Home Visits on my Own

After a difficult week dealing with disruptive students in class (see my previous post for specifics), I was pleased to have two of my smarter and better behaved students, Isaac and Logan, invite me to come to their home the following weekend. They said that they lived about an hour away, and that there were several other students from other classes that lived there, so I would be able to do multiple home visits at once. I planned to hike with them back to their home Saturday morning, leaving Dazhai Middle School at eight in the morning, about an hour after they normally leave to go home. At the same time, I spoke with one of my more disruptive students, Daniel, who lives in Dazhai proper, to do another home visit on Sunday morning.

I have written about home visits before, but I never made it clear exactly what I as a teacher hope to get out of them. Often I simply want to spend more time with my students outside the classroom context. I hope to get a clearer idea of the students' home environment, and how it affects their motivations in my class. Whenever possible, I want to speak with the student's parents, both to better understand the student and to either thank them for their well-behaved child or discuss their child's issues in my class. At a more personal level, I want to get a better understanding of the community in and around Dazhai, and, in some ways, I really just want a tour guide and companion as I hike the beautiful surrounding mountains.

That said, it can be difficult to know what I (and the student) will actually get from a home visit until we are on it. Students' personalities can vary dramatically from their in-class persona. Some of my most disruptive students can become quiet and uncommunicative in their home, while quiet students can become talkative and playful once they have seen their teacher sweat and stumble up the small mountain path to their village. For me, discovering this other side to my students is one of my favorite aspects of home visits.

Part I: Saturday

Unsure of what I would get out of the day, I woke up Saturday morning at seven o'clock at the sound of my students knocking on my door, asking whether I was ready to go. After ineffectively trying to explain the difference between seven and eight (my students don't really have a way to tell time other than the school bells), I dragged myself out of bed, got dressed, grabbed a hunk of bread from the loaf I had made a few days before, and went to meet with my students, regretting the part of me that scheduled anything early ever.

Along with Isaac and Logan, two girls from other bans, Hero and Adele, were waiting for me as I emerged from my sanctuary. I asked my students where their village was, and somewhat daunted as they gestured to a group of trees on the top of a mountain in the distance. My students chided me playfully for my tardiness as they started down the road (my protestations that I had told them eight, not seven, fell on unsympathetic ears), and I hiked up my camera strap and set off after them.

We started off going down through Dazhai before turning off the main road onto a narrow dirt path passing through terraced fields before climbing steeply up the mountain toward their village. Although it was cloudy and cooler than I had expected, I still found myself quickly sweating through my thin shirt as we worked our way higher and higher up. Nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoyed the hike, as the company was good and the scenery was beautiful. My students were talkative and helpful, chatting with me and each other about school and their homes and telling me the names of the plants we passed. As we hiked, we passed several bushes with yellow, raspberry-like berries on them, and my students eagerly picked a dozen to give to me. At one point, Logan ran off the trail, coming back a few minutes later with a handful of small, hard peaches to share with us all. Later, as it began to lightly rain, I started to silently curse my lack of foresight in not bringing an umbrella before Logan offered me his. I took pictures as we hiked (see below) of both the scenery and the students. While Isaac and Hero originally were not fans of being photographed, they later warmed to it, especially Isaac, who began posing as we walked and loudly insisting that I take his picture.

Finally, we arrived at their village a little less than two hours after we left and almost double the time my students had said it would take (to be expected - if a student says it will take an hour, expect at least an hour and a half, and if they say two hours, expect three). My first stop was Isaac's home, or at least what I first thought was Isaac's home but later realized was his uncle's. As we arrived, Logan, Hero, and Adele left to go to their homes, planning to come back and get me after I finished there.


It was a pleasure meeting Isaac's uncle, one Mr. Chen. In general, communication during home visits can be difficult. Parents generally speak pretty strong dialect, and grandparents (who almost always live with the parents) are almost incomprehensible with the mixture of dialect, accent, and lack of teeth. Thus, I have generally had to communicate with parents through their children, which is less than ideal (especially if you want to discuss the students' problems). But not so with Mr. Chen. Mr. Chen is an elementary school teacher, so he spoke impressively standard Chinese, making communication smooth and easy. It was also nice that he was a teacher, giving us plenty of topics to talk about. While Isaac, Mr. Chen, Isaac's younger brother, and I talked and watched the NBA, Isaac's grandmother and aunt made lunch over a coal fire.

