked around to find
trash cans, but he failed. Suddenly he
saw a sweeper sweeping the street with his broom in the distance. Then he ran to the sweeper and throw the
trash into the can that was in the sweeper’s hand. The sweeper looked up at him, smiled, and
said, “thank you.” The boy was confused
why the sweeper thanks him. He returned
to his mother with a confused look. His
mother witnessed what had just happened.
She knew her son’s confusion. She
patted her son’s head and said to him, “Just, you did well. I know what you were thinking. You think that throwing trash into trash cans
is your duty. He needn’t say thinks to
you, right?” She looked at her son, the
little boy nodded, but he was still at a loss.
She continued saying, “It’s a small behavior. Only a small behavior but it reduces the
times he has to bend down. Its just a
small behavior, but it shows that you protect the environment and cherish work
achievement. So he was grateful to you.” The little boy understood and showed a smile
on his face.
Yao, Class 2
As a college
student, you do some basic things just by yourself, such as learning English,
doing some exercises. I bet you never
care anything about sweepers who you meet in the campus everyday. Yes, you are a college student, in your
opinion, you are more excellent than them, you have the qualification to ignore
their behavior and pass through them without a word just because of your own
limitations.
………
You don’t care
about that (the hard work of sweepers), you are a college student so you can do
what you want to do, of course, all you ever think about is yourself. Taking your girlfriend’s hand, walking the
road of street in cloudless dawn or under the glow of a sunset. Enjoy life and reward yourself whenever you
need to relax yourself, at that time, who do you think of creating so perfect
environment for you? Without them the city
will be garbage everywhere, the smell of smoke blackening the sky; without
them, the citizens will not work and life; without them, the city will be
eclipsed.
…….
When you can
learn something from sweepers like their perseverance knowing a little about
philosophy, improve your excellent quality, finally you are to be a better
person.
Michael,
Class2
It was a cold
morning in the winter of three years ago.
I rode a bike to school. It was
still dark. The sky had few stars. The moon must have escaped away to some place
far away from the sky above me.
Everything was quiet. Every
streetlight was so far away from eachother.
What dead quiet. But to get to
school, I must go through it. I felt a
bit scary on my bike.
Suddenly, some
sound was made. It look like someone’s
head or hat floating behind some bushes.
I forgot to ride, so I got a halt and fell off from my bike. At that time, the staff moved out from these
bushes, and came to stand near a big tree.
It should be a
grandma. She had a broom in her right
hand and a flashlight in her left. The
light pointed at me. I was able to keep
my eyes open and heard her voice, “child, what’s going on? Its dark at the time in winter. You go in my light!”
“OK, thank you!,”
I responded.
And then I
rushed to school at a high speed.
The second day I
went through the street and I saw her again.
And she turned on her flashlight and light up that area of darkness for
me again.
The third day,
the fourth day, until it was bright enough to see everything clear, she turned
on her flashlight for me when I rode by.
The next winter,
I met her again. And she went on turning
on her flashlight for me every dark morning.
This lasted for three whole years.
After I
graduated from my lovely high school, I left from my hometown to the
college. A semester passed. I went home like birds on their wings.
I went out to
find her. So in January second, I got up
early and walked to the street with stars on the sky. It was dark as well. The streetlights were bright enough to see
everything clear.
But I didn’t
find her. And old man had taken her
place. I asked him where she went. He had no idea.
I wandered about
on the street in order to find her by chance, even though I know it would never
happen. Actually, it was in vain.
And now, I still
know neither who she is nor where she went.
Maybe she had changed her work place.
Maybe she had retired. But
anyway, I hope the kind old lady could have a happy sunset of her life.
Amy
Chung class 2
Why is there so
much trash? Where does it all come
from? Above all, I think we human beings
are trash making machines; we produce a large amount of trash everyday, like
after eating some snacks there will be many packages; after cooking some food,
there will be many leftovers; after having read some newspaper, there will be
many waste papers; and what’s more, industrial waste is also very common. However, even the cheapest plastic bags are a
source of pollution and are difficult to dispose of.
Delicia
class 5
If I were a
trash can, I may be very full every day.
I don’t need to worry about the ‘food’ because people will feed me
without reminding; I can eat what people eat because they are wasting food; I
will eat plastic things even if I don’t like its taste, and I can eat papers
and tissue; anyway, I don’t like the taste of them too and what’s worse, some
people give me batteries to eat! You
know, my mother told me never to eat battery because its very bad for my
health. The night is the time that I
hate, for a bad man always comes and steals my food and take it away. After that, I become empty again, I think he
is a thief. People should hate him just
like I do, but to my surprise, they call him cleaners.
Fiona class5
You can imagine
when you walk into a place, and there are a great deal of trash coming into
your view and you are surrounded, then you just can see the trash is heaped up
as high as a mountain; or it looks like a high wall stood there; maybe you are
shocked it is as big as a monster, as if
he is reay to eat you at any time; next you smell something strange and
disgusting: the boldy bread, the rotten fruit, the smelly ouil, so you will see
there are many rats running, many flies hovering over your head, and the sight
of it makes you turn your stomach; will you be nauseated when you see all the
filthy things and breath the bad air?
Hilary class 5
As soon as I see
this word, “trash,” I think of Slumdog Millionaire. I remember that in the film there is a scene
where all kinds of trash bank up as a mountain.
A little girl who wears a dress which was picked up among the trash
pulls a large sack which is full of some useful trash for her, searching for
any other available things, while the two lieelt boys are sleeping with flies
flying over their bodies in an old camp by the smelly, dirty trash.
