Hi there:
Hope you and those close to you are in good physical and mental health.
In this issue, we turn our lens to the grand experiment of extended distance learning that’s taking place all over the world right now. Author Mu’le, a homeroom teacher and English instructor at a Chinese primary school—and a mother of a primary student herself—offers this meticulous account first published by The Livings in Chinese on Feb. 21.
It’s a tedious read at times, packed with loads of detail, which I think is necessary to convey the immense pressure that both primary students and teachers alike face in the Chinese education system. Still, Mu’le manages to inject a dose of humor, mainly in the form of some hilarious interactions with her daughter.
We’ll be taking a break from outbreak coverage following this edition after all. I’m a bit burnt out from translating coronavirus content and I’d like to clear a small backlog of material scheduled before the pandemic struck.
—ML
How a Chinese Teacher/Parent Is Coping with Online Learning
By Mu’le
Courtesy Ju-chen Chen.
1.
When the first term of the 2019-2020 academic year ended, as their homeroom teacher, I wrote the following in my students’ report cards: “Winter break runs from Jan. 18 to Feb. 8. Report to class at 8 a.m. on Feb. 9 for the beginning of the second term.”
I also made a mental note to myself at the time to check in on a few students randomly via my WeChat parents group a few days before classes started, to make sure they had completed their winter break homework. That way I wouldn’t have to set aside makeup time when I started teaching new content.
Then it was time to properly enjoy my own vacation. As in past years, I’d meet with friends and relatives to drink and eat to our hearts’ content, dress up my children in new clothing and visit others, as well as go on a short trip with close family. Just thinking about my plans made me happy. After issuing my report cards and bidding farewell to my students, it was time to hand these cubs over to their parents again.
On the first day of break, I got together with my sisters who are fellow English teachers that serve on the curriculum development team for shopping and a meal, kids in tow. We had a proper day out. When we parted, we even made plans to see a movie with our children in a few days. But before we could decide on a time, we were inundated with news about the pneumonia outbreak.
When word of the lockdown hit the streets, it was impossible to buy masks or antiseptic solution. We couldn’t even leave the apartment. My WeChat news feed was filled with rumors. Everyone was in a state of panic. Still, little did I know how my winter break was about to unfold.
The busyness and anxiety started as a sudden onslaught.
On Jan. 24, Lunar New Year’s Eve, our family was preparing dinner when the alarm on my phone went off. My boss had issued orders in our WeChat group asking all homeroom teachers to submit a status update on students from Hubei—whether they had returned to Hubei for Lunar New Year, if they had come into contact with relatives from Hubei, their current addresses, where their parents worked, their current health condition and so on. If any of students had returned to Hubei, we had to report their cases.
I frantically posed the question in our group: “Does this apply to the entire province? I thought only Wuhan was affected.”
My colleagues each had their own opinion and flooded the group with reposts and screen captures. After studying them carefully, I realized this wasn’t an illness that could be tackled by a few IV drips and it spread very quickly.
I dug out my laptop immediately and looked up the personal information of the students in my class. I canvassed the file thoroughly. There was indeed a student from Hubei in my class. I put in a call. It turns out his family had already purchased a flat locally and didn’t head back to Hubei for Lunar New Year. Neither were they entertaining any relatives from Hubei.
Soon the festive spirit of Lunar New Year was replaced by a tense atmosphere. All our family gatherings were canceled.
My father is someone who can’t sit still. Part of his routine is a daily stroll at the local wet market. I tried talking him out of it. “The wet market is so crowded. If one person is infected, then everyone at the wet market might get infected too. It’s not like we’re short on groceries. Why don’t you skip your walk these few days?” He refused. “Wuhan is so far from us. What’s there to be afraid of?”
“OK then. At least wear a mask.” He was still reluctant. “If I need to wear a mask for a grocery run, then will you be wearing a mask when school starts? I bet classes will be canceled altogether.”
Lo and behold, my father called it. On Jan. 26, the second day of Lunar New Year, the local education bureau announced the start of the second term would be postponed. This had never happened before all these years.