After lunch, several of my students arrived to show me around the village, including Elissa, who was hurt that I had not informed her that I was coming, and who was only somewhat mollified when I told her that I hadn't realized she lived there. As we went around the village from student's house to student's house, I was interested to see who lived with the students. Some students had both parents, a sibling, and a grandparent, while others just had a sibling and a grandparent. When they did have parents at home, the parents were usually away at work in the fields, leaving the kids at home. The students were not, however, simply allowed to play at home over the weekend. Elissa was tasked with taking care of a younger sibling and two younger cousins, so as we walked around, the three of them trailed along beside us. Logan had to 放牛, taking his family's cow out to pasture after I left. All of my students at some time during the year had to help pick tea leaves (my students explained to me that there were three tea picking seasons, and that we were just coming to the end of one). The amount of responsibility hoisted on these twelve to fourteen year olds is enormous.

That is part of the reason why I so thoroughly enjoyed my morning and afternoon with them. As they showed me around and introduced me to their families, their homes, and their lives, I saw their maturity and the weight of their great responsibility. And yet, at the same time, as the afternoon went on and as we got more comfortable with each other, I was able to see their childish, care-free side that is almost never visible in school. They really began enjoying the photography, both taking pictures themselves and having their pictures taken, and it was fun to see them get silly and creative with it. Later on, when I had left the village with Isaac, Adele, Elissa, and Isaac's uncle to see the elementary school they had all attended, we played ping-pong together with loud, Serena Williams-esque grunts whenever we hit the ball. We went into their old classroom, where I gave a playful lesson on how to say "He looks like a rabbit," and they gave me a comically strict class on Chinese characters.

Along with the joy of spending time with my students and their families, there came a definite satisfaction at having been able to do it so successfully on my own. Before coming, I had been nervous about communicating and potential awkwardness, but in the end it was an absolutely lovely day. While I did not know if it would have been so enjoyable with other students, I had proved to myself that I could do it.

Part II: Sunday

I had a chance to test whether it would be as successful with other students the very next day, when I met with my student, Daniel, a disruptive student who lives close to the school, to go to his house on a home visit. He arrived at the school gate somewhat late to pick me up, bringing with him another of my students, Ford, and an eighth grader, both of whom are his neighbors. We walked down the road and through some twisting alleyways before arriving at his house, only about eight minutes from the school (Daniel is part of the small minority of the school, about 8%, who does not live at school).

As we walked, I tried to think about what exactly I wanted to get from this home visit. Daniel is not a bad student, but he is an extremely disruptive student. Whereas other students will talk and make noise because they don't care about the class or because they disrespect me or other students, Daniel does so (as far as I can tell) because he has a lot of trouble focusing. He is endlessly talking or making noise as we go through class, and I have to constantly remind him to be quiet and pay attention. I would not be at all surprised if he had ADHD. Other students will sometimes take advantage of this by bothering him during class, either with noise or by touching him, in order to get a response out of him. While I can and do try to help him by dealing with those students, Daniel certainly needed a push in the right direction too.

As we arrived at Daniel's home, I met his mother and father, who were eating breakfast. They offered some to me, and I declined, giving a brief hello before deciding to wait to have the real conversation with the parents until later and heading into a small living room with Daniel and his neighbors. I played two rounds of chess with Daniel's neighbors before getting up to talk with the parents. I walked into the outside courtyard and realized that they had already left to go work in the fields for the day, leaving us to our own devices. With the parents gone for the day, I decided to try to do as best I could just by talking with Daniel.

I returned to the living room and sat next to Daniel. I asked him what he had done the day before and whether he had completed his homework. He showed me his finished homework, which I went over with him, trying to instill in him the importance of focusing on his work and really ensuring that it was done well. As for the day before, he had spent it playing on his smartphone, which he was currently playing games on with Ford. As I asked other questions about my class, about other classes, about home life and school life, and about his likes and dislikes and his hopes and dreams, his rather single-minded love of playing phone games became apparent.

With that in mind, I took Daniel aside and made a deal with him. If he could get through a class without moving a single rung up the consequence ladder, then I would let him come to the office with me and play on my cell phone for five minutes. He eagerly agreed, and said that he would make sure not to be loud in my class. With that, he walked with me back to the middle school, and we parted.

While the Sunday home visit was much more low key than those on Saturday, I nonetheless felt that it was successful. Even if the method did not work, it was a way forward, something largely lacking before the visit. Moreover, I felt a closer connection with Daniel, and I sensed that he appreciated my taking the time to go to his house with him to, as he saw it, play.

