Butler grad on 2-year teaching stint
There's no going home for the holidays for Merritt Wuchina. And the only way she'll see her parents, David and Robin Wuchina of Connoquenessing, this Christmas will be on a computer screen.
That's because the 2008 Butler High School graduate is living in China, where she is six months into a two-year stint of teaching English.
“I live in a town two hours north of Dali, 15 minutes away from the city of Binchuan, in a town called Lijiao,” Wuchina said.
“The best analogy I can make to it is just like how I grew up: one hour from Pittsburgh, 15 minutes from Butler, in Connoquenessing. Except this analogy doesn't apply so well because although it is a 'rural' town, the population density in China is still very high,” she said, adding Binchuan has the same population as Pittsburgh, but it is a city that no Chinese person outside of Yunnan Province would ever notice.
Wuchina arrived in the country at the end of June after signing up with Teach for China, a global nonprofit that recruits teachers in both the United States and China. After an orientation period, three weeks studying Mandarin Chinese and a month's teaching where she gave English instruction to a class of 20 students entering fifth grade, she arrived in Lijiao.
“I teach third-grade English and fourth-grade English and music,” she said.
Wuchina lives in one room at a school dormitory.
“What you have to know is that in China, schools are set up in 'bans,' or one group of students that stay in the same classroom all day while the teachers of their respective subjects come to them,” she said.
“At our school each grade has two bans. I teach two bans of third and two bans of fourth grade for a total of 14 classes a week. In third grade each ban has 53 students, and in fourth grade each ban has 44 students. So that means I see almost 200 students a week,” Wuchina said.
“Depending on the day, I could have anywhere from one to four classes. I usually wake up around 7 a.m. to make a small breakfast in my room and start preparing my materials for the day, grading quizzes and homework,” she said.
“Around 10 a.m., I go out to monitor students during morning exercises. We eat lunch (they call it breakfast) in the cafeteria around 11. I have my first class around 10 or 1 and then teach until 3:30. We eat dinner around 5,” she said.
Wuchina said something she really likes about the Chinese school system is its morning exercises.“All of the students in the school gather in lines to do a 5-minute routine, more like a dance than an exercise, but at least it gets them moving,” she said. “The first time I saw it I was shocked — I could never imagine students in the United States doing this. But I think the U.S. could use more of it with our childhood obesity rates.”Wuchina said she was also surprised to find that the students clean the schools themselves.“While this may come as a shock to many Westerners, I actually think it's really important for the students. There's less of a sense of entitlement, it makes them care more about respecting their environment and school property,” she said.“They learn valuable life skills. I have some young students, especially girls, who have a strong sense of responsibility beyond their age,” she said.“Students here work hard from sunup to sundown, but they also play hard and are very active. A trend with the kids that has caught on here are Pogs — the small circular cards from the '90s the kids from my generation would probably remember,” she said.As for her life outside the classroom, Wuchina admits learning Mandarin Chinese is still very difficult, but she feels she has made progress since her initial language training in July.While talking with her students is a great learning experience, she still struggles when speaking with local teachers and community members.
Wuchina said part of the problem is her shyness, but a heavy local dialect there doesn't help either.“Think of learning English as a foreign language, then going to Boston, Long Island, or the Deep South,” she said. “It's not just an accent, but a different language in itself. So I'm trying to pick up on some of those words, too, even though there's no dictionary to learn from.”She said she's coping with Chinese food more easily than the local dialect.“I really like eating here because meals are done 'family style' and everything is shared,” she said.The diet features “lots of vegetables, pork is a common meat, and the food in Yunnan is deliciously spicy. My region is also very famous for its fruit: grapes, oranges, pomegranates, bananas, mangos, apples, pomelos, etcetera.”“Yunnan is famous for its Pu'er tea which I love. I have always been a big tea drinker, so it's great for me. They don't have too bad coffee either, although the Chinese don't really drink it much,” she said.“The elderly in China, at least this region, are also very fit and active. This really impresses me. I have seen a lot of people carrying their young grandchildren in knapsacks on their back,” she said. “They work as farmers into their old age and have their own hobbies in their spare time like playing music, table games or dancing.”“I do have one friend who is a 63-year-old erhu player and farmer,” she said. “The erhu is a two-stringed Chinese instrument. I heard him playing and singing at a local restaurant one day, and we started chatting because I also play saxophone.”“He gave me a lot of pieces of traditional Chinese music, which is written a bit differently than Western music. He also comes by to give me oranges from his farm,” Wuchina said.“I went to his home over the weekend for a big gathering of musicians and dancers. There was a whole orchestra of musicians playing traditional Chinese music. We even got to participate. My co-fellow sang and I played saxophone,” she said.“A lot of the men there were formerly in the army and were looking through a photo album of “then-and-now” pictures from today and their army portraits as young men,” Wuchina said.“Meanwhile, their grandchildren were walking around with smartphones and snapping “selfies” of themselves,” she said.Wuchina added that while she doesn't know how the elderly Chinese see the world, she gets the sense that a lot has changed in their lifetimes.