News of an extended winter break delighted my daughter. The thought of watching cartoons non-stop, sleeping in without consequence and sitting on our couch all day while munching on snacks was downright heavenly. She had long finished her winter break homework. A life of pure play gave her infinite joy.
Meanwhile, I started to panic even more.
2.
A delay in the start of school meant we didn’t have enough time to cover the material planned for the second term. What to do? The amount of material allocated for a term is fixed. The time is limited and the agenda is full. When students struggle to process the information, parents and teachers alike fret. I started getting questions from parents in my WeChat parents group.
Soon we received new instructions. All teachers had to draft a lesson plan for the first week of school in advance and send it to students while also assigning online video and homework. Our students would start their lessons at home. Classes may be suspended, the but the learning mustn’t stop, so the idea went.
So I had to come up with a lesson plan and teach online classes, but I was home on break, without the necessary books and materials. How could I do my job? I had no choice but to head back to school in full protective gear, donning a mask and gloves.
The roads were empty, with only the occasional two or three cars passing by. There wasn’t a single other pedestrian. The entrance to campus was manned by volunteers wearing red vests who checked your temperature and ID. Suddenly, someone yelled my name. It was my colleague Xiao Hui. (“Xiao,” which literally translates as “little,” is a common Chinese term of endearment.) He stood nearby, but I didn’t recognize him because he was wearing a mask and protective glasses.
“You’re volunteering?” I asked.
“We teachers of secondary subjects don’t have to worry about staying on schedule. I have nothing to do, so I thought I’d help out. You’re here to fetch your textbooks, right? I just saw Xiao Hu.”
“Indeed. So you have night shifts too?”
“Yes. It’s chillier the second half of the shift. The first half is OK.”
Considering the fact that I slept in that day while my colleagues worked the night shift on a cold winter night, I immediately felt compelled to get my own act together too.
I brainstormed for quite some time how to conduct my online English classes. I felt a deep sense of unease, not being able to see my kids face-to-face, to watch their tiny mouths attempt pronunciations and not being able to ask them to stand up and recite new sentence patterns to me, let alone interact with them and give feedback.
I thought back to my regular classes. Even with the teacher standing there and watching everyone, the kids would space out and act up a bit occasionally. Now that their teacher wasn’t physically present, there would definitely be some major spacing out and major acting out. When I was struck by that thought, the images of some of my naughtiest students surfaced in my head.
Just to play it safe, when designing my lesson plan, I decided to stick to straightforward sentence copying and reading along exercises first. Still, I felt very uncertain. I don’t know about secondary school students, but for primary students who basically lack any form of self-control, distance learning really isn’t a foolproof approach.
After finishing my lesson plan, I said to my daughter: “Pull out the textbooks that mommy lent you and preview them a few times first. Mark the words that you don’t know. That way it’ll be easier when you have to learn them.” My daughter paid lip service but didn’t move a single inch. I was about to throw a tantrum when my husband stopped me. “You have to trust her. It’s Lunar New Year. Don’t lash out at her easily.” I could only hold back. Fine, I’ll trust you for now.
On Jan. 30, the sixth day of Lunar New Year, school officials announced the Chinese passages students had to memorize ahead of the second term. If they did a good job of it at home, that would free up time after school started. As their homeroom teacher, I felt compelled to assign the work in the WeChat parents group right away. “Students, please put down your phones, your iPads and remote controls and memorize these passages for the second term first.” I wrote.
I pleaded in the group, but after a good chunk of time, only a small proportion of parents responded. Most of the parents probably felt it was still early, that their kids should relax for a few days first.
The parents weren’t wrong. It was only the sixth day of the Lunar New Year. I wanted to relax for a few more days too, but the situation simply didn’t allow for optimism.
On Feb. 1., the messages in my work WeChat group came non-stop. School management issued several orders. “All homeroom teachers: Please ask your parents to submit their children’s body temperatures. Make it a daily canvassing exercise. If you don’t hear from a certain student in your WeChat group by 10 a.m., call to confirm. Make sure you submit every student’s temperature.”