This week, Daniel was quiet and quite well-behaved during both of my classes with him, getting his name written on the board only once (instead of the usual three or four) and thus getting to play on my cellphone once. As I taught his class, when other students began getting disruptive and I started feeling worn out and annoyed, I had only to look at him sitting attentively to get another spurt of energy and patience. He was making the effort and making a difference, so I guess I could too.

 The path behind us going back toward Dazhai, about halfway up the mountain.

 As my students saw me taking so many pictures, they began offering suggestions of what I should photograph. This was one of their better ideas. Their suggestion of a dead bug later on was not quite so photogenic.

  Adele, Hero, Logan, and Isaac

 With the weather cloudy and cool, the mountains around us had a beautiful, mysterious quality to them

 Isaac with his family

 Logan's family keeps bees, and they offered me some of the delicious fresh honey

Logan with his father and grandmother. After we left his house, Logan had to return not long after to put the family cow to pasture

Although Isaac had started out fiercely anti-photo, he eventually grew to love the camera, posing and then begging me to take the photo.

Isaac of the grass

Isaac and Logan

 Alice, her grandmother, and her 调皮 younger brother

Isaac and the duckling

Logan and the frog

 One of my favorite photos. Elissa, her mother, and her grandmother. Three generations.

Me with Elissa, Logan, and Adele

Me with Isaac, Elissa, and Adele

Dylan and the duckling

Isaac started wanted his picture taken everywhere...

Adele and Elissa agreed. This is them being monsters

Elissa and I taking in the beauty of the flowers

Parent Student Conferences in Rural China

As an American, I am quite familiar with the concept of parent teacher conferences. Often routine, sometimes forced by bad behavior, they give the parent a chance to see how their kids are doing in class and give the teacher an opportunity to share the issues or successes of the student.

That was more or less my thought process when I went to one of my home room teachers with Aiden, a disruptive and disrespectful student from Class 185. Class 185's home room teacher, Mr. Luo, scolded Aiden for several minutes, interspersing stern words with a slap to the head and a kick to the leg that made me flinch, while Aiden stared dejectedly at the ground, occasionally spouting excuses and finally angrily muttering that he wanted to 退学, or quit school.

While children in China are legally required to continue study until the end of middle school (ninth grade), some quit once they reach fourteen regardless of grade level while others simply stop coming (generally to begin work as a migrant laborer in larger cities).

I will admit that I felt a slight sense of almost relief on hearing that, imaging Aiden's disruptive presence no longer throwing my class into chaos. With that I felt deeply sad at my inability to motivate Aiden and slightly ashamed at my readiness to get rid of him. I would like to say that this realization hardened my resolve to motivate Aiden in my class, but to be honest, after five classes that day, I was exhausted and mostly just wanted to return to my room and collapse in bed with a good book.

But not yet. First, I had to finish disciplining Aiden with Mr. Luo. After we both talked with Aiden for several minutes about his behavior, Mr. Luo called his mother, asking her to come the following day (market day, the ideal day for parents to come to the school, since they will likely be in town anyway) to speak with him and Aiden about her son's disruptive behavior. With that, we parted; Mr. Luo sat back down at his desk in the teacher's office, Aiden stalked back to Class 185's classroom, and I limped back to my room. As I left the office, I passed two home room teachers, Ms. Yang and Ms. Chen, shouting at students. Outside, another, Ms. Min, strode in front of three taller boys like an officer reviewing privates, slapping and berating them as three girls watched on the sidelines. I returned to my room, my sanctuary, mentally and physically drained.


The next day, I was in the teacher's office preparing for Chess Club when Aiden, his mother, and Mr. Luo came in for the parent teacher conference. Aiden's mother was worn beyond her years. Her spine was already partially bent from a lifetime of manual labor in mountainous fields. Her hair was black with a spattering of white, her face prematurely lined by the sun and her sons. She looked to be in her late fifties, but I would be surprised if she were older than forty.

Mr. Luo began by explaining that Aiden had misbehaved not only in my class, but several other classes as well. Aiden was disruptive, disrespectful, and did not listen to the teacher. He did not want to continue his schooling. What followed was not the parent teacher conference that I expected, but rather a parent student conference. A meeting both full of and utterly bereft of intimacy.

Aiden's mother, seated uncomfortably and ill-at-ease in a comfortable faux-leather teacher's chair, turned to her son, who was standing a meter to her left, staring at the ground in sullen silence. She launched into a sad, high-pitched scolding, starting with the importance of respecting and listening to his teachers (especially, she would say, gesturing at me, this 外国老师), briefly touching on the considerable impact of education on his future along with a reminder of how hard she had worked to insure his ability to stay in school, and repeating intermittently his status as a twin (and both how it made things more difficult for her and how it meant he should do better, like his brother). Eventually, most of her words were drowned out by sobs. Aiden remained sullen, staring at the ground, speaking only when forced to by Mr. Luo or, more rarely, his mother.

