we are made of dreams and bones....

i have been teaching my students to sing 'the garden song' this week. i love doing songs in class, and most of the students have been enjoying it, as well. i had one class on tuesday afternoon clapping along and swaying in their seats. bravo.

the words to the song are:

inch by inch, row by row,
gonna make this garden grow,
all it takes is a rake and a hoe,
and a piece of fertile ground.

inch by inch, row by row,
please bless these seeds i sow,
please warm them from below,
'till the rain comes tumbling down.

pullin' weeds and pickin' stones,
we are made of dreams and bones,
i need a place to call my own,
'cause the time is close at hand.

grain for grain, sun and rain,
find my way in nature's chain,
tune my body and my brain
to the music from the land.

plant your rows straight and long,
temper them with prayer and song,
mother earth will keep you strong
if you give her love and care.

old crow watching hungrily
from his perch in yonder tree,
in my garden i'm as free
as that feathered thief up there.

besides being a fabulous song for spring, the lyrics give me an avenue to discuss some important topics with the students, as well as lyrics and slang. ‘cause, gonna, ‘till, pickin’, and pullin’ captured their attention. we have a river (a moat?) that circles our campus and that of the neighboring university. one of the reasons i wanted to come back to hu gong this year was to organize a volunteer project. in class, and in their journals, they students often mention that they have lots of free time and they don't know what to do with themselves. i know what they do, they go to the net bar, and all forty of them show up to class with no homework.....time management is a big issue here. high school is so strenuous for chinese students. they are often in classes from 6:00 am to 10:00 pm. i thought it was an exaggeration the first time i heard it, too. the students, i believe, barely have time to digest the material, and they are exhausted. college entrance exams are a really big deal, and the students are devastated it they don't do well. hu gong isn't a top university, and i have had so many students cry to me that they wish they had done better on the exam, and they and their families are ashamed that they didn't get into a better school. admissions, as far as i can tell, are primarily based on the exam results. there must be other factors, but none that the students control. they are basically told where they will go to school and what their major will be. when i came here, i thought that sounded almost nice. if you score really well on the english section of the test, you are an english major. there is something to be said for matching people and their skills. i think the logic is, that if you score really well on english, you have obviously been interested enough to learn it so well, and you may enjoy further studying english. the international business students i had last year were not happy with their major. we did an exercise about what career you were interested in. very few of the students were in the proper major. i had one little girl, daisy, tear up. she wanted to be a kindergarten teacher, and now that was impossible, she said. lots of kids wanted to go back to their hometowns and work in the banks, or be OG or OL (office girl, or office lady. i haven't any idea where the term came from, but all the students use it).

okay, i'll get back on track. students in university still have classes 40 hours a week, but i thought, since they claim to have so much free time, we could organize a volunteer project to clean up the river. it desperately needs help. the banks are a wall of trash, and the water stinks. in the summer, every teacher dreads having a class near the river because the smell is so strong. the water doesn't move, and it helps the trillion mosquitoes on the campus thrive. it is so sad to see such a polluted waterway, and what could be such an asset to the campus, a garbage dump. i am afraid of this river. when i dreamed of the project one of my concerns was protecting myself and the volunteers from the toxins. duff and i did resume building with the students last year, and it was so difficult. in china, the only way i know, for sure, you can get jobs is through family connections. i think that is how the majority of job placement works here, but i thought volunteering would be an excellent resume building project. maybe it wouldn't help them with jobs, but it would help them with visa applications to western countries, and...oh, yeah...it is a good thing to do for your campus and the environment.

last year i brought the idea up to a few people, and gave me really odd looks. they weren't great english speakers so i assumed i was communicating my intentions poorly. this year, the weeks after i arrived, i brought it up again to a woman with near perfect english. she laughed so hard, she fell out of her chair. so, my idea is ludicrous. when she finally stopped crying and realized i was serious, she said, why should the students do this? do you have the money to pay them? How will you pay them? and i explained that, no, i wouldn't pay them, it was a volunteer project, and they would do it to beautify the campus and protect the environment. we kept talking, but you know how the conversation ended. i have never posted on this blog about the great strides we have made in cleaning up the river.

i brought my idea up a few days ago, again. the school is getting ready for a huge inspection next year, and the whole campus is getting polished. i said, hey, what's going on with the river? let's clean it up. again, no. but won't the inspectors be appalled? they are planting flowers and trees at an alarming rate (some forest and a nursery in rural hubei must have been completely cleared out and all the trees and flowers moved here), building three new buildings, and painting everything in sight. all the teachers and administrators are working over time. again, no. i was told it is the city's responsibility. and it was clear that it was time to drop it.

i used the song to open a discussion with the students about environmental stewardship. this is not a concept that many people get here. one of the biggest problems i see is trash. it is everywhere. people don't bother to find a trash can, they just drop it on the ground. on our campus, there is a small army of elderly peasants who walk around with tongs picking up discarded bottles, chopsticks and plastic bags. the kids, running to class, all fashionably dressed, with cell phones and mp3 players, run right by the stooped old men and women, without seeming to give them any thought. duff told me a story about a grandmother and a little boy he was walking behind on his way home from school. the little boy had garbage, and there was no trash can around. he looked at his grandma, and she glanced for a trash can, too, and then shook her head. so he tossed the trash on the ground. duff says the two smiled at each other, shrugged, and continued on their way.

largely, my students were unresponsive, but i continued to talk. they know 'nature' as a vocabulary word, which my students last year did not. we talked about 'nature's chain' and how everything is connected in nature, and what happens when you break the chain. i introduced them to the concept of mother earth. take care of the planet and it will take care of you. i used the river, and other lakes around here as an example. if we care for the river, it will give us healthy fish that are good to eat. everyone around here loves to eat fish. the foreigners, largely, refrain, because of the water pollution. we are worried about bioaccumulation. i jumped, i made class exciting, and i drew happy fish, and dead fish, and sewage and trash. i at least got the front row in each class thinking. we talked about paying closer attention (i just learned to say this in chinese, a useful tool) to the land. i think we made some progress.

most of the students loved the songs. the chinese really work together. in an american class, i imagine, i would have had a lot of difficulty getting students their age to sing, but everyone did, even the boys. it was really fun. i did have one class that flat out refused to sing. there were only seven kids in the class, out of 40 (at what point should i cancel class?), and they were too shy. heaven, the ringleader of the class, told me if we did john denver, he would sing, even if he was the only one. deal. he asked for country roads. i also got a request for 'red river valley'.

i love to teach the students songs, and i would love any suggestions any of you may have. we don't have any instruments, just me singing. i have done rounds with them before, and that works well. please, if you have any thoughts for suggestions leave them here. we'll do a lot of songs this spring, i hope.