Then there was this: “All homeroom teachers: Please identify Wuhan links among your students i.e. see if as of Jan. 10, if any students or their family members have been to Wuhan or come into contact with visitors from Wuhan. If yes, report their personal information immediately. The canvassing task must be completed thoroughly. Nothing falls through the cracks and no missed corners.”
So I left no stone unturned, utilizing the messaging program QQ, text messages and calls to investigate each student’s status. Every homeroom teacher turned into a busy phone operator.
Before I could organize that information, I got another message: “All homeroom teachers: Please send your lesson plans to your students ahead of the start of online learning on Feb. 3.”
My English teachers WeChat group went berserk. “Are we going to become TV anchors? Will we have to plea for likes and cash gifts?” “Lord, this is too exciting. Do we need to put on makeup first thing in the morning?” “Are we going to get super-nervous? It feels like we are going to be lecturing to the entire nation. Will we become Internet sensations?”
We realized we had gotten ahead of ourselves when we saw the schedule for the first batch of online classes. The first slew were all recorded lectures by outstanding local teachers, covering mostly extra-curricular reading material and activities. It was a warmup to real online classes, so to speak. We just had to remind our students to watch.
Only then did everyone breathe a sigh of relief.
3.
When online classes started on Feb. 3, the parents started picking up their slack as well.
The moment I opened my eyes in the morning I had to start bugging parents about their kids’ temperatures. At a time when they didn’t have to go to work, the parents probably wanted a bit more shut-eye as well, so the responses in the WeChat group were sporadic. But I was in no position to wait. I had to make call after call with thick skin.
At 9 a.m., when online classes kicked off, the server hosting the video feed crashed because too many people tried to log on. The parents pulled all stops but only a few could log in. They all came crying for help. “What should we do, teacher? We’ve been trying for the last hour, but we still can’t log into the website.”
I was also stressed out. My daughter also had to watch the online lectures. None of our devices worked—our phone, laptop and iPad all failed. We also tried switching back and forth between a 4G signal and Wi-Fi, to no avail. I could only console parent after parent. “It’s OK. It’s OK. They’re recorded lectures. You can watch them later.” I was glued to my electronic devices all morning, not even dropping them for trips to the bathroom.
While I was putting out fires, my daughter was also running out of patience. She may not care about the assignments I give her, but she still follows her teacher’s orders. She’d run over to ask once in a while: “Is the video loading?” I got even more anxious.
Finally, noon came around and I could finally open the online classes interface on our school’s website when the traffic tapered off a bit. I tested every single recorded lesson. They all played smoothly. I scrambled to announce the news in my parents WeChat group.
The teachers who recorded lectures were all well-known instructors in our local region. It’s quite difficult for other teachers to sit in on their classes, so this was a learning opportunity for me too.
Chinese class featured an analysis of extra-curricular reading material, while the English lecture discussed a picture book. The teachers were very meticulous. My daughter had read both books, so she enjoyed the lectures immensely. Then it struck me that students who hadn’t read the two books would definitely be lost. Now that delivery services were on halt, they couldn’t even order the books if they wanted to. I was a bit worried for the students in my class.
At that point, another message popped up in the homeroom teachers group. It was a document entitled Coronavirus Outbreak Control Canvassing Form. This was an extremely detailed spreadsheet. Apart from listing our students’ names, sex, phone numbers, ID numbers, hometowns and current addresses, we had to fill out a bunch of items including where the students spent winter break, where they went and when they were due back if they left town, whether they came into contact with people from areas where outbreaks occurred, whether they were in self-isolation, their health status and so on.
I got an instant headache. This was a huge task. Not every parent knew how to fill out an electronic form and not every family had access to a computer. Some students who went back to their ancestral hometowns might struggle to find even mobile phone coverage. Also, some of the kids were being raised by their grandparents, who might not even be literate or they may use primitive electronic devices. Filling out a spreadsheet is really a big ask.
Several fellow homeroom teachers couldn’t help but grumble. “If we were at school, we could print this form, copy it and hand it out. Parents could take a first stab at it by pen and the teachers could tie up loose ends the next day. What are we going to do now?”
