From Rubbish to Gold

Sonic and I on the Great Wall

Today I want to talk about one of my students and a personal friend, Sonic.  Sonic chose his English name due to its vernacular proximity to his own Chinese name, Suo Qi Wei.  I first met Sonic during my two-week excursion to China back in May.  He, a teacher, and three other students were part of the airport welcoming party for the Langfang teachers.  Sonic grabbed my bags and stuck with the entire time as we made our way to the Langfang school bus.  He was simply full of question after question and he was eager to tell me all about his glorious land.  Since that point to now I’ve maintained a close friendship with this young man.

About two months ago, Sonic approached me with a problem.  He was entering an English competition; however, his teacher had told him that his entrée paper was rubbish.  He asked me for help.  Sonic’s favorite place to eat is a fast food restaurant called Dico’s.  We often go there for conversation and fried chicken.  I sat down with Sonic in Dico’s and I read over his paper.  His teacher was right...  It was rubbish.  However, it was still salvageable.  The premise behind the paper was a good one and the thesis was one that merely needed a little tweaking before it would make a great argument.  The paper was about the health benefits of humor.  I sat with Sonic and helped him work through the finer arts of developing a strong outline.  We debated the premise, started searching for good supporting evidence, and even included a few humorous jokes to drive the point home.  After three hours we finally had an outline to be proud of.  Now all Sonic had to do was rewrite the paper based on the new outline.

Sonic presented the new paper to me and I corrected a few of the imperfections.  The credit for all the improvements really should go to Sonic.  I may have steered him in the right direction but he made the conclusions on his own.  A good teacher doesn’t tell his students what to think but helps them to learn how to think for themselves.  Sonic did that and I couldn’t have been more proud of him.

Finally the time came for the submission of the paper in speech form.  Sonic preformed it well and I was impressed with his progress.  His advisor couldn’t believe the change.  The results came back a week later and Sonic had taken first place!  It was unbelievable.

However, the story does not end there.  Round one of the competition was simply betting out all the other students at LTU.  Round two of the competition was going to be a contest against all the other school in the province.  This time, instead of a paper and speech, Sonic was going to have to win in an importune debate without knowing the topics.  Once again, Sonic came to me for help.

I hate to say that Sonic came to me telling me that his advisor said to him, “You’ve got no critical thinking skills.”  Advisor this person may be but life couch they are not.  So Sonic and I made our way back to Dico’s to work on his critical thinking.  This ended up being a lot more fun than you might think.  Essentially Sonic brought along a list of common news relate items that would probably come up in the debate.  I told him that we needed to argue the pros and cons of each topic.  In order to decide which side one of us would take we simply flipped a coin.  If it was heads then Sonic argued the pros and I argued the cons.  If it was tails then vice versa.  We had fun trying to outdo each other and it served as a real mental challenge.  It didn’t matter if we believed in what we were arguing so much as coming out the clear victor and knocking the other speechless.  Sonic really held his own ground and we were pretty much 50/50 for wins and losses.  I couldn’t believe that Sonic’s advisor said he didn’t have any critical thinking faculties.  By all accounts I would say that Sonic has some serious brain power.  True, it was largely untapped potential but a push in the right direction got him really thinking on his toes.  I was quite impressed with how he held his own against my scrutiny.

Sonic and I also had a long talk about what it meant to win the competition.  Sonic wanted to win, of course, but I didn’t want him to get his hopes up.  I told him that no matter what happens I would still be proud of him because of the progress he had made so far.  Winning isn’t everything and he needed to focus more on enjoying the debate than on winning.  The nervousness would fade if he could only learn to thrive off of the trill of the contest.  It’s the sport of the competition that makes it worth the effort.

The day of the big competition finally came.  Sonic was dressed in a fine suit and looked quite dapper.  He waited alongside the other contestants in a holding room awaiting his turn.  All of the contestants had their cell phones removed and pockets checked.  The officials take a dim view of cheating here in China.  Finally the time came for the debate.  Sonic was given the topic of, “Does age matter in relationships?”  He handled it like a pro and even told a few appropriate jokes to prove his point.  I was super proud of him.

After the debate I waited with Sonic for the results.  I asked him if was nervous at all during the debate.  He told me that he was only partly nervous.  However, he said that it didn’t matter if he won or lost.  It only matter that he tried his best and had fun doing it.  I was floored.  I found myself biting my nails during the performance but Sonic was a cool as a cucumber.

The results finally came in and we couldn’t believe it…  Sonic had placed first! Looking back at it I can’t help but think about what Sonic’s advisor had said about his paper.  He had said it was, “rubbish.”  Well, Sonic had turned that rubbish into gold.  I guess it just goes to show that we should never be too quick to give up on our students.   

Sonic and I at Dico's.

Sonic, Luke and I at the competition.