(Post on behalf of Duan)

In the past year, the meaning of my work has become the most common topic of my thoughts. So far I have established about 15 schools for young children, and am currently working with more than 260 children (the numbers is still growing), I have to remind myself to be careful about what our schools are providing to them. Are we doing really good things for them? Do they need what we are giving? Do we really know what we are doing for the children? Do they want to be the way we want them to be? Who gives us the right to cultivate the children as we want? Do we really have the rights? I have so much doubt about my work, because I really hope my students could be a good person and have a good life in the future and I want to contribute the positive power for our education system.

However, what is a good life? Nowadays in China lots of people are in a terrible circulation of their desire and anxiety. The desire makes them feel more anxious, thus they think if they had more they would then worry less. This negative circulation also influences our education philosophy.

For example, when the parents are thinking about sending their child to our school, usually they have worries about what and how we teach. Normally most of them have strong preconceptions about early childhood education. Such as learning as preparation for primary school, learning to be skilled, learning for being a beloved one in the community, learning for being smart enough to protect her/himself, etc. Behind all parents’ opinions there are their unresolved desires and anxiety. They want to be a rich business person, a professional expert, a superstar, a governor, a doctor, a lawyer, even the housewife of a magnate, all in all they want to have an easier life, but now they do not, and they are bearing the powerful pressure with great effort! I also partly understand why they yearn for all this. The main cause is not the greed or the vanity of human beings; it is the unfair social system. As an ordinary person, everything is hard in China, such as finding good schools, hospitals, safe food, even clean air, while the rich and powerful people have the convenience of all the fine resources. On the other hand, the media is encouraging the consumerism because our government wants the GDP to keeps growing quickly. So the parents are also suffering with these problems. Their income is not high enough, their apartment is not like they want, their skin and body shape is not perfect ( more and more mothers ask our teachers to not giving too much food to their daughters because they worry the young girls would be not slim enough in the future. Other parents force their children to eat more, and there are many parents who do not really care what their children eat in the school, instead their concern is what kind of skills they learn in school). Therefore the parents have an unhappy life in this society. I think psychologically most of the parents from a grassroots family have subconscious guilt for their children because of all the reasons above. Now they pass their unrealized desires to the young generation. Because they think it is too hard to provide the fine conditions and friendly environment for the children they are then so afraid their children will lag behind in the competition with others for the limited resources. Under the pressure and feeling guilty, they have very incompatible requirements for our schools. They want their children to learn as much as we can teach without facing any difficulty in our schools. They ask our teachers to take care of their children as best as we can; they worry we let them eat too much or too little; the parents are not satisfied with the air conditioner, it is always too warm or too cold; they ask us to not let them get any little hurts in the school; ask us to teach more words and math. They have forgotten the famous proverb that every Chinese person knows, “becoming the greatest needs suffered of all the bitterest difficulties.”

This is one my biggest my career challenges. Not like the manufacturing production or service industry, where they focus on the satisfaction of their customers, we need to persuade the parents to concur with our education philosophy while also trying to improve our education quality. More and more we noticed that educating the parents’ thoughts and behavior even is more urgent than for the children.

That’s why I often ask the parents same questions I ask myself everyday: what kind of person do we want the child to be? Are we sure s/he would be satisfied in the future with being that kind of person? How can we design their future without asking their thoughts? Are anyone of us really perfect enough to have the right to ask our children to be perfect?

In our school, our plan is to supporting the students being a good person. What does a good person mean? We, all of our staff, have discussed and concurred the values of our team as this: Firstly, to be a good person. That means to be honest, kind, thinking of others more; first of all we need to be a better person for our children.

It is not easy to be a good person though, for adults or children. To be a honest person, we take a higher risk to be cheated by a less honest person; to be kind, we are more easily been hurt our softter heart by a harder one; thinking of others more means thinking of ourselves less at the same time. These are not parents want to happen to their children. It is maybe reasonable, to protect their children parents would like their children to be less selfless. But in our schools, we try to educate the children to be a good person. It is so different compared with most of the schools in China. We do not have the ready-made textbooks for the children, there is no the writing homework for the students, no primary school teaching style classes, no exams. Meanwhile we have a thousand well-chosen picture books from the world; our art teachers are also excellent artists; we introduce the best classical Chinese articles to the children. The students also experience real occupational experiences as a postman, doctor, chef, police in the real working offices in our schools; on the other hand, we never hand feed the children and instead train them to eat by themselves; we remind them to talk and sing gently to avoid disturbing others and also feel the beauty of singing. In the other schools, teachers ask the students to talk and sing very loud. We ask our students to eat slowly and learn to appreciate the food where as other school teachers ask them eat quickly as a competition. When some students are crying we never just ask them to stop as in other schools, we usually agree they cry for a while until they have expressed all the negative emotion and then remind them there are more effective ways to solve the problem because crying can not solve any thing. When someone broke toys or wasted food, instead of preaching or rebuking them, we ask them try to fix by themselves as our only rule is “ take care of and be responsible to yourself, others and the environment”. We even expend lots of effort to make a small field with the children to plant some vegetables when other schools ask them work hard on the textbooks.