Complain away as we may, we had to keep at it—pestering parents for information, waiting for their responses and filling in blank spots as the replies came in. We were customer service reps for a Taobao online shop, keen to get answers from our customers while we had their attention.
As expected, there were bound to be a few parents who found us a nuisance and rushed through the forms. We homeroom teachers had no choice but to double-check their work and follow up by phone. After the forms were in, I had to write a summary. While I juggled my homeroom teacher duties, I also had to fill out my daughter’s form. After a day in front of my laptop, my vision was a blur.
In the evening, I chatted with a fellow teacher who was younger than me. She had been picked by the local education bureau to record a third-grade math lesson and posted the following status update: “Way too busy… Went to bed at 4 or 5 in the morning and woke up at 8 or 9 several days straight.”
I asked her why she was going to bed at 4 or 5.
“My kid had to take online pre-term classes with private tutorial providers Xuersi.com and New Oriental. There’s also a lot of homework, so I have to stick around. I also need to cook breakfast, lunch and dinner. I only get around to recording my own lecture in evening. If I make a mistake or pause unexpectedly, I have to start over. If I finish and spot details I want to fix, that’s another redo. Before I know it it’s 4 or 5 in the morning. I sleep until 8 or 9, then I have to watch the online classes with my kid. It’s too painful.”
My friend said when she’s recording an online lecture, she doesn’t use a blackboard nor show her face, mainly providing a voiceover for a PowerPoint presentation instead. The students just need to focus on the points in the presentation. “The principal specifically asked me to deliver the best possible lecture. That’s why I recorded the lecture multiple times. I even tried it on my son.”
In a regular class, the teacher and the students have face-to-face interaction. The teacher can adjust accordingly in response to visual and verbal cues and zoom in on content the students struggle to grasp. There is no audience when you’re recording an online lecture. You have to rely on experience in deciding which points to stress. You’re the only one who can answer the questions you pose, which is quite boring. Plus, as a primary school teacher, you have to be sensitive to short attention spans and come up with interesting gimmicks. It’s not an easy job at all.
4.
Feb. 10, the day the second term was supposed to start, arrived.
Up to that point, the assigned online classes focused on extra-curricular content. Students could browse them casually. If they really didn’t want to, we didn’t force the issue. But now it was time to study the textbooks. The parents took this seriously. They got their electronic devices lined up, borrowed the required books and downloaded the electronic versions of books they couldn’t. Families with printers printed out the necessary material and made sure they had the necessary supplies during this extraordinary period—stationery, notebooks, exercise books. They went all out to back up their children’s studies.
Just like before, I kicked off my mornings by checking up on the health of students in my classes, using both my phone and QQ, so I could fill out my daily spreadsheets. During a break, I had to wake up my own kid and sit her in front of her laptop. The sleepy, distracted look on her face typically pushed me over the edge.
I reckon the parents of my students faced the same scenario.
Online classes started at 8:40 a.m. It was a packed schedule, including Chinese, math, English, art, music, PE and information technology class. It was just as full a program as at regular school. Yet the online streaming was still jamming frequently. The online classes a week ago mainly featured extra-curricular content, so it was OK if parents didn’t take it seriously. Now we were teaching new chapters in our textbooks, it was unacceptable to lag behind. Parents who couldn’t log onto the school website vented their frustration at us teachers.
No matter what we tried, the streaming quality remained dismal. We kept getting the same question from anxious parents. “Can’t you just do something about the jamming? And how are we supposed to keep up when we still haven’t received the new textbooks? Couldn’t you have ordered the textbooks in advance and had them delivered to us?”
But we were at a loss too. All delivery services had been suspended. How were we supposed to send the textbooks?
Soon enough, a teacher suggested that everyone upload the video files of the online lectures to a shared drive and send the link to our respective WeChat parents groups. That way we didn’t have to worry about streaming. The subject teachers got to work. Before long our parent groups were sent links to a full set of videos. The parents finally shut up.
