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Virtual classrooms for real English lessons
From:Shanghai Daily  |  2018-12-26 08:29

Expats in Shanghai who teach English to underprivileged migrant and rural children for the nonprofit Stepping Stones organization often continue their work even after they leave China.

In early 2017, Stepping Stones introduced a video-link program that allows volunteers to continue their teaching, wherever they are.

One of the volunteers is Nola Clark, who taught in a school in Minhang District for three years before returning to Australia. She then taught in a virtual classroom in Fengxian District.

“I really missed my Shanghai experience, so when I heard about the new program, I was very keen to be part of it,” said Clark, who is trained to teach English as a second language.

She is provided with a PowerPoint lesson every week before her class and spends about an hour tailoring it to her personal teaching style.

She often uses props to illustrate teaching points and a small white board for games.

“In this type of teaching, you need to be creative,” she says. “If it was just a matter of repeating things from a PowerPoint, it would be impossible to hold the students’ attention.”

One of Clark’s props is her pet dog Buckley, who often wanders into her virtual classroom.

“I sometimes use him when appropriate,” she said.

“For example, I would tell the students, ‘This is my dog. His name is Buckley. He is 11 years old. What color is Buckley?’ It helps students relax and enjoy learning.”

Another remote teacher is Lisa Lam, a volunteer based in Hong Kong.

She taught with Stepping Stones for six years when she lived in Shanghai and has been using the program from home since March 2017.

“I love children and teaching, and that’s why I joined,” she says.

Not being physically in a classroom is a major challenge for the volunteer teachers, but Lisa said it can be fun and made to really work.

“What amazes me and sort of what keeps me going is the students’ eagerness to learn,” she says. “My class starts at 7:40am. Seeing the children all bundled up in a freezing classroom ready to speak English warms my heart.”

Stepping Stones collaborates with Bloomberg on the program. The New York-based company has been a supporter of the organization since 2013, providing a major share of volunteer teachers.

Since spring 2017, 90 Bloomberg employees from six cities have volunteered to teach through the program, devoting 321 hours to the classes as of December 16 this year.

The video-link teaching program mainly targets primary school children in less privileged areas of China, including poverty-stricken pockets in the provinces of Anhui, Henan, Hunan, Sichuan and Yunnan.

Ross Pitcairn, training director of the organization, said the service sprang up in response to need.

“In poorer provinces, children do not have access to good education,” he said.

“When migrant children who have attended schools in Shanghai go back to their hometowns, they’re usually about two years ahead of children of the same age in those towns and villages.”

The program’s ultimate aim, beyond learning English, is for students to be motivated to pursue high school and college education, and to open their eyes to the world.

Pitcairn said links with the schools in need were established through Stepping Stones’ own contacts and through contact with other nonprofits that need his organization’s English education and volunteer training strengths.

Teaching materials that have been developed for use in Shanghai schools have to be modified to address different needs in other provinces.

“In many places, the students start to learn English from Grade 3 instead of Grade 1, so we make the content for the starting level more intense but no less interesting, colorful and engaging,” said Pitcairn, a Briton who has been an English teacher for 18 years and worked for an English education company on content development before joining Stepping Stones in 2007.

Control group experiments, examination results and feedback from questionnaires to the students all show that the program is being effectively delivered, he said.

The video link is also used to train English teachers in far-flung places.

So far, 42 teachers from schools in eight provinces have been trained, helping about 10,000 students, according to the organization.

One of those teachers is Xie Shenyang, who teaches English in a primary school for migrant children in Jiaxing in Zhejiang Province.

Xie said he and another 10 English teachers received training from Pitcairn via video link for about two months this year.

They were taught how to manage classrooms, how to arouse interest in topics and how to motivate all the students in a class.

“I learned to encourage the students instead of blaming them for not learning well,” he said.

“I also started to try methods to get them more actively involved in the learning process so that my class is no longer a one-man show.”

In a WeChat group, the teachers post videos of their classes and share ideas.

For her services to education and disadvantaged children in China, Corinne Richeux Hua, founder and executive director of Stepping Stones, was awarded the British Empire Medal last month.

Hua said the organization hopes to establish a foundation with a first fundraising goal of 2 million yuan (US$290,000).

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