We are doing this because we believe if each of us could be a better person then all of us would have an easier life in the future. Not so many parents really agree with our education philosophy, including the educational department of the government. People often are more concern about what they could have now. So besides the daily communication with the parents, we also host free workshops for learning parenting. The good news is they have more sense about it gradually, even slowly. That is really nice hope for my work so far.

As I am writing this, I am facing another big challenge. Since Chinese economic situation is going down since last year, the company I am working for has a serious financial problem like many other companies in China. All the staff have not been paid for three months already, and for me even almost one year. Many staff already left or are leaving, but our education program team is still working for our dreams so far. I don’t know how long we can maintain since so many of us need the salary for the regular life.

I have written too much above maybe. Whenever think of early childhood education I always have too much to share just like I did during APLP. That is my passion, my dream. I believe I am working for a better world for our children.

Hi Dear APLPers!

Thanks for remembering my joke still. This time I would like to share some very COOL experiences during my last week.

Last wednesday, I went to Hangzhou for a 5-day environment friendly summer camp as a volunteer. I stayed with the children and other teachers in my friend’s environmentally friendly hostel. We did many interesting indoor activities, such as painting on the stones, using a piece of wood to make a key ring, and had a garbage classification competition. The most popular one is called True Man Library in the evening. We invited the experts to give workshop for the children. One night a veteran mountaineer shared many breathtaking stories with us, introduced the professional equipment, and trained us how to make knots. It reminded me of Yuan a lot. Another night, three musicians taught us to play ukulele, woo, we were in Hawaii at that moment! Where were you guys? ；）

We were learning how the make the basic knot from the mountaineer. It is called Eight Knot. It looks really like a “8”

Ukulele workshop.  Woo, we can play together!

We also had many wonderful outdoor excises. The children picked the vegetables in the family farm and cooked them at the dinner by themselves. Really delicious! We went to the Pit Park to learn basic geology. 

The colorful Five Senses Children Jungle in the Pit Park.

On the last day, we went to the top of a mountain that is around 800 meters height to fly by para-glider! I flew in the sky even though I had a fever. Since I didn’t have any fear, the coach taught me the extra difficult flare maneuver, that made me even more excited.

Fly Fly Fly!

Besides the unforgettable experience of summer camp in Hangzhou, I had the chance to enjoy two other exhibitions. One is called Celebrating 90 years of dreams by Disney; another is called Yuanmingyuan Imperial Garden-- The Most Beautiful Dream of Qing Dynasty Emperor. Have you guys heard about Yuanmingyuan story? It was the most beautiful garden in the world during Qing dynasty of China (around 150 years ago)  and  it was destroyed by western army from eight countries and Chinese people. It is a very shameful history part of ancient China. The interesting thing is those two exhibitions are all about human’s dream. The former dream is warm, happy and wise; the latter dream was powerful, greedy and sad. Human beings need dreams to create the courage to explore the secrets of the universe, but greedy and selfish dreams could lead people to the hell. I am lucky to have a dream to make the world better by good education. What’s your dream?

What’s your dream?

A magical birthday gift!

Since I was super busy after the Hangzhou trip I almost forgot it is my birthday today. Anyway, I got a magical birthday gift from my students! Please look at the photos!

He is one of my 4 years old students. My teachers told me he has a problem to fall asleep during the nap time for the last 3 months since he came to our school. This noon I told him I am a Kungfu master and I could teach him Kungfu. First I asked him to sit up and play for a while silently instead of lying down. Then I asked him to sit cross-legged. I said: “Now let’s focus on our breath.” As I breathed deeply and slowly beside him, his breath went deeply and slowly also. Then I asked him to close his eyes. He sat by the position that shows in the photo for more than 10 minutes! I could really feel his mind calmed down and we both felt very peaceful.

I thought he might feel tried sitting so long, so I said: “Now you can practice another Kungfu position. Please lie down at right side, put your left hand on your chest, and close you eye, focus on your breath.” He followed my “coaching,” and fell asleep very naturally and peacefully after 2 minutes!

Actually it was my first time to use Yoga to help a young child to sleep. It works so well! I even got shocked by his reaction. I was deeply moved by the peace from the child’s heart.

It is really a magical gift for my birthday from him. If you guys have the problem to fall asleep, maybe you can try Kungfu to help? Or come to China to practice it with our children?;)

That’s all my stories for this July. Thanks for spending time to read them. Wish you guys would like them. Actually I still have many nice or worth things to share with you. But, the time flies too quickly, and my typing is sloooooow, when I am writing this right now, it is already the last day of July.  

So, let’s say Aloha to Matt, the Blogger of August.

Alooooooooooha Maaaaaaatt! How are you dooooooooooing? Where aaaaaaaaaare you now? Now I am moving my slooooooow typing to you. We are looooooking for your adventure stories. 

