Volunteering in a Local School

Our trip to rural China was not just meant to be adventuresome, it was also meant to be a service trip. The company that was facilitating our trip had also lined up an opportunity for us to volunteer at a poor, rural school. We knew that we would be working with first through fourth graders. We had already divided our kids into groups of about five students each and we had planned activities and brought materials for each level.

This was the first time that either of my colleagues had chaperoned the Yangshuo trip so none of knew exactly what to expect.

We got our first clue when our charter bus was a quarter mile from the school, the driver had to stop, get out, and go examine a low, rail-less cement bridge. Our driver talked to a local man who was fishing from the bridge. “Oh, you should probably be able to make it across.” After we waited for a woman to finish walking her bike across, our driver slowly inched the bus across the forty-foot bridge.

We finally made it across and pulled into the school yard. The school yard was a large, cement square. On the east side was the two-story poured-cement school building. It looked new and was painted a fresh, crisp white. The windows and door trim were painted a contrasting green. It had a total of eight classrooms. In the center of the building was an open stair case.

Around the rest of the square was the old school building, a building with teacher offices, and outhouses.

The large cement square in the middle of all this served as the kids’ playground. It also doubled as a place for one of the local farmers to spread out and dry his rice. As we pulled up in the bus he was busy spreading out one bushel after another on the play ground.

As we got off the bus, we could also see the students lined up in perfect rows in the school yard. A few of them were standing on the farmer’s rice. The school principal was standing on a large cement dais addressing the students.

Whatever lesson, exercises, or lecture they had been receiving came to a stop as we started to unload from the bus. As our representative from Dragonfly went over to make contact with the principal, my middle school students and I nervously stared at all the little elementary kids in their colorful winter coats. They stared back waiting for somebody to do something.

Finally, the local children were dismissed and scrambled back to their classrooms.

Each of our service groups was pointed in the direction of the classroom they would be serving in.

Seeing a bus load of volunteers pull up intending to keep their kids occupied for the morning, the local teachers had managed to make themselves scarce.

I think I probably would have done the same.

-Jack