Be The Narrator of Your Own Track

In the Webinar I did with SIEBA (School International Education Business Association) a while ago, I got a question from the audience:

"hi Lin, in my experience the Chinese parents more concern/interested on the school ranking regardless of the school values and what we are offering- this is the first thing they ask or the agents ask us..so if you are not on the top rank or higher decile school- most likely they are not interested- money is not the issue , so they are willing to pay higher fees if the school is the top school- any comments?"

I responded,

"In China, the educational system is very hierarchical. The educational resources are distributed unevenly. The infrastructure of the school and the competence of the teachers could have a big gap between a top school and a bottom school. If you get into a high-ranking primary school, high chance you will get into a high-ranking middle school, then a high-ranking high school, then a top university, which leads to a good job. You always climb the 'ladder'. The parents' enquiries are in line with this kind of thinking. Therefore, to facilitate the communication, it's not about changing their mind, rather, we can provide more context. Using an analogy that a schoolteacher in Dunedin told me before, 'if you consider the schooling in China is like a tree that grows taller and taller, schooling in New Zealand is like a tree that grows broader. You explore more here.' I think we need to let Chinese parents know more about the differences between the two systems in context."

This conversation has stuck in my mind since the Webinar. It also clicked with some comments on schooling in New Zealand I heard from Chinese parents and Chinese students:

"在学校光玩儿了。My child just gets a lot of play time at school [indication: not study enough]."

"他们数学教得好简单，我成学霸了！The maths is taught very easy here. I become the genius now!"

When we acknowledge that the parents and the students are using the mindset of learning wired in Chinese educational system and pedagogy to understand their current situation, these comments start to make sense. From my observation, in New Zealand, activities and games are the tools that facilitate the teaching, whereas in China, teaching is mostly delivered in demonstration, and learning is mostly conducted through rote memorisation and drill practices. Hence, in these comments, the parents felt that their children were only playing at school here, not studying enough; and the students, who had the 'stack' of maths knowledge from the schooling in China, felt that they became the little genius here. But there's a risk for them that they'd stop exploring and skip the deeper understanding of the subject.

Meanwhile, such difference could cause conflicts in parent-child relationships in the family.

A participant in my research told me that after a year of study in Auckland, her 16-year-old son said to her:

"Mom, do you know, studying is not the only way of making a living, or succeeding in the future? Someone can also make a living by becoming a professional video gamer."

My participant was shocked by her son’s change of attitude in study and this newly developed imagination of his future. She had constant conflicts with her son during that year. The mother and the son were in misery. The mother said to me,

"When we had conflicts during the first year I came here, I went to tears alone quite often. I was so stressed that year, my hair went grey."

I felt for the mom. But I also felt for the boy.

When I use my 'compassion eye' to see the boy's experience, I'm wondering how he would feel when he had those arguments with his mom. He was not wrong, in New Zealand context, for thinking about other options besides academic pathways. From his previous lived experience in China, he might also understand why his mom reacted in such way. On the one hand, he was thinking about his life, with autonomy. He was making progress in his life. On the other hand, from his mom's perspective, the progress meant nothing, or even worth, it meant a serious setback which she tried so hard to correct.

It must be frustrating for the boy!

Would these conflicts become a disruption of how the boy sees his life? Would that be a disruption of the narrative of his life stories? Can he restore the cohesion and the continuity of this narrative?

Sadly, in this story, the boy gave up the fight, and went back to be the 'good' boy who only focused on study.

"Is there anything I can do for school-age Chinese international students to facilitate their communications with their parents?" I ask myself.

So I developed this tool, 'The Narrator's Track Map ? Lin Zhang 2023'.

In the analogy that the teacher in Dunedin told me, we had a tree which grew taller (the Chinese mindset of schooling), and a tree which grew broader (the New Zealand mindset of schooling). I used this analogy as a simplified model for developing the tool. Thus, I had two directions of the growth: the vertical axis and the horizontal axis. I drew two axes on the paper, and I used glass marbles to symbolise the student's progress in learning.

If I moved the glass marble along the axes, it demonstrated a potential roadblock for the communication between a Chinese student and their parents: when the student developed horizontally in a New Zealand school, explored more in knowledge and in themselves, the parents might not be able to see the progress if they only acknowledged the vertical developments. For example, if I put a glass marble on the map and moved it along the horizontal axis, the output shown on the vertical axis was zero.

"How can I show the student's progress to the parents?" I asked myself.

A spiral!!

Now we are talking~~

I drew a spiral on the axes. When I moved the glass marble along the spiral from the first position to the second position, even the distance it moved vertically was close to zero, the distance it moved along the spiral was significant. The track of the spiral symbolised the real progress that this student had made in life during their schooling in New Zealand.

To use this tool, firstly, I'll do an activity with the student using this track map. I'll let them put the glass marbles on the spiral and talk about how they see the progress they've made since coming to New Zealand. Let them be the narrator of their own life stories. A narrator of the stories from one integral person, rather than a person split or stretched in two systems of standards. If they are happy with it, I'll record the conversation.

Second step, I'll show the map to the parents, and let them listen to the stories told by their children. Based on that, I'll discuss with the parents how the schooling in New Zealand is different from the schooling in China. Then I'll let the parents write down some words for their children, ideally in handwriting. And I'll pass on the parents' feedbacks to the students.

Third step, after the first round of the facilitated communication, I'll let the parents and the students use this track map to have a discussion on their own. Students shall facilitate their discussions with the parents and write down what they've got. Then I'll host a group discussion with all the students. We can reflect together on how the discussions went with their parents and how they felt about this experience.

I hope this tool can help Chinese international students own the narratives of their life stories when they go through change. I also hope this tool can help the parents understand the change that their children are going through, renew their mindset on how to evaluate their children's progress in schooling, and most importantly, maintain the bond with their precious little ones.

#StoryMatters

#HappinessAndSuccess