(Note: This has been posted on Duan's behalf, as she does not have direct access to the blog. - Ahila)

Ni Hao!

How are you, guys? 

We had a lot of rain during the last week so we have had a lot of cool summer days. The weather is so kind for our people in Ruichang and Wuhan. Not hot:-)

One night, our More Fun Education students had a very good outdoor performance for the Ruichang community. As their teacher, I was so proud to see their growth and progress, as well as cooperated with them for the show on the stage.

The 8 years old twins were preparing the comic dialogue in our dancing room. And the 13 and 11 years old students who are from More Fun Leadership Summer Program were practicing their show in our Children’s Town.

We very much enjoyed our show on the stage.

The photo with Lily & Sansan, the dream spirits of More Fun Education. We designed and made the costume. I named them and my mother wrote the story about them.

Last Monday I returned to Wuhan again, the 4th time in one month to meet a visiting delegation from The University of Queensland, Australia. They were a team running the Positive Parenting Program for 36 years. They had a meeting with Professor Feng and other education experts in Hubei University. 

We shared the outcome of our research and ideas of early childhood education and the importance of parenting. As Professor Feng’s assistant and one of the translator, I gave a talk about Chinese Parenting situation.  

Understanding their Australian accents was a challenge for me.

During the meeting, we received positive feedback and comments about about our research outcome.

Professor Feng and Dr. Sanders were giving the gifts to each other. 

The interesting coincidence was Dr. Sanders, the Director of Triple P, and Professor. Feng, both started their education research and running their program in 1978.

During the two days, I went to nearby places for having fun and continuing my Slow Journey for a while. My hometown is really nice, welcome for you all!

Wishing you all a happy summer!

(Note: Posting this on Duan's behalf as she does not have direct access to the blog. - Ahila)

Hi friends!

Hope you are all enjoying your summer time and are also having new experiences and maybe some fun!

The Lisan More Fun Education center has been very busy this summer and that has brought me to Wuhan, China many times.  In June, The Next Generation Working Committee, a department of China government hosted a conference in Wuhan on the topic of China Early Childhood Education Proseminar. In the conference, my Professor Feng Dequan, Modern China’s Father of Early Childhood education gave a two-day workshop for the participants as the main expert. 40 of our teachers from the Lisan More Fun Education Center in Ruichang made the 3 hour train trip to Wuhan for the conference. At the conference I received a happy surprise, receiving “The Distinguish Expert of The Next Generation Working Committee”. Our teachers learned many new information and teaching methods of ECH and they also helped introduce P4C (Philosophy for Children) to the audience of early childhood educators from China. I also gave a talk on early childhood character development and leadership.

Was so surprised to get the Certificate form The Next Generation Working Committee.

Our teachers took the group photo with Professor Feng. The 6^th woman in black and white from right on the second line is my mother. She got a certificate from China Early Childhood Education Association!

The summer has been mostly work for me, although I also discovered this magical hotel resort on East Lake in Wuhan. The place is peaceful with a lovely floating tea house and many antiques and artifacts from ancient China. That was a short break at the East Lake, a very famous nature view of China. I wish someday I can visit there again with APLPers :)

The nice view from my room window

In the yard of the hotel

The lobby is like an art museum.

Welcome you guys come to Wuhan!

Love,

Duan

(Note: Posted this on behalf of Duan Wei - Ahila)

Hi everyone

Something unexpected and rewarding always seems to come up and make life more interesting and rewarding! 

In middle June, me and 2 colleagues visiting from the University of Hawaii were invited to join a group of entertainers. The entertainers are part of the Support for the Back Lands Education by Artists program that visits remote primary and middle schools in China. They entertain the school children with music, dance, and song. Many of the children are being raised by their grandparents while their parents are away working in the large cities. We did not know what to expect at each school or what grades the children would be in, so we had to invent on the fly and on the go!

What we three did for the 4 schools students were the Leadership Workshops. The children were given some question on leadership, such as “Who are the leaders in this room?” “Does anyone else could be the leader?” “If everyone is the leader for ourselves?” “If anyone could be a leader at some part by having certain advantage ?” “If there are some bad leadership?” Wow, APLP being taught in the countryside schools in China!

Then, we introduced the children to awareness of their breath and body using basic yoga techniques. The awareness of themselves and of others is a building block of leadership. We even played some leadership games with the children and young adults in the classroom. Later we were all treated to an outdoor performance of music and song by singers and musicians from Beijing!

Each school and group of children responded differently and moved all of us very much, we even cried!

We wish we can do more for the lovely children!

Introducing the Leadership conception to the students with Gregory Mandryk who is from UH.

Doing the Leadership Workshop for the Grade 9 students.

Doing the Leadership Workshop for the Grade 7 students.

Communicating with the school teacher with Lulu Leng and Gregory Mandryk, they both are from Hawaii University.

Writing the wishes for the primary school students.

Playing the leadership games with the primary school students.

The artists provided wonderful show for the students. 

Note: This post written by Duan Wei, has been posted on her behalf as she does not have direct access to the blog from her location - Ahila.