As an English teacher, I studied the English lesson carefully. The picture resolution was good, the pronunciation clear and the teacher stressed the difficult point adequately. Every part of the lecture was compelling. The most remarkable thing that there wasn’t a single mispronunciation in the entire lesson. In fairness, the teacher who recorded the video must have endured a countless number of redoes to achieve that performance.
Even though we resolved the delivery issue of online classes, whether the cubs took to them was an entirely different matter.
Soon the bitching started in my parents’ group. “Thank God for my two nostrils to vent my fury, otherwise I would have died of anger. So I let our little rascal watch online classes on his own, but when I opened his door to check up on him, he was actually asleep!”
“That’s nothing. Ours secretly fast-forwarded a video to near the end and started playing video games when I wasn’t looking. I walked straight past him without noticing.”
“Same here. None of our children are taking it seriously. Kids—how many of them can keep themselves in check? You need adult supervision at the end of the day.”
I didn’t have time to respond, but I did drop in on my daughter immediately. She was actually eating potato chips while watching her online lessons. She even had the gumption to grumble: “So boring.” Standing just outside her room, I was so furious I could puke blood. These are classes. Of course they’re not as interesting as your cartoons.
After the lectures were delivered, it was time for the teachers to assign homework and remind students of deadlines.
This posed another major problem. Some parents said their kids couldn’t handle copying exercises because they didn’t have the physical textbooks. I had to post a link to the electronic version to my parents group for the millionth time. Others said they didn’t have notebooks at home and didn’t think they were worth the risk of a trip to the store. I compromised by saying any piece of paper would do. Another group said they had to work, so their kids weren’t able to access their phones during the day, so they weren’t able to obtain their homework. These parents asked for an extension of a few days. Other parents who also asked for extensions said they were being quarantined out-of-town and didn’t have access to any supplies. I could only respond: “Fine, fine, as along as the assignments are completed before real classes resume.”
I asked parents who used non-smartphones if they were able to borrow a smartphone. They said: “No. We’re just going to skip the homework.” I didn’t know how to respond. What could you say to that in times like this? I could only take down the students’ names and schedule makeup sessions when school started again. There were always more solutions than challenges.
School management could empathize with the parents, asking homeroom teachers to announce in their respective parents groups that homework wasn’t mandatory and that teachers would go over the key points of content covered in the online classes when school resumed. There was no need to panic.
But that line bred a new set of problems that gave anxious parents a bigger headache. Homeroom teachers said in their parents groups: “The suspension of classes doesn’t mean the learning stops. As long as your children aren’t wasting time and are learning something, the rule is fulfilled. Studying a textbook is learning, but reading on your own is also learning, as is learning a new skill. Homework isn’t compulsory.”
Yet that gave the little rascals too much ammunition. My daughter showed me the homework her homeroom teacher assigned and said: “Look, Mom. Our teacher said that students who were properly equipped had to copy the vocabulary and learn to write it on our own. See—not every student has to turn in the homework, only those who are properly equipped. Did you see that line?”
I glared at her and responded: “So you’re not properly equipped? What are you missing? Your pen or your textbook?”
“I don’t have enough time. I want to watch cartoons.”
I was so angry I pulled out my feather duster with a bamboo handle. “Quite a few kids have done the assignment and gotten all their answers right. And you’re trying to pull this on me?”
5.
Right now, the combination of official online classes and pre-term courses are driving parents nuts.
Ignorance is bliss. In normal times, the parents would be at work during the day while their kids are at school. The fits and tantrums are reserved for the teachers. If all the parents had to do was supervise their kids while they do their homework in the evenings, parent-child relations wouldn’t be this tense. Now that the outbreak is still ongoing and most parents are stuck at home, the constant supervision means that all their kids’ shortcomings are easily exposed. It’s hard for the parents not to lose their tempers.
Not to mention the most dangerous thing in the world is contrast and comparison. If you have an obedient kid, but a friend’s child is a tad more obedient, then your kid doesn’t seem so great after all. You might think your own child is smart, witty and adorable, but compared to an academic superstar he or she will fall short significantly. Suddenly, you feel like delivering a major beating.
