Summer Time! (Part 1)

Long time no see!
[Imagine your own unoriginal opening paragraph apologizing for how infrequently we write here.]

When last we wrote, Leigha gave a bit more detail on our specific schedules and some of our ‘adventures’ over the course of the year. She also hinted at upcoming trips we were excited about. Since then, of course, the trips have passed us by, but we’ve also finished the school year! I’ll work through these more or less sequentially, perhaps over a few posts.

Toward the end of the school year we were privileged to join students on “Spring Trips” – week long class adventures for each secondary class (6-12). (Think E-term if you’re familiar with EMHS or Interim if you’re familiar with RVA). Due to COVID, these trips were all centered on Chengdu this year, but in past years they’ve ranged all across (and even outside) China.

Leigha was asked to lead the 6th grade trip, which was a cool recognition of her clear organizational and leadership skills. She didn’t have to plan or coordinate the specific events and timetables, but she coordinated with the travel company, tracked tons of handouts and forms, checked and double-checked personal documents like passports for travel, and learned tons about safety requirements and procedures. Her trip headed back to DuJiangYan (mentioned in last blog post) but explored completely new parts of the area.

Pictures from Leigha’s trip! (Note: our selections of photos for this post will be limited to those that don’t show close frames of students’ faces as an attempt to maintain their privacy and uphold school policy. So if the selection seems overly landscape-heavy, that’s why).

I went with the 7th graders for the week. (This also means Leigha and I spent the most time apart since getting married. Gasp!) Because we went with the same travel company as the 6th graders, my week included a lot of similar activities to Leigha’s, including adventure activities like rock climbing, camping, hiking, and biking as well as cultural activities such as pottery-making and basket-weaving. My group also engaged in service for part of a day. The travel company had identified a few elders who lived in a nearby village who had no support network and lived in physically difficult conditions; our primary act of service was to flatten one lady’s yard and build rock pathways for her to walk more safely across it.

[Mini-reflection on the service: at first, and throughout the actual day, I was pretty skeptical about this form of service. I felt quite self-aware due to the presence of local government officials, I wasn’t sure how much help we were adding that couldn’t more easily and professionally be done by those who were assisting us, and I worried about presenting those we served through a lens of pity rather than a lens of dignity – our group being almost entirely urban, upper-class outsiders. My fears weren’t entirely assuaged by the end of the day, but as I talked with the students that evening and the next day, I could see the impact the activity was having on them. Many of them were deeply moved by the idea of people living without family or community support – or in poverty in general – and more than a few listed the day as one of the highest or most important parts of the whole trip. As I listened, I began to realize that the service may not have been the actual goal – but rather the means by which we tried to build servant-leaders who would actually look outside their own lives on behalf of those who are suffering or disadvantaged. That is to say, this may have been a sterile, controlled, unrealistic environment for “service,” but seen as a learning environment or “sandbox” rather than a full-blown culturally-sensitive give-and-take service-and-learning relationship helped me shift my frame of reference. These are 7th graders, after all, and not college students or working professionals. I’m sure there are similar experiences in my past that inspired some of my desire to live a life of humble, Christ-centered service.

In some ways, this still seems a bit ends-focused (the means by which we accomplish the growth of servant-leaders should certainly matter, and modeling an approach that is focused on relationship and humility is important); still, given the time-frame, the lack of previous exposure to poverty or difficult issues for many of the students, and other unique circumstances, perhaps it was the best that could be done.]

Upon returning we compared notes and decided that Leigha’s trip was much faster-paced and energetic than ours. This was a big blessing because the 6th graders really needed “go time” and the 7th graders tend to be more methodical and laid-back. Overall, it was a wonderful week of fun and adventure, and it helped me grasp how essential it is to provide opportunities to interact with students outside the classroom; I came to know many students in ways I never could in Geography class.

More pictures!