Description:

Summer of 2019, I participated in DukeEngage in Zhuhai, China, an amazing immersive experience where I witnessed how media and the arts were implemented into the education system in China at a local middle school, Zhuhai No. 9 Middle School. As a musician, I am really passionate about the arts and believe that every student should have the opportunity to learn about the arts and have a creative outlet. I chose to pursue this experience because it offered me a chance to create the change I wanted to see in education programs around the world like Zhuhai. Through this program, I got hands-on experience teaching English and film at a middle school, coming up with innovative ways to create a curriculum that was flexible and interactive, especially because most of the time our lessons were not taught in the traditional setting of a classroom. For my film lessons, I taught students the basics of an editing software and let students work in teams to create storyboards for their short films. Not only did I have to make sure my class was on track and able to finish their films before the showcase, I also worked on the final showcase committee and helped thoroughly plan the logistics of No. 9 Middle School’s 10th anniversary showcase, allowing our students to showcase their new skills at the end of the program.

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Reflection:

Because thousands of students attend this school, I had to teach the same lesson three times a day for an entire week in order for every seventh grader to attend my class, limiting the time I saw each student to only 45 minutes each week. I needed to create interesting assignments that would keep students engaged throughout the week before I saw them again. Towards the middle of the program, lots of activities became repetitive and students were not as engaged as before. In order to keep the class interactive and engaging, I came up with group activities that involved friendly competition between groups and brought my class outside the classroom to create opportunities for students to practice speaking in English.

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Our goal was not to make students memorize vocabulary words, but to be able to provide an interactive education experience different to what most traditional Chinese schools provide. I wanted my students to be able to practice interacting in English and also learn how to think creatively and plan and execute a short film. I had to come up with a curriculum that was both entertaining and achievable in the short amount of time we had before displaying their films at the showcase.

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As a member of the final showcase committee, I was in charge of communicating with the student teachers in our program as well as the teachers from the middle school. Because this was the first time hosting a formal showcase at a television station, the middle school teachers were all very new to this, and there were a lot more details and logistics needed to be planned. The biggest challenge was constantly revising our plans and communicating between the student teachers and the middle school teachers in charge of the showcase logistics. I quickly realized that communication was one of the biggest challenges we faced and stepped into the role as the intermediary making sure both the student teachers and middle school teachers were on the same page. 

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I helped design the program, find costumes and props in our budget, and put together the lighting, sound, and backdrop instructions for the performances in both English and Chinese. On the day of the show, I knew things would be hectic and communicating the instructions with the technicians in the sound room would be difficult without someone there to explain and direct, so I helped backstage and in the control room, making sure everything ran smoothly. 

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Through this experience I was able to learn about the moving parts of a large scale production as well as communicating with different people despite cultural and language barriers. I learned how to compromise and be flexible, coming up with creative solutions on the spot. Planning the showcase that involved hundreds of people was definitely difficult and stressful, but it taught me a lot about communication and effective team work. Seeing everything come together at the end showed that our hard work paid off. The final showcase was a success! 

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Artifact:

Linked below are some of the performance videos from the final showcase where you can see the lighting, sound, backdrop, costumes, and all the details of the performance come together. These videos show the result of the many weeks of dedication and hard work both the students and the teachers put in as a team. The culmination of the carefully planned details of each performance and all the logistics and details behind the scenes that were needed to create a successful showcase are shown through these videos.