The Jiafang – 家访

I’ve made many promises to get back on the blogging bandwagon, and then I go and fall right back off again, so I will make no such promises now.  Can’t hurt to be hopeful, though!

Since I last wrote about my 4^th graders, my relationship with them has come a long way, thanks in a large part to Molly.  She was the first of my students to invite me to her home to meet her family.  Home visits are an established part of teaching in China; all of us teachers go on them pretty regularly.  They’re a valuable investment tool because they give us a chance to show our students that we care about their lives outside of the classroom.

Until Molly, however, I’d mostly viewed home visits as a remedial measure, something done when a student was especially misbehaving or on the verge of dropping out of school.  Molly was a lovely, quiet little girl who I’d never given much thought to.  She invited me to her home because she just really wanted me to meet her Mom!

One Friday afternoon Kaede and I set off with Molly and several other 4^th graders on the 30-minute walk to her home.  Before we left, Molly gave us the option of the beautiful “small road” or the less beautiful “large road.”  We clearly went for the beautiful option, which ended up being more of a bushwhacking path down through rice paddies into the valley and then back up the other side of the mountain, to where Molly’s home was nestled in the slope.  We’d brought all of our things with us for our weekend in the city because we planned to head into Lincang directly from Molly’s home.

View of the valley and the other side of the mountain from Molly's home.

A few minutes into our journey I learned the Chinese word for mud.  It had rained recently and my flip-flops were getting stuck in the packed dirt paths between the rice paddies.  My students instantly tried to remedy the problem by running to grab dried bunches of rice crop and throw them in front of us to make a path.  We felt a little like royalty as they scrambled to make this path for us, but I let it happen because I was starting to be genuinely worried that I’d slip on the muddy, one-foot wide path and fall into the rice paddy that was at least a five foot drop below me.

Just as we began the ascent up the other side of the mountain it started to rain again.  My students rushed to help us with our things, hold umbrella’s over us, and continue to help us with the path.  Kaede and I were soaked, mud up to our knees, not quite knowing where we were going or how’d we get back.  My flip-flops were getting so stuck in the mud that one of my students insisted on holding them for me, and I completed the rest of the journey bare-foot.  My students got so worried that my bag would weigh me down and I’d fall that the group of ten year olds started standing behind me, literally pushing me up the mountain.  That’s an image I’ll hold with me for a while.

We arrived at her house, the sky cleared, and we washed the mud from our feet and shins.  It turned out that her mother was still out in the fields, her older sister worked at a factory in Kunming, and her father had recently died, so we went exploring the area with all of the local children.   Her home was attached to what appeared to be an abandoned oil refinery.

Emma, Samantha, Annie, and Molly next door to Molly's house.

Annie, Molly, Jenny (top row from left) and Samantha, Emma, and an unnamed 1st grader (bottom from left).

The walk up from her house to some other student's homes.

It was clear that it meant a lot to Molly that we were there, that of all of the students in the 4^th grade, it was her house we trudged through the mud to get to.  Ever since that visit, Molly has gone from a sweet student to an OUTSTANDING student.  She never stops practicing her English and her grades are exemplary.  This whole experience made me realize that the home visit might actually be most beneficial for students like Molly, students who are good but need that little push the become great.  In this context, it’s only the great students that have any hope of going on to high school, and in a lot of ways it’s my job to light that extra fire in these kids to make them work and strive for that opportunity.