When the teacher is far away

prototype.com.hk

Shanghai high school students with the Spark program teach pupils from rural areas. Photo: Courtesy of Boston Education International Inc A pioneering new program called Spark sees high school students from Shanghai teaching English to children in the far-flung country areas of China. Organized by the US education company, Boston Education International Inc, the program connects students from Shanghai with pupils via web camera links.James Jiang, who runs Boston Education International Inc, first thought of this scheme two years ago. "At that time we lacked quality teachers but I realized that many students living in big cities like Shanghai and Beijing spoke better English than the teachers in rural areas. So we started to train students who were capable, passionate and responsible, to make them voluntary teachers."Jiang was critical of the way English was being taught in rural schools. "They try to teach English using Chinese. There's no way children can learn English properly like this."Luo Haihan is a 16-year-old student at Shanghai Weiyu High School and explained how the program was working. "We have 23 students in our team and we all have been assigned different jobs - some teach, some recruit volunteers and some promote and organize the program."For his first assignment Luo had to go to a remote country school in Zhejiang Province to set up the equipment for the program. He took his computer and a new web camera supplied by a German company. "My dad first drove us to Jinhua, a city close to the village school and we stayed there overnight. We set off early the next day and left the highway and took a mountain road which led us to the Tashi township. The houses looked old and ramshackle but the school looked better than I expected. The basketball court was sealed, the football pitch looked new and the school buildings seemed well constructed. "But what surprised me most was that they had a very high-speed Internet connection." Making lessons funChen Long is a 15-year-old student who joined the program on the recommendation of a friend. "We were trained by experts from the US and after we prepared the materials for the classes, the experts then checked it over. We were taught how to make the lessons enjoyable and encourage the kids to have fun - like we would ask them what color hair a hero should have."Most of the students in the program are active in other clubs at their schools but they find Spark is a real chance for them to make a difference. Chen Long is the captain of two student clubs but he thinks they have limits. "For example in the model United Nations we discuss the environment but this is not in public. Our discussions never make a difference in the real world. But I think Spark can change things."Kelly Del Monte is one of the US education experts involved in the program. She teaches elementary school children in Ohio and trains the young volunteers for Boston Education International Inc. "I taught some of these country kids on one occasion and I think they're different from the students I saw in Shanghai. The kids from rural areas were less exposed to English so it was a little bit difficult at the beginning. I was lucky enough to have a translator during the class, who helped me strike a chord with the students." Del Monte said grammar was important in these classes. "The earlier we teach students English the more likely they will learn it successfully. With Internet teaching you can really reach out to the students in your own way."Three weeks after their online lessons started the Global Times contacted some of the children from the rural areas. Lin Xiaoheng is 11 and has been attending the Tashi Town Central Primary School for five years. "In the ordinary English class in my school, we always use a lot of Chinese." He told the Global Times that his father was unemployed and spent a lot of time in the mountains. He spends most of his time living with his mother who carts bricks for a living. "English is a very important course. I want to go to high school and college, because if I don't, I will have to work for other people like my mom does." Children from Tashi town in Zhejiang Province learn English via the Internet. Photo: Courtesy of Luo Haihan Technical problemsWu Yi, a 12-year-old girl, came to Tashi town for the summer vacation with her family. Her parents make toys in Yiwu and her grandmother lives in this little town. Wu thought the foreign teacher was beautiful. "She was very patient. Not like the teacher at my school. If we make a mistake at school the teacher makes us stand still like candles for a long time. The video classes are good but I prefer the classes with live teachers."However technical problems have plagued her lessons. The video projector has broken down and instead of English lessons she and her classmates watch television or go outside to play in a nearby stream.Lai Mingsheng is the math and English teacher at the Tashi Town Central Primary School, and has been teaching there for 30 years. The school has 112 pupils over six grades. "Last year we began using two volunteer city teachers every year. These volunteers have usually been teaching for six years or more in primary schools in bigger cities. To get higher gradings they have to teach in rural schools. After a year of teaching in a rural school they return to their city schools and will probably be made senior teachers."She doubted that these short-term appointments really helped the students but was enthusiastic about the Boston Education International Inc program."It started offering online English course for our students this summer and the students are passionate about the classes. In little towns like ours, we don't have the money to send kids to summer classes. As this is a free program, most parents are very supportive and willing to have their children study. But we didn't have enough places for all the interested students. We picked eight students who lived close to the school and were comparatively better at English for the first course."International charityThe equipment is provided by the Lions International, an international charity group which has been helping the school for some time. The equipment was bought online and shipped to the school but there have been problems."Our projector broke down last week and no one in town could repair it. So we had to take it to a town 30 kilometers away to get it fixed. But when we got it back, it still wasn't working and we have already missed two classes. If the equipment works I think this program can help a lot. I think they could even teach math or other subjects," Lai said.Stepping Stones is a not-for-profit organization that focuses on improving the education and welfare of disadvantaged children in China. It also runs a distance education program and the program manager, Sebastien Carrier, outlined the approach this group has adopted. "In spring this year we had volunteers teaching English to kids online twice a month in an orphanage in Anhui Province. I suggested we teach English to smaller groups of children - it's possible to provide quality education through the Internet. The feedback from the kids and their schools is very good. I think with more rural schools getting access to the Internet, distance education has a big potential because it can reach so many kids and it's a lot less time-consuming for the volunteers."Zhou Ling is a professor of higher education at the East China University of Science and Technology and has been researching education in China for 18 years. "In 2009 and 2010, my students and I were researching teaching in some of the rural areas of China including Shandong, Hebei, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Before we started we had assumed that the low rate of schooling among rural children was mostly due to poverty."Lack of quality"However we discovered that the students themselves didn't want to go to school. They felt they couldn't get a good education because of the lack of quality teachers and proper equipment. Even though there are many talented and hardworking children in rural areas, they need good teachers to inspire them and that's hard to achieve at present."She said that although the online distance education programs were at present supplements to the rural education system, more needed to be done. It was the government's responsibility to provide these children with a good education, she said. "Although teacher education is now totally free in order to attract more students to teaching, many young people don't want to go to these rural areas after they graduate. In fact students who pay for their own teacher training don't need to go to rural areas at all. "It would be better to encourage and educate teachers from those areas instead of sending teachers there. And the authorities should improve the salaries of these teachers and provide them with extra opportunities for training," professor Zhou said. 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