Empower Rural China Students - 21st Century Skills

For the past three years, the Summer US-China Student Exchange Program has been sponsored by Evergreen. The goal of the program is to enhance mutual understanding of student life in their respective countries. We connected our US students with 26 village kids from 4th to 10th grade in a small town, Heshengqiao, in Hubei Province. The majority of the students are left- behind in the village while their parents work in remote cities. In a borrowed community center, they came together to improve their academic performance. Students had only one room to sleep and study. The sleeping area was divided into two rows for the boys and one row for the girls. The students jokingly claimed that they were living a “landlord's” life because they had air conditioning during the extremely hot summer, which allowed them to focus on advancing their academic studies. A parent kindly volunteered to take care of food and cleaning, while a teacher and a college student volunteer helped with their academic studies. A big TV screen in the conference room, which only opens for special events, was made available; this facility gave students opportunities to communicate directly with people from all over the United States through Skype video and screen sharing. The students also had a great deal of fun finding their village through Google maps. Evergreen invited people from a wide array of professions: Engineers, scientists, entrepreneurs, professors, parents, and elementary, high school & college students, who shared their passions and dreams through these video conferences. Also, students in China connected with high school students in the US through the group project programs. One program involved participating in a poster contest hosted by the American Cancer Society. The students in China formed 4 teams and submitted posters and videos; the American students helped with translation and subtitles. We are proud to announce that through this collaboration, the students achieved 1 gold, 2 silver and 1 bronze medals. Students were very nervous about participating in an international event for the first time; even the youngest kid woke up at 4:00am to participate in the evaluation and award segment of the contest through video. Students were very happy with the international recognition provided by the certifications, prizes and medals! Even though the prize was a Target gift card which couldn’t be used in China, all students chose to keep the gift card, deeming it a token of their dream to see the other side of the world. Every morning, students in China held one-on-one Skype conversations before breakfast with US volunteers, which gave students opportunities to share their experiences and ask their own questions, covering a wide range of topics, including food, hobbies, music, complaints, dreams, and video games. Project based learning concepts were introduced by invited guest speakers. Guests’ ages ranged from 6 to 70 years and came from different geographical areas. For the students, favorite topics were math challenges from Howard, an 11th grade US student, and environmental science projects from the KidsLoveCoral.org , a nonprofit organization. At the end of the three-week program, students shared their wish lists with us. A boy from 6th grade said:” I love math challenges, the coral fish tank and Stanford campus statue projects. I wish to have a coral fish, play video and PUBG [an online PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds] games in the future, and have the opportunity to communicate with other gamers and artists.” A girl from 4th grade said:” I want to learn more about cancer prevention and travel the world to eat all kinds of food. I also want to watch a real sport game live overseas, any sport.” The fulfilment of all their dreams, is our greatest dream.