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| 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.
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| Sonic and I at Dico's. |
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| Sonic, Luke and I at the competition. |
