The back-row boys are always the hardest ones to reach. The confident students, the ones excited to see you who want to engage with you always get to class early and go right to the front row. They’re the ones you want to invite to lunch after class. The back-row boys? Not so much. They avoid eye contact, talk to themselves in Mandarin as you try to teach English, and don’t bring any paper or even a pencil to class just as an extra little sign to you that they aren’t fully there.
When Jacki, one of our English Week team members, walked into the classroom where she was teaching for the first time, she smiled at her first-row friends and then looked at those back-row boys. From the very start, she made a decision to pursue them no matter how hard it would be. She started teaching with her husband Bruce, using the curriculum Mark and I have been putting together over the last several months, and used every opportunity to physically make herself present in the back of the room and directly engage those boys. She wasn’t sure if her efforts that Monday morning made a difference. When Bruce and Jacki walked into their classroom a few minutes before class was to begin on Wednesday, those back-row boys were not in the back row; they were in the front row. The same boys whose very body language and physical placement had sent the message of “I am only here because I have to be. I am not interested in this class or in you. I will not connect with you. I cannot connect with you” were now sending an entirely different message. Their heads were up. They were smiling in response. They were ready for class. They were ready for relationship. Bruce and Jacki continued pursuing them, using every tool in their toolbox to encourage those students, becoming more like a mother and father or friend than distant, uninterested professors. Those boys showed up together to the all the remaining activities we offered on campus—unstructured times to practice English conversation, English nights with singing and a lecture, an American dance night complete with the hokey pokey, electric slide, and bunny hop among other whammies. When Bruce and Jacki taught on Friday, their class size was actually larger. Not only were those boys in the front row again but they brought friends. They actually brought friends to class who were not registered for that class just so they could experience Bruce and Jacki. Incredible.
American Dance Night.
One of the English Nights. We sing songs like “You Belong to Me” and “You Don’t Know You’re Beautiful” and then listen to a lecture from one of the team members.
On Saturday, before our team left the campus, those boys said yes to Bruce and Jacki’s invitation to join them for lunch, and the full-time teacher we have at that school joined them. There at a simple cafeteria table in a noisy “canteen,” we witnessed a perfect picture of the depth of this work. Full-time teachers are in place at each of the universities, pursuing students, teaching everyday, using every opportunity with those who are put before them. English Week teams come once a year, are given access to a greater number of students our teachers never get access to, give those students their 110% for a week, and then gracefully connect them to and hand them off to our full-time teachers to continue building on the relationship foundations that were started. It works. It’s how we’ve seen the students we’d label as the most unlikely become changed.
We knew this English Week would be one for the books with three members of our own family serving together for the first time. Ashlyn was amazing, larger than life. She willingly missed all her 5th grade graduation fun times to work hard in China, patiently enduring all the students’ photo shoots with her and participating in every activity including teaching in a classroom (and wearing a skirt!). She was the rockstar we expected and had girls crying as they hugged her goodbye at the end of the week. In a letter she wrote to the peeps who helped her go, she shared that she believes her life has been changed through this trip—and she’s informed us that she plans on going back every year and going back as a full-time teacher once she’s out of college. Hmmm….
Jet lag has rocked us this time. I don’t know why this trip has been harder than others. Maybe because our first day back was the last day of school and the sheer number of children in our home seems to have multiplied. With our full-caff coffee in hand and bags under our eyes yesterday, we got word that we have the green light to lead a team to a brand new university in Baoding in October. Wow. So, while I’m still leading the team to the orphanage, Mark will be boarding a plane to come over to China as well to lead a team to this school for their first ever English Week. Now, we just need to fill the team. Know anyone who may want to be a world changer and build some friendships with some back-row boys?
Me. with my easy-to-love front-row girls.