To Teach All Students

I used to work as a teacher of English in a high school in China. This school was considered

the best of the city because it was founded by the government and equipped with the strictly-

selected teachers and the most advanced teaching facilities of the time. Even though it was a

public school, students needed to pay what they would have paid for private schools since they

would receive the best teaching service. Besides paying high tuition fees, students had to pass the

entrance exam to be admitted to this school. The school had an enormous reputation for its

students’ high academic performance. Thus, it was very popular in the city. My focus at work

was how to engage students in learning, which has been my professional interest since the early

days of my teaching career. The promotion of student involvement in learning enabled me to

soon establish myself as a high quality teacher. I was proud of my work because my students’

English proficiency was evaluated by experts of English teaching as three levels higher than that

of students of the same grade. Actually, I believed every teacher at this school was gratified in

that we were all selected by the government to work here because of our excellent teaching

performance. I didn’t really think about who my students were, which I was not aware of at that

time.

Perhaps, I was with my students every day without contacting any student outside this school

so that I was too close to see who they were. It continued this way until one year, on the day of

the school’s entrance exam I experienced what was quite provoking to me. I witnessed how

prospective students who participated in the exam reacted to the exam results. Some were

ecstatic about being accepted to the school while many others burst into loud sobs the minute

they realized they failed. It never came to my mind that my school’s entrance exam would have

such a huge emotional impact on so many elementary graduates of the city. I couldn’t help but

feeling like consoling the students who were crying and who would not become my students, or

more precisely, the students of my school. They made me think about the students I taught.

It was at this moment I started to ask myself “Who are my students?” My students were

predominantly the children of local government officers whose political status decided that they

could afford paying a lot more extra money to send their child to my school. In China, the

government has the tradition to select its officers from intellectuals. Based on that, I could infer

my students’ parents, in general, had received college or university education. Putting all the

factors together, I was now able to see the social background of my students: intellectual families

of the high political, socioeconomic class. Also, through my interaction with parents, I knew they

were very supportive of teachers because they themselves were beneficiaries of education.

Moreover, my students’ success in passing the school entrance exam implied that they were high

academic performers. In a word, I and my colleagues literally taught elite students in terms of

everything. Their hign academic performance was not just because we taught well. Compared to

our counterparts at other schools, I and my colleagues were doing an easy job. What if my

students were from lower socioeconomic classes? What if my students’ parents were not

supportive of my work? What if my students were the ones who couldn’t pass the entrance

exam? Would it be the same easy to engage them in learning? Would they be able to learn three

times better? I realized the social injustice that had been created by the local government through

the founding of this particular school. I was not the cause of the injustice; however, I had a

vested interested in this school. I as well as my colleagues was contributing to social inequality,

even though unintentionally. In this school, teachers only served the social elites. Having

realized all this, I started to feel ashamed of myself for having been self-contented about my

teaching outcomes. During the rest of my teaching years in China, I was more and more aware

that I was perpetuating social injustice. But, there was not much that I could do. It was hard for

me, a system’s beneficiary, to challenge or criticize the system. I left China with the realization

that teachers needed to teach all students to promote social justice.

Then I came to Canada and worked as a Mandarin teacher in Montreal for a few years. Unlike

my students in China, my Mandarin students were very much diversified in terms of race,

ethnicity, culture, age, and socioeconomic status. They were between 3- 12 years old. About half

of them were from middle class, and the rest were from lower middle class. Holding my belief in

social justice, I was working diligently to reach all my students. Nevertheless, it was challenging

to involve all students equally as well as enable every single of them to truly learn. One of my

biggest obstacles was that students of the same grade had different Mandarin proficiency and I

had to teach them at the same time. It was through reflecting on who my students were and what

they needed that I worked out some ways to engage different students. For instance, the students

from Chinese immigrant families usually learn more easily, so I engaged them as student

teachers to help other students. Most students from other culture groups shared the same

motivation for learning Mandarin: they would like to visit China one day; therefore, my teaching

was focused on practicality. It was crucial to always look for the areas where Chinese-

background students wouldn’t get bored and meanwhile non-Chinese students would still have

confidence to learn.

Teaching all students means different challenges at different times as every learning context is

unique. My humble opinion is that no matter what, we teachers should strive to teach all students

to achieve our teaching and educational goals as well as eliminate injustice in schools.