Parents love to show off their kids in their social media feeds, touting how many past papers they’ve completed, how many times they’ve scored full marks, how many chapters they’ve covered in advance through self-study and so on. The comments sections are inevitably crammed with envy from jealous parents.
When you see other people’s kids completing their homework on a daily basis with proper handwriting, punctually and on their own initiative, while your child’s homework is riddled with errors and plagued by crooked penmanship and procrastination, your anxiety immediately mushrooms into a big temper tantrum directed at your kid. How can mothers not freak out when their child’s teacher posts meticulous notes taken by another parent’s kid during online classes, while your own cub falls asleep in front of his laptop, a pen nowhere to be found?
When moms lose their tempers, these emotional fires are bound to spread to the dads. And once the feather duster comes out, grandparents inevitably intervene, leading to a full-on family affair.
Among the feedback in my parents WeChat group was this: “At the end of the day, you don’t cover much material in a single online class. It’s not as substantial as a real class. After the online class, we have to cover the content again. We can manage Chinese and math, but our English pronunciations are hardly standard. I nearly had a breakdown these past few days.”
Other parents echoed the sentiment. “Our kid isn’t motivated at all. Once I get busy with my own affairs, he starts slacking off. He doesn’t take his handwriting seriously and gets many questions wrong. It’s better if school resumes sooner. Teaching your kid is such a major headache.”
So the teachers conferred among themselves and decided that as long as the students finished watching all the online lectures, that was a pretty decent accomplishment. They also refrained from assigning too much homework. We figured that we have to cover a lot of the material again after classes resume. Just giving our students a taste of the content during this period would suffice.
“Just hang in there. We’ll get through this ordeal together.” Ultimately, we could only console each other this way.
Really, I don’t think our parents need to be this stressed out. I’ve said in my parents group a countless number of times: “It’s OK. The teachers will cover the same material again. Your kids won’t fall behind. There are always more solutions than problems.”
But parental anxiety can’t be dispelled with a few words of assurance.
The other day a friend posted her son’s daily schedule on WeChat. He’s been getting up at 7 a.m. and going to bed at 9:30 p.m. The schedule was crammed with all sorts of online classes—for school, Xuersi.com and New Oriental. He was also taking arts lessons.
I couldn’t resist asking her: “Your kid is only in third grade. Why are you pushing him so hard?”
“Don’t even get me started. I just gave him a major spanking today. I just couldn’t stand how lethargically he went about his business. Everyone is working hard during winter break. If I cut him loose, it’s going to be a mess when school starts. He’s going to be so far behind everyone else. I’m just planning ahead.”
I guess this is what they call passing someone on a curve. I feel for the kid.
In our household, I respected my daughter’s wishes and didn’t sign her up for tutorial classes during winter break. That’s why I’m not as stressed out. But I still keep a close eye on her schoolwork, sitting with her during online lectures and making sure she does her homework and turns it in on time. I have not been checking her homework though. Teachers need to see a genuine effort, so they can adjust accordingly in class when school starts again.
Still, shit happens, but that’s the best we can do.
Ending
A friend recently posted a joke on WeChat that said the outbreak has turned everyone into cooks, health care workers into soldiers, teachers into TV anchors and parents into homeroom teachers. Only the kids remain wild beasts. Come to think about it, it’s so true.
My daughter has been moaning every day: “All this talk about postponing the start of school. I say they started school ahead of time. I’ve barely played during winter break. I’m just stuck home getting scolded by you day after day. It doesn’t feel good at all.”
I glared to her and thought to myself that I was in the same boat. As a parent and a teacher, I could totally relate to both. The teachers aren’t getting their fix from online lectures. They’re gearing up to go all out in real classes, so they can’t wait until school starts. Parents are stuck with their cubs all day, which has made them realize how hard it is to raise a child, so they’re looking forward to the start of school too. As for the kids, they’ve been restless for some time now, asking their parents every day: “When can I go to school again?”
The trees of southern China have already grown new buds and the flowers on their branches are gradually blooming. Spring is afoot. Winter has to pass at some point. I believe the outbreak will end soon too and everything will get better. The start of school that everyone is looking forward should be imminent as well.