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Will Clem

The mark of a good tale is in the telling. That is the message mainland 'national level' primary teacher Li Jilin had to share with local Chinese-language teachers attending her teaching masterclasses last week.

'Wo he Dingding dou diao le menya,' Ms Li read out loud,  in a soft but emotionally weighted voice, inserting dramatic pauses and exaggerated facial expressions.

It is a simple sentence: Dingding and I have both lost our front teeth. But delivered as she presents it, it draws the listener in to the rest of a short poem in which the two children overcome their embarrassment about having toothless grins with the help of a joke from the teacher.

This is the sort of performance she feels primary teachers should deliver to create an atmosphere in their classes to instil in their students a love for  reading.

'Whatever you do, don't get the students to chant, 'Wo-he-ding-ding-dou-diao-le-men-ya',' she added, mimicking the monotonous group-reading familiar to teachers across Hong Kong and beyond.

'That doesn't work. They simply don't gain anything from that.'

Ms Li's approach to storytelling is just one aspect of her teaching philosophy which aims to develop children's natural curiosity and inspire them with a sense of wonder about the world around.

'It is the teacher's job to bring the world outside into the classroom,' she said. 'When you can do that, then the classroom comes to life. Learning becomes a joy and the children don't even realise they are studying.

'When the teacher loves their children, they will always find a way to inspire their children.'

And the 69-year-old educator believes in spreading this message so strongly that she spent 24 hours on a train to come to Hong Kong from her hometown of Nantong, in Jiangsu province just north of Shanghai, where she has taught for the past 50 years.

Ms Li is a prominent figure in education circles in the mainland.  She played a key role in the reform of primary education and  has received a ream of top teaching awards and accolades.

Her collected writings were published  last year by the People's Education Press, and her theory of 'situational learning' has developed a strong following among mainland  academics.

Ms Li believes primary school children have the ability to teach themselves from their surroundings.

'The teacher's role is that of the guide.  All we need to do is to teach them to have the right inquiring attitude.'

The poem about Dingding's front teeth gave children the chance to reflect on the changes going on in their own bodies as they grew.

'They start thinking, 'Yes, I have grown',' she said. 'This is part of their own life experience, and it makes their lessons relevant.'

She said teachers could not do too much to stress the importance of reading.

'Children need to read more,' she said. 'All they need to do is read more and write more and the language of books will naturally become part of their life.'

While it had been designed to help children hone their language skills, she said the approach could be applied to all aspects of the primary curriculum.

She gave the example of a maths exercise setting students the task of how to work out the area of a cut-out parallelogram.

'The class sits silently for a while as the children  try to  work out the problem. But then a hand will shoot up and a child cries out, 'Teacher, I worked it out!' ' she said. 'After that another hand will go up, then another and another.'

Some students cut the shape in half and put the two ends together to form a rectangle. Others realised a right-angle triangle cut from the end could be placed on the other side to form the same rectangle.

'But they all get to the same conclusion that its area comes from height times length,' she said.

However, it was not enough for teachers to sharpen their students' powers of observation. They themselves needed to heed that lesson as well.

'Education needs to rely on research, so teachers ought to adopt this attitude to their work,' she said. 'You need to look at everything you do and ask if it is effective, how well it works, and how you can do it better.'

That meant taking a critical look at education theory and not taking directives at face value.

'Too many teachers are going about their business blindly following what they have been taught or they read in their textbooks,' she said. 'We cannot be blind about what we are doing.'

Ms Li was in Hong Kong as part of a delegation of mainland educators invited by Chinese University of Hong Kong's Centre for University and School Partnership in conjunction with the Education and Manpower Bureau.

John Lee Chi-kin, dean of CUHK Faculty of Education, described Ms Li as 'inspiring'.

'The interesting thing is that her ideas tie in very closely with current western research,' Professor Lee said.

While Ms Li said she did not know enough about Hong Kong schools to pass comment on the local education system, she had been impressed by the atmosphere she had experienced.

'From what I have seen, it is clear the teachers  love their students and the students are  fond of their teachers,' she said. 'That gives students a sense of security which is very important. They appeared to feel relaxed, safe and happy. Hong Kong seems to do this very well.'

She had visited both schools which used Cantonese in Chinese classes and others which taught in Putonghua.

'The vocabulary and structure of Putonghua is much closer to written Chinese, so it might be advisable for children to be taught Putonghua,' she said. 'But there has to be a balance between Putonghua and local dialects, it cannot be all one or all the other.'



It ain't what you say, it's the way you say it