Dazed and Confucius: Western Academy of Beijing

Confucius say: Well, this Confucius didn’t say much of anything because he was a statue on the grounds of the Western Academy of Beijing, where Sara and I spent eight days working with the Elementary, Middle and High School scholars plus an after school teacher session.

Librarian extraordinaire, Trish McNair – a short cropped redheaded Canuck who has seemingly harnessed the energy of the Calgary Stampede  - shepherded us through our visit, finding us when we were lost, making us espressos when we began to get bleary eyed and never complaining (too loud) when we asked for another print-out of our schedule.

Having thoroughly author visitized the elementary school the preceding week, Sara and I tackled the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade Monday through Thursday and then moved over to the high school on Friday.

We worked on figurative language, memoir and definition poems with the students and presented on vocabulary acquisition and writing across the curriculum for the teachers. The students then had an opportunity to perform their or other’s work at an after school Coffee House Poetry Reading that saw way more hot chocolate being consumed than coffee.

Friday we moved over to the high school and presented on public speaking and the politics poetry during a global issues conference entitled Speak Out. The morning keynote was given in the gymnasium by the US ambassador to China, Gary Locke. Which was cool – but the real highlight was the international lunch where all the different nationalities comprising the student body of WAB present native cuisine for the epicurean pleasure of students, staff and presenters. Extra super yum.

The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round

To get to the International School of Beijing from the Lido (pronounced lee-doo) Hotel, where Sara and I are staying during our visit to the city, we take a bus that picks us up at 7:10am. We wait across the street from our hotel with a dozen or so other teachers including our librarian hostess Nadine,  Starbucks coffees in hand.

Okay, I want to take a little aside here, crossing the street is an accomplishment in itself here in Beijing. In retail one may have heard the adage the customer is always right – in Beijing traffic, the motorist is always top dog – no matter what. Zebra crossings, walk signs, crutches, sudden appearances of deities hold no sway with the Beijingalings behind the wheels of their automobiles. A pedestrian might as well be made from a wisp of smoke as far as they are concerned – make eye contact with one of these drivers and you might as well paint a bull's-eye on your chest. just sayin’…

Anyway, we successfully crossed the street three mornings in a row in order to work with the middle-schoolers. We ran workshops on memoir, metaphor and imagery with the 6, 7 and 8th graders in some very well equipped mini auditoriums with embarrassingly large banners announcing our presence in the school outside the doorways. Even though most of the groups consisted of double classes and the students were writing in their laps we couldn’t have asked for a more successful visit.

The best part was in the evening when I was checking my e-mail after our first day at ISB and I began receiving messages from some of the 8th graders I had worked with during the day. Attached were copies of their writings from the workshops and it was obvious that they had been working on the pieces after the workshop was over. Believe it or not this is the first time I have received so many samples from kids I have worked with so quickly – I don’t care if they probably were getting extra credit for sending hem – it really made my day. (I even forgive the one girl who attached her work as a pdf that ate up half my cell data allowance.)

It’s always a leap of faith by the folks who put their neck on the line to bring a couple crackpot poets from thousands of miles away to infiltrate their classrooms and Sara and I so appreciate their willingness to take the risk. Hopefully, we made them look as good as their students made us look.