About fifteen minutes into the scolding, as Aiden's mother's sobs began fading away, Aiden's twin brother, Jerry, cautiously entered the room. Aiden and Jerry are identical twins (in different classes, both of which I teach), and they have most of the same clothing, making it hard to differentiate them at times. Aiden has a small scar on this right cheek that I now know well after having had to find him and make him write lines during one lunch. They wore different clothes now too. Aiden wore dark, torn jeans, a shirt with one mismatched button, and an orange and blue jacket while Jerry had jeans on that are four inches too long and an over-large sweatshirt. Both wore brown leather slip-on sandals that most every boy in the school wears (along with many of the male teachers).

While Jerry is by no means a star student, he has never been as disruptive as Aiden. Not long after I had made Aiden write lines during lunch, I asked Jerry about his brother. It ends up that Jerry is the older brother. While this may seem like splitting hairs to you, it has a large effect on his place in his family and therefore on his behavior. In Confucian philosophy, there is a rigid hierarchical family structure where the younger defers to the elder, and even after sixty-six years of tradition-bashing communism, this aspect of Chinese culture is very much still evident. Thus, Jerry is treated as the elder brother and mostly acts the part, more responsible and less disrespectful than his younger twin.

As Jerry entered the office, his mother turned toward him without interrupting her chastisement of his twin. She began to direct her words toward both of them until Jerry interrupted her, complaining, “妈！我不吵！(Mom! I wasn't noisy)” Eventually he was able to position himself by her side, and his mother started using him as an example rather than including him in the scolding. From there he watched the happenings with a mixture of interest and worry that the focus might return to him. His mother continued to castigate Aiden, mostly repeating herself by now as she told Aiden that he should behave in class and listen to the teacher and respect the teacher and study hard so he could succeed. Aiden got in barely a word edgewise, nor did he want to; he was busy staring at the dirty concrete floor, giving only one word answers when forced to respond by Mr. Luo.


As Aiden's mother's words continued to crash over Aiden's unresponsive features, I began to realize the great distance between them. Aiden, like the great majority of my students, lives in the school during the week, only going home Saturday morning for one night before returning to school for evening study hall on Sunday (students have to walk anywhere from one to four hours to go home, so their time at home is incredibly limited). Aiden's father, like many of my students' parents, works in the city for the majority of the year, only returning to Dazhai once or twice each year. Furthermore, when Aiden is home, he often has to work, constructing houses or working in the fields picking tea leaves. Aiden may be twelve, and may be going through puberty with the elegance of an elephant seal on land, but he does not have the privilege of remaining a child.

It made me extraordinarily sad. There had been no hug when his mother had arrived, either for Aiden or for Jerry. There was no touching at all in fact. The distance between them was extraordinary, a gaping absence longing to be filled. We teachers attempt to fill that role, but it is impossible, like trying to shove the square block through the round hole in the children's game I remember so well from my babysitting days. Or, more appropriately, trying to shove three hundred and sixty square blocks through three hundred and sixty round holes, one for every student I teach. Yes, we are able to make connections. Yes, I believe we make a difference. But we cannot replace parents. And there Aiden was. Alone in the world at the age of twelve, with his mother and twin mere feet away from him.


About forty minutes after the parent student conference had begun, the bell rang for the start of afternoon study hall, and Jerry grabbed some fruit from his mother's bag before jauntily turning to return to his class. I too had to leave; my manager was waiting for a phone call from me. I briefly apologized to Mr. Luo (perhaps the second time I had spoken during the whole affair) before walking between Aiden and his mother and out the door.

As I walked to my room, I turned to look back at the office. I wanted to see Aiden admitting his faults and his mother hugging him before she returned home. I wanted to see Aiden coming out of the office with an ashamed, yet confident look on his face, the face of a reformed man. I wanted to see that awful, oppressive distance between Aiden and his mother filled with something, anything. I wanted to see a conclusion.

The sky was a sharp blue with barely a cloud to be seen. Mountains rose up majestically behind the teaching building, terraced farms and small villages built into their slopes by many generations' of effort. The sun shone hard and bright on it all, throwing the office and its occupants into shadow, and I saw nothing at all.

Aiden at Tomb-Sweeping Day, several weeks before the parent teacher conference