Saplings and young trees in the garden - A snapshot of CCBG high schoolers
Gisela Jia
Each year, more and more CCBG students are entering middle and high schools, with a few already in colleges. As long-time teachers working in this "garden", we are literally seeing sprouts shooting up, turning into saplings and young trees, which we need to look up to, in many senses.
On this April day of the year 2023, we get such a snapshot -
S., a 10th grader, working on his AP Chinese exam
S. joined CCBG at age 5. He took our school year classes, and attended our summer camp most of the years. When entering 6th grade, he had the choice of Chinese and other languages. He chose Chinese. We thought our working relationship would end then, but little did we expect, these past five years from 6th to 10th grade, in addition to multiple days of Chinese classes in his regular school, he has kept his Chinese class in CCBG going.
For the many mock AP tests I've done with him, he scored in the range of 4 to 5. Based on the grading criteria, a score of 5 is "reserved" for native speakers, and 4 is pretty much the highest a child growing up in a non-Chinese speaking home can obtain.
On a recent Sunday, before a mock test, I chatted with S. about his grandparents, as a way to relax. He told me about his paternal grandfather, who managed to climb up a fence to get to India from the Pakistan side that was previously India; how he met his wife; how they immigrated to UK; how they've remained vegetarian their entire lives. After the mock test, I took S. to get some dim sum, and we walked and chatted all the way about his school, his track and field event the following day. All of the chatting was done in Mandarin. I chatted with him like a young friend who is fresh from China.
V., a 9th grader who loves language analyses and cultures
V. joined CCBG as a 3rd grader. At that time, she didn't speak a sentence of Mandarin (although she could understand a lot of Cantonese and limited Mandarin). She has done school year classes in CCBG since then. Just like S., she has also taken middle and high school Chinese class in her regular school. Also like S., she doesn't speak Mandarin at home.
In this school year (2022-23), V. is studying CCBG Level 6 - the mountains and rivers of China. All reading and discussions are in Mandarin. Due to her limited time available, we're teaching her online on Saturdays for 50 minutes, and she has very little time to do CCBG homework.
But she's growing and budding. She consistently speaks with a genuine and wholistic interest in the language and culture.
When we learned about the ancient city of Li-jiang (丽江古城), she uttered a remark “太美了,我想去这个地方!” (It's so pretty. I want to go to that place!)
When we were studying Article 3 entitled 《中国人爱山》(Chinese Love Mountains), I asked her one of my favorite critical & cultural analysis questions: 为什么中国人常常把寺庙该在很高的山上、人们要很辛苦地爬上去祭拜?(Why do Chinese often build temples on top of high mountains and worshippers need to do such hard work to climb up to get to them?) V. thought for only a few seconds and said -
“当人们祈祷时,很安静,人们可以和神仙聊一聊。”
(When people pray, it's very quiet there. People feel they are chatting with the Gods.)
Then, immediately, she added -
“如果你真想去拜佛,肯定不怕辛苦去爬山。神会看你,说,他很 loyal, 会帮助你的。“
(If you really want to pray, for sure you'll not mind the hardship. God will look at you, and say 'He's so loyal.' And God will help you.)
Note, this question is not about religion. This is about practicing perspective taking skills - the perspectives of the Chinese who built those temples, of the Chinese who climbed up the mountains, and of the Gods and Goddesses. V. for sure has used and sharpened her perspective taking skills while learning Chinese.
In a recent class, V. translated "羡慕“ as "jealous". I told her "jealous" is “嫉妒”, and asked her to be sure to say to others "我真羡慕你“ (I'm so envious of you") instead of "我真嫉妒你“ (I'm so jealous of you"), and she totally got the humor and laughed. V. then asked about "吃醋". I said this word, literally meaning "eat vinegar", means "jealous", but only in romantic relationships. Her eyes lit up with the light of understanding. I felt so good because I am so certain that the grasping of such nuances in these expressions will empower a child of V.'s age by allowing her to see that Chinese language is a useful tool to express ideas of certain relevant and significance.
I recently explained to her that the common radical in characters like 远, 运,道 (zou zhi pang) has to do with movements across distances.
Each time, after such an analysis, V. would let out a sigh of relief, pleasure and appreciation, followed by a heart-felt “谢谢你!” (Thank you!)
S. a 9th grader who has made Chinese part of her life
When I first met S., she was 5 years old. Seeing that she was so talkative in English and moved around the classrooms with such great energy, I had a hard time imaging that she would utilize the weekly 2-hour classes effectively for some structured practices. So I told her mom E. to wait.
E. brought S. back the next year when S. turned 6 and she has been with us since then. S. came to us with not one word of Mandarin understood or spoken. Nobody in her home knows any Mandarin. She had good friends in school who spoke Mandarin, and that was enough to get her curious.
