[Repost] Secrets of the Mountains – Green Children Enter Hebei Dalonghua Hope Primary School

Hap­py green child!Orig­i­nal address:Secrets in the Moun­tains: Green Chil­dren Enter Hebei Dalonghua Hope Pri­ma­ry Schoolauthor:Green Child
 
The ori­gin of this event is inter­est­ing:9At the end of the month, the Green Kids char­i­ty project began devel­op­ing a new ini­tia­tive: a mobile cre­ative class­room. This ini­tia­tive will involve invit­ing pic­ture book researchers and artists to rur­al pri­ma­ry schools to inter­act with chil­dren and encour­age them to cre­ate sto­ries and illus­tra­tions on the spot. These will then be fur­ther processed and pub­lished in Green Kids, demon­strat­ing to teach­ers and chil­dren cov­ered by Green Kids how to dis­cov­er the joys of their sur­round­ings. This ini­tia­tive aims to achieve Green Kids’ found­ing goal: to extract inter­est­ing ele­ments from rur­al life and allow chil­dren to col­lab­o­rate with artists and writ­ers to cre­ate pic­ture book sto­ries.

 
In order to fur­ther under­stand the actu­al sit­u­a­tion of teach­ers and chil­dren in the school,10At the begin­ning of the month, we start­ed to select sev­er­al schools for tri­al. Hebei Dalonghua Hope Pri­ma­ry School was one of them. Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, a Tai­wanese com­pa­ny head­quar­tered in Shang­di approached me to dis­cuss the pos­si­bil­i­ty of joint­ly plan­ning a cor­po­rate social respon­si­bil­i­ty (CSR) plan. I sug­gest com­bin­ing the com­pa­ny’s autumn out­ing with Green Kids’ cre­ative class­es, so that employ­ees can not only trav­el to places like Langya Moun­tain but also have a mod­er­ate expe­ri­ence by read­ing with the chil­dren. After inter­act­ing with the chil­dren, employ­ees can be encour­aged to form pen pals with pri­ma­ry school stu­dents. Care for these chil­dren through reg­u­lar cor­re­spon­dence. After all, one or two activ­i­ties can only bring lim­it­ed ben­e­fits to the chil­dren, and even less can be retained. Every­one’s ener­gy is lim­it­ed, and only things that can pro­duce long-term effects are worth the effort. So, an “Employ­ee Autumn Out­ing”+Hope Pri­ma­ry School Activ­i­ties+The activ­i­ty plan of “Cre­ative Class­room” was just released.

 
This time, I led the Green Kids out­ing. In addi­tion to Teacher Xiong, there were Teacher Yang and Teacher Liu from the Cen­tral Acad­e­my of Fine Arts. In addi­tion, there were two lit­tle guys—8Tiant­ian and6Along the way, every­one talked about where they were going. Except for me, they were all going to the Hope Pri­ma­ry School next to the West­ern Qing Tombs for the first time. It was almost noon when we arrived at the school.48vol­un­teers are already there, and they brought2000A vari­ety of new books (the prin­ci­pal lat­er looked through a few and was reas­sured, say­ing: “The books you brought are very suit­able for chil­dren to read, and I also like to read them. I am afraid that there will be a sit­u­a­tion where “giv­ing love is not warm” — refer­ring to the dona­tion of used books). A sim­ple lunch (mil­let por­ridge+stew+The pan­cakes are real­ly deli­cious, which is one of the secrets of the moun­tains. We start­ed to divide into groups. Although it was Sat­ur­day, the board­ing school still had class­es, not for exams but to save the stu­dents who lived far away from home from trav­el­ing. There­fore, when plan­ning, we includ­ed read­ing in the class./Time for sports activ­i­ties1Point to2:30, so as not to affect the chil­dren’s after­noon class­es.

 
There are four class­es in the fourth grade, two of which are for read­ing and two for phys­i­cal edu­ca­tion.6Cor­po­rate vol­un­teers entered four (4) class, each per­son leads8Stu­dents par­tic­i­pat­ed in the read­ing activ­i­ty. Teacher Yang brought a few pic­ture books with her and after a brief self-intro­duc­tion, she began to read to the chil­dren. The lit­tle ones got clos­er and clos­er, until their heads were almost touch­ing. Teacher Liu used the sto­ry “Grand­pa Becomes a Ghost” to dis­cuss the details with the chil­dren while read­ing. Lat­er, they even learned to make ghost calls togeth­er.2Around 12:00, I went to the play­ground to watch the oth­er two class­es’ sports activ­i­ties. Unex­pect­ed­ly, half a year lat­er, the fourth (2The kids in my class rec­og­nized me right away. I was so excit­ed that I asked these acquain­tances to take a pho­to togeth­er.

2At 12:30, the cor­po­rate vol­un­teers took a group pho­to and left the school. The chil­dren returned to their class­es.4) class was doing a “Secrets of the Moun­tains” activ­i­ty. The inspi­ra­tion for this activ­i­ty was Teacher Yang’s word­less pic­ture book, “Secrets of the Seabed.” We con­tin­ued our tra­di­tion of open­ing with a pic­ture book. I began by talk­ing about the book, then shift­ed the con­ver­sa­tion and asked the chil­dren, “What secrets are there in the moun­tains?” It was a live­ly scene, with the chil­dren eager­ly describ­ing the ani­mals and plants they had seen…

 
The first boy to come up was a chub­by boy. He was very seri­ous and demand­ed strict­ness from the painter uncle, with­out any ambi­gu­i­ty. “I’m talk­ing about mag­pies. Their beaks aren’t like this… Yeah, that’s right. Hey, a longer tail…” His rig­or amused Teacher Xiong.

The next per­son to come up was a some­what shy girl. Teacher Xiong encour­aged her to draw with chalk by her­self. Now, the chil­dren sit­ting below became even more excit­ed and start­ed shout­ing.

Well, those who are pre­pared can4“Every­one, take anoth­er look at the details in the book we just read.”

 
 
What are you all look­ing out the win­dow at? Why is Teacher Xiong draw­ing again?
 
Aha, if you look close­ly, you can see a few leisure­ly guys in the dis­tance.

There are ani­mals, plants, and even naughty chil­dren in the moun­tains. Okay, I’ll use you as my rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

 
Hey, you drew all my red cheeks.

 
The oth­er stu­dents could­n’t sit still any longer.

See­ing that there were more rab­bits, Teacher Xiong took action again.

After rounds of cre­ation, our big pic­ture is out!

 
The chil­dren looked at the black­board with great joy, admir­ing their own draw­ings or those of their friends. Next, we had them write about “The Secret of the Moun­tain.” They want­ed to draw from real, inter­est­ing sto­ries in their own lives. They were used to imi­tat­ing, just like Bird Hero’s sto­ry last time: “A dozen peo­ple who could­n’t ride bicy­cles fab­ri­cat­ed a sto­ry about falling into a ditch while rid­ing them.” Teacher Xiong said, “Then let’s take a good piece and have them imi­tate it.” Using “The Secret of the Sea” as a tem­plate, the imi­ta­tions should be of com­pa­ra­ble qual­i­ty. In fact, when I lat­er com­piled the man­u­scripts, I found that the chil­dren’s think­ing lim­i­ta­tions were still very appar­ent. Unlike my pre­vi­ous anx­i­ety, this time, I tried to find the bright spots in their work.
I told myself that it’s okay, just take it slow, and these seeds will even­tu­al­ly sprout.