White-collar compete to spend vacation teaching in rural areas

What are you going to do with your five-day annual vacation? Travelling, sleeping, or shopping? On October 11, the Green Hope School's teaching assistance program in Sichuan Province was officially launched. The program was featured with the theme of "Striving for a Better Tomorrow and Touching Your Soul."

It planned to recruit white-collar workers to spend five working days in the middle of November serving as a teacher in the mountainous areas of Sichuan Province. The reporters learned from the organizer that since the application was released, 11,502 citizens have signed up to compete for the 15 volunteer positions.

Talking about this, Feng Ai, deputy secretary of Fudan University's Youth League Committee and with rich experience in organizing teaching assistance activities, said that launching such a short-term teaching assistance activity required special attention from the organizer, and that the applicants should take this activity seriously as well.

White-collar workers

Maybe the gains are well worth the effort

"In the past month, we have been overwhelmed by phone calls. Besides the local calls, we also received application calls and emails from Zhejiang Province, Beijing and other places in China." The organizer told the reporters that white-collar applicants were quite enthusiastic.

Ms. Guo, born in 1983, now works in finance at a Top 500 company. In 2008, she took part in a program the company organized to send their teachers to teach at a school for migrant workers' children. Even after this experience, she wanted to be a teacher again, so she signed up again this year. Although she only had a five-day annual vacation, she still felt it was worth it. "Maybe I will gain more than the students, because while helping others I can also feel happy and relaxed."

Yet according to Mr. Wang, a veteran volunteer who has participated in rural education programs, the Special Olympics, assistance for the Wenchuan Earthquake, as well as many other volunteer activities," In many people's eyes, the annual vacation is for amusement and relaxation. In fact, if I can spend the annual leave in Sichuan Province, experiencing the local customs and helping the children, then it can be called 'combining teaching with entertainment.'"

What will the five-day teaching assistance program bring to the children?

Ms. Guo's wish was to become an English teacher. "I feel that five days is probably insufficient to impart basic knowledge. I have heard that there are first-graders to fifth-graders in the school. In the last few days I have been preparing the teaching plans. I have been thinking of playing interactive games to stoke their interest in English."

Mr. Qian, aged 26, is an IT worker. He heard that the local school was equipped with computers but the teachers and students there did not know how to use them. So he hoped to use the five days to "eliminate illiteracy" on computers among the students. He would open courses on using a computer and photography to broaden the students' horizons and help them realize the power of information.