My Rockstar Students

I began my position as a lecturer at DePauw University this past August. It's the first time I've had a class all to myself, and it's both very exciting and an awesome responsibility. For many students, I'm the first Chinese instructor they've had. For others, I'm the first instructor who has required them to mind their tones and pay attention to stroke order. The great thing about these students? They are so eager! They have lots of questions and they absorb cultural knowledge like sponges. We're still working on the language basics, but it takes time, and already they've made a ton of progress! They even self correct!

This past Thursday was Mid-Autumn Festival, one of the most important holidays in Chinese culture. In many ways it is much like our Thanksgiving -- families gather together and enjoy moon cakes and fruit while gazing at the moon, which symbolizes togetherness. It's a difficult time for those who can't reunite with their families, but there's still some comfort to be sought in knowing that wherever you and your loved ones are, the harvest moon shines bright and full for all of us.

I taught my students about the holiday on Wednesday since we don't have class on Thursday, and on Friday, the ASIA club hosted a celebration in honor of the holiday, which is also celebrated around various countries in southeast Asia. The news of the celebration didn't reach me until a week before the festival, when I was informed that they'd like to have our students participate. I was skeptical that my students would want to organize a performance on such short notice, but when I presented the idea to them on Monday, their overall reaction was "yeah, let's sing a song! It'll be awesome!" I suggested the classic song "The Moon Represents My Heart" since it was very fitting for this particular event, but I soon realized that if we were going to do this, it would have to be something that the students felt comfortable with and were excited about. So what did they choose? 對不起，我的中文不好 or "Sorry, My Chinese Isn't So Good". 

I tweaked the lyrics a bit so they better described my students. The song is originally performed by the British band Transition as they travel around the streets of Taiwan poking fun at their own Chinese skills. They joke about the stereotype that all foreigners are assumed to be American and identify themselves as "English gentleman". My students are certainly not English gentleman, so we changed it to say that they are DePauw students. And in the last verse, the band sings about how their Chinese ability has improved. Well, we're only in week 5 of the semester and we've got a long way to go, so I had them sing:

no worries, my Chinese will improve

no worries, no worries

 I'm taking Chinese class now

no worries, my Chinese will improve

no worries, no worries,

Deng Laoshi will teach us how to speak Chinese!

They loved this. One of my students volunteered to learn the song on the guitar in just two days and after only 20 minutes of practice in class on Wednesday, we were ready to take the stage. We were told to arrive at 7, although the performances didn't end up starting until 8:45, but they were troopers, laughing and chatting with their fellow classmates (I teach two sections of first-year Chinese). They almost had a heart attack when the emcees announced a surprise performance by the second-year students and wrongly announced that they would be singing our song. They all turned around and looked at me yell-whispering "Deng Laoshi (Teacher Deng), they stole our song!" I told them just to remain calm, we'd figure it out, but my stomach dropped as well; I knew how excited they were to perform the song. Thankfully, the emcee had just made a mistake, and the second-year students were actually performing "The Moon Represents My Heart"! Phew!

Backstage, the kids were abuzz with excitement. They made their own little chant "一二三，非常好!" (1, 2, 3, excellent!). It was so heartwarming to see them come up with this on their own; it comes from something I say in class often. I always give feedback to students after they respond to a question, and they know that there's a scale. First comes 好 (good). Then 很好 ( very good). And if they really blow me away with their response, they get a 非常好 (excellent). Many students answer me very deliberately and carefully in hopes of getting a 非常好.

We took the stage and set up our guitarist and the mics. We started singing and things were going very smoothly until our guitarist got a little excited and skipped the second verse. There was a bit of a fumble, but we recovered acapella and he came back in a couple of bars later. We finished strong! The crowd went wild! It was 9:30 when we got off stage and the kids were so excited about how much fun it had been. The group disbanded quickly as they ran off to go meet parents and friends for dinner (it's parents' weekend at DePauw), but not before receiving praise from the other language teachers. They were rockstars!