I had prepped for something else. I planned to do a repeat of the Simple Interactions training I had done last year, going a bit deeper, training the trainers. I had been met with yeses along the way. Until I wasn’t. And, nothing was going to be what I planned.
That’s kind of how things go in China. I knew that. I know that. And, yet, every time it happens, I act like a good girl, nodding my head and saying okay on the outside and wringing my hands on the inside.
They still wanted a staff training though. Thursday afternoon, they told me. We are looking forward to it, they told me. I nodded my head and smiled. I am too, I told them.
I stayed up past midnight, remaking a Power Point, rewriting notes, searching through old video clips, emailing my mentor for more, texting Mark for ideas and help finding things that I couldn’t find fast enough with all my world wide web limitations. Somewhere along the way, I stopped wringing my hands and started enjoying the process.
By the time I walked into the conference room, the smile I gave to the front-row administrators and the working staff in their pink sweatsuits in the rows behind them was the real thing. And, the message I offered them really wasn’t any different than the message I had planned.
We can give children good programs, research-based curriculum, the best computers and equipment…build the prettiest facilities with light-up music notes…but the best indicator of long-term success is simply relationship. In fact, we were made for relationship. Relationship is the key ingredient that makes all those other good things we have to offer work. There is nothing that can take the place of it–for the children and for us.
They sat up a little higher in their chairs and I could literally see their understanding grow as they started to see that this was not another in-service training that might tell them what they do that they need to do better or give them more they need to do.
I showed them videos of them caught last year and celebrated the connections evident there. And, I encouraged them that the most significant work that can be done is not what happens in the spotlight but the deep and simple interactions we have with children and with each other everyday. Those deep and simple interactions change us and grow us and help us to become the people we were created to be.
When I finished, I closed up my computer, an administrator closed up the training and dismissed them and no one moved. So, I opened my computer back up and invited them to ask questions. And, they did. Questions about how adopted children adjust to life in America, about what is hard for them, about if they still see themselves as Chinese once they no longer live there, and how we talk to them about where they come from. I offered some answers as I could. They listened. I listened. They offered me so much more.
I can’t imagine the afternoon being any different.