Jane class 5
White plastic
bags are like snow in the ground, white as cloud, it looks like a blank test
paper, it hears like a little tune, it feels like a trash paradise, it smells
like old wine, it is beautiful as kites in the sky, although it pollutes our
environment, it still gives us pleasure, because of these plastic bags, our
life can be convenient and interesting, in other words, plastic bags promote
our society; as a popular saying goes, “Every coin has two sides,” and plastic
bag is no exception, it is convenient, at the same time, it does harm to our
environment, because of this, we still need to reduce the use of plastic bags.
Maggie class 5
Once upon a
time, I saw a rotten apple lying at the corner, as rotten as a dark minded
politician that you would never want to see for a second time—it looked like it
had been soaked in the vitriol for days that has dark brown stains clung to it,
just like sores, maggots were crawling on it that even mice would have no
appetite for, and even if mice were to eat it, if they were not afraid of
death, I am sure they would inevitably suffer some serious illness; if Snow
White was killed by a poisonous apple, it can be said that this was the apple
that killed all fairy tale princesses!
Some days later, I made another discovery. A piece of chocolate had beem melted on the trash can, turned there into a tiny sweet pond, like the swamp where Shrek lives, furthermore, it attracted numbers of flies, who were trying their best to occupy that feast. As for them, that melted chocolate was totally a treasure, the battle among flies looked just like some kind of air war; but for me, that “swamp” was absolutely a big trouble, as black as the night without stars and moon, gave me a feeling of desperation, I wonder if the river in hell looks like that swamp, and as time went by, that evil melted chocolate turned smelly, far more smelly than the worst toilet that even flies would be killed for breathing it, it also glued the trash around itself, made them stuck on the ground, so I had no choice but to clean it up. You know what, it seemed that those trash and the ground had fallen in love with eachother, they stuck together and never let go…. Did I feel terrible that I broke this couple up? Of course I did. I felt bad, not for them, but for myself, because it cost me great efforts and what was worse, it misled flies to think there would always be a feast at the corner, waiting for them, so they came to visit me frequently.
Some days later, I made another discovery. A piece of chocolate had beem melted on the trash can, turned there into a tiny sweet pond, like the swamp where Shrek lives, furthermore, it attracted numbers of flies, who were trying their best to occupy that feast. As for them, that melted chocolate was totally a treasure, the battle among flies looked just like some kind of air war; but for me, that “swamp” was absolutely a big trouble, as black as the night without stars and moon, gave me a feeling of desperation, I wonder if the river in hell looks like that swamp, and as time went by, that evil melted chocolate turned smelly, far more smelly than the worst toilet that even flies would be killed for breathing it, it also glued the trash around itself, made them stuck on the ground, so I had no choice but to clean it up. You know what, it seemed that those trash and the ground had fallen in love with eachother, they stuck together and never let go…. Did I feel terrible that I broke this couple up? Of course I did. I felt bad, not for them, but for myself, because it cost me great efforts and what was worse, it misled flies to think there would always be a feast at the corner, waiting for them, so they came to visit me frequently.
Anyway, those
trash—as dirty as mud; evil as demon—caused me a series of troublesome
problems, I hate them, and never want to deal with again. Oh no way!
That means I will have to clean my room everyday, that can be another
serious problem.
Rex class 5
I am the earth
mother, I used to be very happy for I can touch pleasant smell and flowers, I can
enjoy the warmest sunshine, whenever I look up to the sky, it looks like a blue
carpet with some soft clouds, which makes me feel like living in the
heaven. Now, however, I want to cry, as
many different trashes are around me, which makes me feel sick. My good friend garbage can, whose duty is to
collect trashes also feels very sad due to the fact that nowadays many people
don’t pay enough attention to trashes and they always throw trashes everywhere,
instead of throwing trashes into my body, however, a few people would throw
trashes into my body, but they don’t throw them into the right order.
At this time, I
really feel more comfortable, I really need a shower, but who can help me? I am on my way to find someone who can give
me a shower, firstly, I met some waste cans, I wold them everything, they felt
a little upset about this, so they got together and jumped into the recyclable
garbage can. After I felt better, I met
some white trashes, whey were surprised at me but they jumped into the
recyclable garbage can eventually. They
next several hours, I met different kinds of trashes and in order to help me,
they all jumped into the right garbage cans, which made my body feel
comfortable.
When I was on my
way home, I found it strange that a boy and a girl were collecting waste
cans. On seeing it, I came to them and
asked them what they wanted to do, they told me that they wanted to do some DIY’s
with the cans, which did raise my interest, I followed them for I wanted to
know the fact. When we arrived at their
home, what I saw surprised me a lot: many beautiful crafts came into my view
such as pen holders and lovely animals.
What a happy and
surprising shower I had.
Cikey class5
In spring,
flowers are in bud. It is the best
season of the year. Sweepers begin their
work. They clean up the strets, whick
makes our environment neat and tidy. They
are out to let us enjoy a more beautiful surrounding.
In summer, when
we are in our house enjoying a cool, they are still working on the street. It seems that they are never afraid of the
hot weather, though they are pouring with sweat. How selfless they are!
In autumn, the
world is golden. With they joy of
harvest, with a bright smile, sweepers wave brooms to clean up the
streets. They are still working for us,
day after day, year after year.
In wonter, when
we are in our house enjoying the warmth, they are in the cold weather. Their hands become frozen. Every time I see this, I feel confused why we
always look down upon these men.
Jenny
class 1
Thanks for reading. More highlights and stories to come. 再见！
Cam
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