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Date: 6/25/2015
EAST LONGMEADOW – Three generations of a local family recently volunteered for a two-week assignment through Global Volunteer to help nursing students with their English speaking and reading skills at the Xi’an Bio-Medical Technical College in China.
The volunteers are resident Jody O’Brien, her daughter Kelly Palm, a 1987 graduate of East Longmeadow High School, now a resident of Florence, and Kelly’s 12-year-old son Hunter, a sixth grade student at the Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School in Hadley. Hunter is the only one of the three family members who speaks Mandarin Chinese.
“We had different experiences in our [classes],” Kelly said. “In my mom’s classroom, they gave her a little more leeway and the teacher that Hunter and I worked together with, she had us go a little bit more by the book.”
Kelly said students in her and Hunter’s class followed the textbook and read aloud together.
“It was cool because I would say something in English and Hunter would ask them in Chinese if they had understood what I said or understood the directions,” she added.
The textbooks were flawed for teaching as well because they had weren’t written by native English speakers, Hunter noted.
“We’d have a list of 10 boys names and one of them was like ‘Air’ and one was ‘Ice,’” Kelly said.
Hunter related a story about a student who he caught cheating during a test.
“I told them in Chinese that if they were going to cheat, to at least try to hide the textbook,” he added. “One of them was in the first row of desks and she would just look at it and close it a little bit ... It was funny because she made this tiniest bit of effort [to look as though she wasn’t cheating].”
Kelly said when Hunter caught the student cheating, the rest of the classroom of 18 to 20 year-old students erupted into laughter.
“Hunter was able to sit in a class of his peers and the average class size for [12-year-old students in Xi’an] was 40 to 60 with one teacher,” she added.
The principal of the Chinese Immersion School told Kelly that they were the first family at the school to volunteer to teach English while in China.
“I can’t think of anybody in my grade who has been to China,” Hunter said.
O’Brien said she and Kelly were very fortunate to have Hunter present to translate because otherwise, “We wouldn’t have been able to ride the bus.”
The family members found their experiences teaching in English in Xi’an to be positive ones and felt they helped Chinese students grasp a better understanding of the English language.
Hunter said he would like to continue learning foreign languages such as Arabic and Spanish.
“I’d definitely like to utilize my [language skills], definitely with the U.S. government or something along those lines,” he added.
Kelly said the Chinese Immersion Charter School receives federal Department of Defense grants because Mandarin Chinese is considered a critical language for the U.S. government.