The Classroom Curmudgeon: Summer Camp, Part I

The next few postings build upon my personal experience. Last week I stayed for three days to participate in the five-day Ai Tsai Jia Wan summer camp in Hualien County's Shou Lin Township. The camp is within the Jia Wan Community, an area dominated largely by the Truku Tribal people. The summer camp is run by a retired elementary teacher, Mrs. Tien, who with her recently deceased husband started this venture approximately five years ago. She actually opens her private classrooms to private groups that want to offer afternoon arts or teaching camps in the summers, while for the rest of the year she keeps the facilities available for evening tutoring. Her property is a safe place for the children to spend their after school hours.

My participation in this camp was supposed to be the teaching of Western Chess, but my actual usefulness seems to have nothing to do with my “teaching” skills. As I expected, it is my “physical presence” that is proving most interesting and perhaps valuable for the children. This may sound odd, but I suspect that the children of this area have few opportunities to interact with white persons. From past experience I expected and did not reject the children’s focus on my body. I did not discourage their interest in my body hair—my “fur” as I jokingly called it, referring to myself as a big monkey. I allowed them to stroke my arms, and even let one young girl experiment with pulling out a few hairs to see if it hurt. “A little,” I told her. Why was she surprised that I would feel pain? The children were also fascinated by my blue eyes, a feature of me that I often overlook.

Where is the benefit of this fascination with my physical difference, the markers of my European ancestry? Here I have to make a wild leap of logic, but I suggest that experiencing a “friendly foreign presence” at such a young age may, as these children mature, leave a mark on the subconscious that will someday allow a young adult student to enter the challenging university classroom with a greater sense of confidence. They may be less afraid of “foreign” teachers, less anxious about speaking with their international professors, less worried about using the English they've been taught. In the classroom setting they may be more willing to ask questions, to seek clarification, to challenge for the purpose of learning.

My excellent colleague Professor Chang Ya-ling wonders about my joy at the prospect of these children someday "challenging authority," for she sees authority as all-important in their tribal cultural community. I suggest that this is true, and while she says this authority is “military based,” I add that it is different from our Euro-American and Sino-Taiwanese notions of martial power. The indigenous concept of authority is based on respect, not sheer dominance through force. The tribal chief is respected for his abilities as a leader, a hunter, a provider, a protector.

Also, it is our hope that these children will enter the university system and complete the "educational goals" established for them by the system that none of us will ever have the power to change. We want them to achieve in learning new information and applying that knowledge toward expanding their own creativity and wisdom. This skill should then be brought back to their indigenous community to help lead the tribes into a positive future.

Of course, it was more than my physical presence that might have been of benefit to the children last night. Nor was I alone. Let me describe what I can of last evening's playtime with the children.

Simple Conversation. Being able to talk to the children in Mandarin was a good experience for me, and for them. The children were fascinated to learn that a person can have an animal surname: “fox.” They also asked me about the Chinese zodiac, what my nimal sign is:“ox.” They then asked me what was my favorite of the 12 animals: “ox.” And of course, I couldn't help going into my spiel about pigs as intelligent and even dangerous beasts, anything but cute. I told the children about my small menagerie of pets past and present, and that inspired one young lady to run home to retrieve her pet tortoise, which she found in the wild and has since done a surprisingly wonderful job of taming. She held it and stroked its head and even offered it the closest approximation of a kiss that could be mustered—even if it was more like a Maori nose-to-nose greeting.

One young boy was more bold in speaking to me, taking on the challenge of using English in his discussion. That's how I learned that his main academic interest is mathematics, a topic that he returned to later on in the evening as he tried to explain that in math he's at the top of his class.

Creative Endeavor. When my colleague Olivia Chang and I returned from dropping off one of our former students at the train station, we found that Amay—a doctoral student at Arizona State University—had pulled out the watercolors and blank paper, and put the children to work using the brushes that Olivia had given them. The child in me came to the surface . . . the child, or the frustrated artist? Either way, I sat down, took up a brush, and dived into the challenge of painting my own masterpiece. How funny, even just by playing with colors I revealed something about my personality: what started out as light and vibrant colors quickly eroded into shadows and dark colors. Compare my own vision of horror to the bright optimism in the children's paintings. Oh, what a troubled mind is at work within me. How encouraging it is to see that children still keep joy at the center of their hearts. They have much to teach us.

Games and Entertainment. Singing is always a challenging activity that helps break down barriers and get people comfortable with each other. But when I was asked for a “happy” song, I was silenced by my inability to recall the full lyrics of even one generally upbeat tune. Fortunately, two of the girls piped up with cheery songs in English, including an old standard that is obviously edited for learners: “If you're happy happy happy clap your hands....” I tried to give them the lyrics that got me through too many elementary school music lessons, supplementing with lots of “actions” like foot stomping, eye winking, head tapping, and the like. Later in the evening, two young boys were completely comfortable in performing for us a dance routine that they have been practicing and which they say will be ready by Friday afternoon. Their musical accompaniment was a cell phone.

This brings me to one note of importance. These children seem to have bonded into a strong group that functions without embarrassment. They know each other quite well, and are not inhibited by the shyness and embarrassment that I see in the interactions of other children in Taipei. Indeed, it would be rare to see children performing a dance routine in front of other children, no less their classmates. I have seen this comfort with public performance in my aboriginal student, Ruby.

Helianthus, just a little worn down after exploring the joys of childhood again.
After the dance performance, the children pulled our former student and fellow volunteer into their circle for a few games before heading home for the evening. Helianthus graduated last month, and will be heading to graduate school in September. She and her former classmate Phil were wonderfully generous in joining this summer camp. They are teaching the children how to edit video on the school's computers. Last night Helianthus was also teaching them that a “teacher” can also be a pretty fun kid to hang around with. Earlier in the day they had dragged her into a wild game of dodge ball, and in the evening it was a version of “musical chairs” and “truth or dare” that had her behaving like a child again.

This afternoon we will be taking the children on a field trip to visit the Amis tribe in Hualien’s Guan Fu Shan. This will be one of their few opportunities to see, and hopefully interact, with their neighboring tribal communities.
The afternoon's adventures await us...