The teachers' tales

Sarah Curtiss

My name is Sarah Curtiss. I'm 26 and from the United States. I've been a teacher at Muffy's Education for more than one and half years.

I was an elementary school teacher back in the US. My degree is elementary education. I taught fourth-grade for a year and then I taught first-grade as well.

At Muffy's, I teach reading, writing and math - we call them "word smart" and "logic smart". We teach art through design. We also do a lot of "song smart" through music and musical instruments - how to keep a beat and sing songs. We also teach a lot of "body smart", which is like PE, where we learn how our bodies work and how we can run or interact with our friends.

We do a lot of learning here, but we also have a lot of fun. I think the teachers here plan really good activities that keep the kids engaged and help them learn, but have fun at the same time.

The feeling from Chinese kids is awesome. I love coming to school every day. Working with the kids is very rewarding. It's always fun and fascinating. It's amazing watching them learn and grow up.

They are so many impressive moments in teaching. One of them is just watching a kid go from hardly being able to write basic letters to being able to write three or four pages. It's pretty cool by the end of the year to see that and watch their confidence grow.

It is exclusive to teachers. You get to see unique moments in a kid's life and the unique experiences that they have. That's a pretty awesome job. You get to see kids grow and really start to develop their critical thinking.

The feelings from the parents are also very positive. I work very well with the parents. They've come to me to ask for suggestions about how they can keep their kids learning at home and how to encourage their child to improve their English.

I'd say the interaction with US and Chinese parents is always going to be a little bit different, just based on culture and things like that. Of course, there is always an adjustment to make or communication differences to be overcome, just to meet the needs of different parents. You have to change how you communicate with the parents because they are from different cultures.

Kristie Newbold

My name is Kristie Newbold. I'm 24 and I come from England. Before I came to China, I worked as a teacher in England. I've been in China for almost one year.

My students are aged 5 or 6 and they've been at Muffy's for around two or three years.

I teach reading, writing, math, science and design. Math is conducted in a variety of ways. Because the students are so young, I think it would be hard to just sit them down and just give them a math lesson. "Logic Time" is about exploration, giving the kids the chance to explore math and do fun activities focused on math, addition or time. They actually have something physical that they can all do together, where they get a clock to play with and learn how to tell the time.

They enjoy it and I think they want to learn math because it's fun, rather than being told they have to learn.

There are so many unforgettable moments, like the end of last year when my class graduated. We had a mini-graduation ceremony. All the children made graduation cups and we had little scrolls made for them. All the parents came and watched them graduate. One parent said that it was really wonderful that we'd made a big effort to allow the kids to graduate and she couldn't wait until her kids graduate from university. It was a nice day.

I actually saw one of my graduate students recently. She came back for Teachers' Day to say hello and let me know how she's getting on in primary school.

Again, I have had very positive experiences with parents. They encourage their children. They are always eager to know what they can do at home, how they can better their child's education and how they can help them at home. I think it's really important for the parents to have a close relationship with the teachers to ensure that the learning process continues at home and doesn't stop when the child leaves the school gate.

The growth that a child displays during a year in a fully immersed kindergarten is massive. They can start coming here with no letter-writing skills, and with very little verbal communication, and they leave being able to speak full sentences, to write full sentences and to communicate their basic needs, and more, in English. They progress a lot during the course of a year.

Sarah Curtiss and Kristie Newbold spoke to Peng Yining and He Na.