Creator: Charlotte Alexin
The Martin Luther King Jr. school located in Cambridge has a unique program – a Chinese immersion school. Elementary school students enrolled in this program receive Chinese instruction in classes like science, social studies, maths, and Chinese, for 3-4 hours per day. Students of the two advanced Chinese classes at Northeastern University, like me, had the opportunity to visit the school every week and help the Chinese teacher with her class. When I went to the elementary school, I was assigned to help Ms. Li teach third-grade students. Since English was not allowed to be spoken, I had some difficulty at first adjusting to Ms. Li’s fast pace of speaking, as well as the children’s. During my time there helping the students and Ms. Li, I re-experienced third-grade life
and was surprised to see the progress these students made in the weeks that I was there. They learned a lot of topics that I have never learned, such as the tribe of the Wampanoag in Massachusetts, as well as scientific words in Chinese. Had I not participated in service-learning, I would never have learned how to solve mathematical problems in Chinese and learned the
specific words describing the weather and geography of the world.
At times, the students lost focus and were uninterested in the class, so they chatted amongst themselves in English. The teacher didn’t like it, but I understood the students. It’s very difficult to speak in Chinese for more than an hour and still be engaged. This is where we came in and did our best to try and keep them on topic. Every week, we were given tasks by Ms. Li, mostly consisting of correcting the students’ pinyin, helping them write Chinese characters they were unsure of, and assessing their Chinese language level through quizzes. I think the third-graders are very smart because when I corrected them on the pinyin of a word once, they wouldn’t make the same mistake next time. Some students in the class spoke Chinese fluently, but other students had difficulties in reading,
writing, and speaking. Only if everyone studies hard will their Chinese level improve, and I think attending this Chinese immersion program is the best way for them to learn. Through this service-learning experience, the children’s and my own Chinese level has improved, so I think that the Chinese immersion program works very well. We, Northeastern students, even though not perfect and still learning, acted as role models for the third-graders, giving them encouragement and helping them improve their Chinese language speaking, reading, and writing abilities. I hope they enjoyed their time with us as much as we did.
This blogpost was compiled from singular blog posts after every week of service. It is a good representation of what we have done in helping serve the community, as well as what the community has given back to us.