#changzou

The past three days my school had an event that involved doing the same 15-minute activity repeatedly for various groups of kids. It was both gratifying and exhausting. I was able to see hundreds of kids--some my own students, but most not--ranging from almost too young to talk to teenagers who looked like they'd prefer hanging with their friends elsewhere.

The activity itself was making paper tacos. My job was to make sure the kids enjoyed themselves while possibly sneaking a little learning in. And while I've been working with Chinese kids for the past eight months, some things still surprised me.

Here are a few:

no matter what age group, they all took absolute pleasure and joy in the simple acts of crumpling and tearing paper

for some kids, tearing paper at random is impossible; they must fold it and then tear along the lines

sometimes a simple "Great job!" can make a child's face light up

apparently my students like me more when I'm not actually teaching them; I got several exuberant hugs from some not-so-enthusiastic students

handing out things for a teacher is a highly-desired and fought-after job