BEIJING, Sept. 27 (Xinhua) -- Ahead of the Mid-Autumn Festival, 73-year-old American teacher Gail Chou spoke with Xinhua via video link about the years she spent living and teaching in China. Reflecting on people in China and the United States, she said they share many similarities -- they are both friendly, kind, warmhearted, and always willing to help others.
Twenty-two years ago, Chou came to Luoyang No. 2 Foreign Language School through the U.S.-China Teacher Exchange Program to teach for one year. When that year ended, she volunteered to stay, spending twelve years of her life teaching in China.
For Chou, it was never simply a job. What she saw was "a group of children eager to see the world."
Chou summed up her approaches to teaching in three principles. "No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care," she said. "The second is to give my heart to children, and the third one is that love is always the answer."
Before each new semester, she would spend weeks writing words of encouragement on cards. On the first day of school, she waited at the school entrance to greet students with the cards and "welcome candy," a tradition she kept for years.
Over her 12 years in China, Chou wrote more than 50,000 such cards for students. Many of her former students have still kept them today.
To bring English lessons closer to everyday life, she constantly experimented with new ways of teaching. When introducing western food culture, she used local Luoyang flatbread as a pizza base, adding tomato sauce and cheese to make "pizza" with her students.
For a lesson on Hawaiian culture, she guided students to turn green trash bags into grass skirts and use colored paper, drinking straws and yarn to make leis before learning a Hawaiian-style dance.
Basketball became another way for Chou to connect with her students. She started a basketball tournament named after herself and helped organize more than 3,000 games, using the court to teach sportsmanship and teamwork. The tournament has still been held at the school today.
In June 2016, after 12 years of teaching in China, Chou prepared to return to the United States. At a farewell gathering, Bai Fan, principal of Luoyang No. 2 Foreign Language School, presented her with two keys, one gold and one silver. "One opens the school gate, and the other opens the door to home. You are always welcome to come home."
"China has long been another home to me," Chou said during a visit to the Chinese Embassy in the United States at the embassy's invitation during this year's Dragon Boat Festival.
Ronald Sakolsky, another American teacher, also came to Luoyang through a teachers' exchange program. After learning about efforts to combat desertification in China, he helped raise funds to support Yin Yuzhen's tree-planting efforts in Inner Mongolia. Twenty-seven years later, Sakolsky returned to China and traveled to Inner Mongolia, where he revisited the forest he helped fund years ago and planted a tree of friendship with Yin together. He also returned to the school in Luoyang, where he once taught, to meet with teachers and students.
From friendships formed in classrooms to bonds that have endured for decades, the stories of Gail Chou and Ronald Sakolsky reflect the lasting connections between ordinary Chinese and Americans.
Correspondents: Wu Jingdan, Sun Ruibo, Li Jianan
Video editor: Lin Yu
Photo credit to Luoyang No. 2 Foreign Language School■