“It's amazing to see how resilient they are in light of that change, yet still nostalgic for the past. My friend has told me numerous times how happy he is to meet us as foreigners, probably something he never dreamed of when he was 19,” she said.Wuchina said she plans to do some traveling over the Chinese New Year break, going back to Kunming to study Chinese.“Then I am probably going to travel around some other regions of China,” she said, adding she's already gone on a hike through Tiger Leaping Gorge, a UNESCO World Heritage Site on the Yangtze River, with some friends during her October break.“Of course, there's a lot of things I miss from the U.S., mostly food,” she said. “But at least once or twice a month we travel to a city called Dali three hours away where we can buy pizza, sweets, coffee, draft beer. I eat oatmeal every day, I get a little tired of that. I probably say I miss breakfast foods the most.'“I miss having running water easily accessible sometimes. It makes life a bit more difficult, although I suppose I am living more 'green,'” she said.“I miss my family of course. Thanksgiving just passed, and it was hard having a holiday pass while away from home. Luckily we re-created a Thanksgiving in Dali and I could celebrate with my Teach for China family,” Wuchina said.“My parents and I talk on Skype usually once a week or every other week. They will probably visit me next summer,” she said.“We try to talk at least once a week,” said Robin Wuchina. “Usually on Saturday morning or Saturday night. There's about a 13-hour difference. Saturday morning is her Saturday night and Saturday night is her Sunday.”
Robin Wuchina said she shipped her daughter a care package in October.“It had chocolate, Nutella and fall-smelling bath products, “ she said. “She's asked for things for her students like stickers and basketball cards. They are really into basketball in China.She said she's readying another package to ship to Merritt that will contain more chocolate, socks and her daughter's hiking boots.However much Merritt Wuchina might miss tastes from home, there's one thing she doesn't miss. She said, “I don't miss winter. I am never need more than a light fleece on cold days.”Wuchina added she faces some problems in the classroom.“Within the past five years or so, the residents of our town have grown wealthy from grape farming. It's a big cash crop here,” she said.“Almost all of my students' families grow grapes for a living, even as a side job,” she said. “However while the money goes up, the importance of education has gone down. Many of the teachers at our school have noticed a significant drop in students' behavior and academic performance.”“This could be because no longer do parents need to put pressure on their children to study hard and go to college to earn money for the family when they can just grow grapes and make good money,” Wuchina said. “Thus, we deal with a lot of management and behavior issues.”“Even though I said earlier students here do not have as much of a sense of entitlement, I think students in my community are starting to develop one more and more. Luckily our local teachers and staff are very strong and supportive of us,” she said.She plans to remain in China through the duration of her two-year contract.“There are always complaints I have, but overall I am content to be here,” she said.“What really keeps me here is knowing how heartbreaking it would be for my students to see me leave,” she added. “The teacher from last year had to leave early for family reasons and it was incredible to see the notes my students wrote her to send in the mail.”
Sharing her snapshots is Merritt Wuchina of Connoquenessing, a 2008 Butler High School graduate and a 2012 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh with a degree in English writing and anthropology and a certificate in global studies.Since the end of June, she has been in a town called Lijiao in the Chinese province of Yunnan teaching third- and fourth-grade students English.She plans to remain in China for two years as part of the Teach China global nonprofit group that recruits teachers in the United States and China.