Throughout her elementary school years, we felt S.'s learning was an uphill battle. She passed a CCBG level during the school year, and then lost a lot of it in the long months of summer. But, during the school year, she rarely missed any class, and always did her homework.
These annual forward and back moves added up, and around the time of 7-8th grade, teachers suddenly felt that S. got it - the language had stuck in her head!
Then, in the Fall of 2023, she entered high school, chose to take Chinese language class, and also chose to continue coming to CCBG. These days, every Tuesday, I only catch glimpses of S. when she is mingling with her long-time teachers Lei and Amy, with younger students, chatting in Mandarin, writing furiously on her thick workbooks in Chinese characters, and mostly importantly, always wearing a big smile!
Recently, a Brooklyn College intern who majors in Chinese language teaching worked with S. for a session. The intern, in her early 20s, who is a native speaker and immigrated to the US in her early teens and speaks Mandarin at home all the time, told me "S. knows how to read and write more characters than I do. I get to improve my Chinese!"
L., a 9th grader and a trilingual
L. joined CCBG and started Level 1 in third grade, together with her sister who was in 1st grade. He has been taking CCBG regular school year classes, and each summer, doing the CCBG summer camp.
Just like V., with his limited time, we teach him online on Saturdays for 50 minutes per week and he has little time for Chinese homework.
Different from S. and V., L. has not taken Chinese classes in his regular school. As a result, he speaks and read less fluently than them. But still, he can carry out any daily conversations, and discuss in-depth topics of Level 6 like they do.
When asked to offer his explanation of why the ancient philosopher Zhuang Zi 庄子 articulated this nuanced connection between people and nature "智者爱水,仁者爱山“ (Wise people love water; benevolent people love mountains", L. replied
"因为水有很多用处,很 flexible; 山很稳、不变、reliable".
(Because water has many usages, and it's flexible; mountains are stable, unchangeable thus reliable.)
One sign of strong listening comprehension is to capture words you don't know while listening to Mandarin. While doing guided listening of a video about the stone carved Buddhism scriptures on Tai Mountain, L. stopped me and asked what "洋洋洒洒" means, and showed evident wonderment when learning that it means characters and words flow gracefully on a surface (meaning effortless writing).
Of course there's a long way to go. When I asked L. to explain what “天下太平了” means, he said "The world is too flat." That led to a good discussion of the multiple layers of meanings of this word, and how it means "at peace" here.
Not taking Chinese in his regular school, L. has been studying French in middle and high school. I've learned that he speaks and reads French fluently. I've asked him to say classic Chinese expressions in French to hone in on the common essence of languages, as I've done with students who are learning Spanish and Latin.
K., a 12th grader who told us what he wants to learn
I first met K. in 5th grade. He came in with his 3rd grade younger brother for the interview. I still remember how I played ping pong with them.
Fast forward, now he is in the 12th grade, making final decisions on his college. Since I met him in the 5th grade, he has only paused in CCBG in the Fall of his 12th grade due to his college applications.
In the Spring of his 12th grade, he emailed to say that he was done with college applications, and wanted to get back to Chinese.
I had an online brainstorm meeting with him. I asked him what he wanted to study during the last few months. He said he wanted to learn more about Chinese history, about modern China, about Chinese immigration, and everyday life dealings in Chinese.
We ended up with a combo plan. K. reads Iris Chang's classic Chinese in America, tackles the long and nuanced Chinese conversations in Integrated Chinese: All Things Considered (a textbook representing the highest level of Chinese achievements in high school Chinese classrooms), reviews what he learned before with us such as the Battle of the Red Cliff 《赤壁之战》 during the Three Kingdom era. For his recent class trip to the Galapagos Island, I asked him to do a presentation of what he's learned about the animal habitats.
K. and his brother are by nature rather quiet children (at least in our class rooms). I don't have memories of them talking effusively in Chinese or in English. However, from the 5th grade to the 11th grade, they rarely missed classes, always did their homework, paid attention to teachers corrections but didn't become anxious about those.
I know that the stories and conversations in our curriculum, being in the making and with a lot of room to improve, are not that exciting to children. But I remember, the first year of the pandemic, K. and his brother were studying Level 5. I taught them online. For each of the Units 81-100, any time I displayed a short story (with no pinyin), a page of math questions in Chinese, and asked my routine question, “这个你们做了吗?” There was, always, the quiet and gentle nodding of their head, and then, I could always count on a full understanding of the content, including a story like 《马先生为什么变得礼貌了》, a culturally nuanced story of hypocrisy and company politics.
Ending thoughts -
Most of these students' Chinese growth project has been done on the home front with parents being the architects. There are convictions, negotiations, inspirations, and most importantly, loving care with a vision that is wholistic and individually tailored to each child thus is beyond my horizon of a Chinese class. CCBG teachers including me are just lucky to have been pulled into the process of witnessing the growth of these sprouts, saplings and trees.
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