At Dandelion, there are two students who are assigned to be the representatives for each subject class (English, Chinese, etc). They're supposed to help out the teacher, for example by carrying all the students' work to the teacher's desk. However, normally I just carry back their books myself because there aren't that many.
One day, Carter, my English class representative, carried all the dictation books back by himself, instead of carrying them with Linda, the other class representative. The top shelf, where I told him to put the books, comes up to approximately Carter's chest. He struggled to lift the books up to this height and ended up dropping them all because he his arms physically couldn't lift them.
Admittedly, most of the guys in 7th grade haven't hit their growth spurts yet, however many of the children at Dandelion are particularly small and thin. Their meals have very little meat or protein. Each student gets one boiled egg on Tuesday and Thursday and one chicken leg on Wednesday. The students also almost never get any fruit. My students range from 13-15 years of age, but most of them look half their age. One of my students said that volunteers who come to their school always say they look 7-8 years old. Many of our students complain about being hungry during the day.
Our student's smallness was especially apparent in comparison to the middle schoolers we saw during our Enrichment trip to Changsha. I couldn't believe that one of them was only 12 years old, because she looked so much older than my students, not in a premature aging sense, just in terms of normal growth and development. The middle schoolers we saw would have looked very out of place if they sat down in one of our classes.
Even though one of Dandelion's larger issues is lack of funding for nutritious meals, I think they do very well with what they have to provide the students with balanced, good tasting meals. The meals always have plenty of vegetables, and honestly taste better than school lunches I had during K-12. Everything is freshly prepared and cooked everytRecently, they even starting giving the students an extra piece of bread before they go to sleep.
One day, Carter, my English class representative, carried all the dictation books back by himself, instead of carrying them with Linda, the other class representative. The top shelf, where I told him to put the books, comes up to approximately Carter's chest. He struggled to lift the books up to this height and ended up dropping them all because he his arms physically couldn't lift them.
Admittedly, most of the guys in 7th grade haven't hit their growth spurts yet, however many of the children at Dandelion are particularly small and thin. Their meals have very little meat or protein. Each student gets one boiled egg on Tuesday and Thursday and one chicken leg on Wednesday. The students also almost never get any fruit. My students range from 13-15 years of age, but most of them look half their age. One of my students said that volunteers who come to their school always say they look 7-8 years old. Many of our students complain about being hungry during the day.
Our student's smallness was especially apparent in comparison to the middle schoolers we saw during our Enrichment trip to Changsha. I couldn't believe that one of them was only 12 years old, because she looked so much older than my students, not in a premature aging sense, just in terms of normal growth and development. The middle schoolers we saw would have looked very out of place if they sat down in one of our classes.
Even though one of Dandelion's larger issues is lack of funding for nutritious meals, I think they do very well with what they have to provide the students with balanced, good tasting meals. The meals always have plenty of vegetables, and honestly taste better than school lunches I had during K-12. Everything is freshly prepared and cooked everytRecently, they even starting giving the students an extra piece of bread before they go to sleep.