Rose. Thorn. Bud. My interpretation of this activity.
Rose: Something positive that stood out this week.
Thorn: Something negative that stood out this week.
Bud: Something that is turning and may turn out to be a rose in the future.
The first few weeks at Dandelion are the weeks with only roses and few thorns. You’re a fresh face here and a curiosity (whether you like it or not) at the school. Meeting the students is a positive. Meeting the teachers is a positive. Every interaction is a positive and you almost get lulled into this sense that the students here are just normal students.
Until you’ve gotten close to the students.
Close enough for them to slowly begin to open up to you. Then you realize that behind all the fun, games, and studying that happens at Dandelion is the truth that many of the students are here because they don’t have a better option open to them.
Dandelion is open to migrant family’s children. But what does that actually mean? (To my understanding) In China, there this internal passport system. This system divides people as being from a rural area or urban area and from which province they are from. This passport (hukou) gives the wielder access to services in the province they are from, such as access to public education. If you live in a different place that is not the same as the one on your hukou, you lose these certain services. This is the situation for most of Dandelion’s students. Most do not have a Beijing hukou and thus cannot enroll in public education here in Beijing.
One day, as I was tutoring a student in English, we kept on adding an “er” sound at the end of many English words. This is a common “accent” in Chinese, called the Beijing accent. In jest, I told him he was like a Beijing person, adding “er” at the end of words. He replied, “it’d be great if I were a Beijing person, then I wouldn’t have to do all this.”
This off-the-cuff remark was the first one I heard from the students about their personal lives. It was a poignant reminder that despite how content the students may seem on the outside, they wouldn’t be here if they had a better option. Most of the students won’t go to high school after this. Many will go straight into the workplace, while others go onto vocational schooling. This was a sobering reminder that I’m not just here to play English games with the students. We are here to make as large of a positive difference in the student’s lives as we can in the short period of time we are here.
Rose: Something positive that stood out this week.
Thorn: Something negative that stood out this week.
Bud: Something that is turning and may turn out to be a rose in the future.
The first few weeks at Dandelion are the weeks with only roses and few thorns. You’re a fresh face here and a curiosity (whether you like it or not) at the school. Meeting the students is a positive. Meeting the teachers is a positive. Every interaction is a positive and you almost get lulled into this sense that the students here are just normal students.
Until you’ve gotten close to the students.
Close enough for them to slowly begin to open up to you. Then you realize that behind all the fun, games, and studying that happens at Dandelion is the truth that many of the students are here because they don’t have a better option open to them.
Dandelion is open to migrant family’s children. But what does that actually mean? (To my understanding) In China, there this internal passport system. This system divides people as being from a rural area or urban area and from which province they are from. This passport (hukou) gives the wielder access to services in the province they are from, such as access to public education. If you live in a different place that is not the same as the one on your hukou, you lose these certain services. This is the situation for most of Dandelion’s students. Most do not have a Beijing hukou and thus cannot enroll in public education here in Beijing.
One day, as I was tutoring a student in English, we kept on adding an “er” sound at the end of many English words. This is a common “accent” in Chinese, called the Beijing accent. In jest, I told him he was like a Beijing person, adding “er” at the end of words. He replied, “it’d be great if I were a Beijing person, then I wouldn’t have to do all this.”
This off-the-cuff remark was the first one I heard from the students about their personal lives. It was a poignant reminder that despite how content the students may seem on the outside, they wouldn’t be here if they had a better option. Most of the students won’t go to high school after this. Many will go straight into the workplace, while others go onto vocational schooling. This was a sobering reminder that I’m not just here to play English games with the students. We are here to make as large of a positive difference in the student’s lives as we can in the short period of time we are here.