Chelsea Li : What brings me to teaching?

Since I was born, l lived with my grandparents. Like other kids, I like listening to stories and always curious about the previous stories about my family members. My grandma was a professor of Psychology. Once, I asked her why she wanted to be a teacher, she told me a long story.

She was born in a small village with two brothers and one sister. After graduated from middle school, they all dropped out of school to get a job as a worker, only my grandma insisted on continuing studies. However, her family was too poor to afford her tuitions, so she always borrowed books from her neighbors. During middle school, she completely finished all her high school studies and then she went straight to college after graduation. She studied hard and finally walked out of the poor village. I admired my grandma as my idol and this is probably the starting point for me to become a teacher.

As I grew up I became more independent than other peers, because my grandma taught me a lot such as how to do housework, face failures and even make friends. But when referred to my study, she merely told me that “Regard learning as pleasure”. The words wandered through my mind like magic. Since then, I never regard learning as a kind of pressure, but more like a challenge, which could stimulate my potential. I think a good teacher might be the one who makes students study happily.

When I was 16 years old, I went to high school and began to accept typical Chinese education. The growing population caused increasingly fierce competition in the job market. This led to the phenomenon that most high schools follow the “Sea” tactics, which means to do a mountain of homework. It did make a lot of students stand out from their peer groups, but it also annoyed a fair number of students, myself included. I even swore that if I ever became a teacher, the first thing I would do would be to abolish the “Sea”.

In 2013, I started my college life. I was so excited that I finally got through three difficult years of high school. However, after a period of relaxation, I started feeling confusion and idleness. By chance, I was introduced to be a teaching assistant at a summer camp by one of my friend. I accepted it without thinking because I really need a part-time job to kill the time and enrich my resume.

The summer camp was aimed at primary school students. Teachers of each class came from different countries, they taught students about their own culture. Eventually, I was assigned to the American class. The American teacher was full of energy, he taught the students knowledge by playing games, focus on edutainment instead of pragmatic which is totally different from Chinese education. We spent all the day with my students having classes and playing games. Although the summer camp only has a short five days, I could feel the enthusiasm of the children and their desire for knowledge. It's a stark contrast to my previous life.

At the last day closing ceremony, the children cried a lot. They possess the purest heart. They show gratitude and love to me just because I taught them knowledge and brought them joy. I not only got a sense of accomplishment but also learned and made progress from that. Since then, I have been working as a teaching assistant every year. I think this is probably what I love.