An Angel Sent to China

By Gary Weedman

In the summer of 1999, Mary Lou Martin, a Johnson alumna, veteran elementary school teacher, and wife of Professor Bob Martin, led a group of 10 students to China to teach in the English Language Institute of China (ELIC). Little could that intrepid band know what would ensue from their pioneering work.

The following year Martin and nine students returned to China, this time to the city of Zhengzhou, Henan Province. This former ancient capital, one of 13 emerging megacities in China, has a population of 8.6 million. These Americans worked with Zhengzhou No. 47 Middle and High School, an elite residential institution on four campuses with more than 7,000 students. The influence of their work has increased every year till today when there are six distinct programs in the city or on our campus. Approximately 50 Chinese have visited Johnson, and 115 Johnson personnel have visited or worked in China since that first trip.

 

Visiting Teacher Program

The founding principal of the Zhengzhou school, Chen Fengshan, initiated the first partnership. At the end of Martin”s third summer at No. 47, Chen asked her to recruit a team to teach for the entire academic year. He specifically wanted Johnson teachers in his school. Six Johnson alumni agreed to go. Chen, impressed with the dedication and ability of that first full-time team, wanted more to come. He came to Johnson”s campus in the spring of 2005, with his assistant and translator Amy Chang, and stayed almost a week in the home of then President David Eubanks and his wife. Early in his visit, Chen requested that Johnson host one of his teachers each spring to see how the school prepares teachers. Eubanks agreed, and it was stipulated that the visiting teachers should participate fully in campus life and observe campus regulations. After that first visit, Chen graciously hosted the Eubanks in Zhengzhou.

Each spring, Johnson continues to host a teacher who attends classes, chapel, church, and community events. Each teacher has been changed by this experience, enabled to see the world afresh.

 

Master”s in Educational Technology

Before Duan Hua, the second visiting teacher, returned to China, I suggested she consider enrolling in Johnson”s Master of Educational Technology program. Duan had participated in the full life of the Johnson community, her English was quite good, and I believed the degree could help improve her teaching skills. She enrolled and became the first Chinese graduate in this program, but by no means the last.

On my first trip to China to visit School No. 47 in January 2009, new principal Guo Qinxue hosted me in grand style. As we said good-bye at the airport, I mentioned to Guo what a good student Duan had been. I then said, without really thinking about the implications, “Perhaps you have other teachers who would be interested in this program.” Guo said nothing, didn”t move, and continued staring at the floor. I worried I had said something that was upsetting, but then the call came to board the plane. About 10 days later, I received a letter from Guo in which he wrote, “When you were here you mentioned a master”s program for our teachers. I announced you were going to do that, and there”s great excitement.” What a mess, I thought. Such a program was clearly outside our mission as we then understood it. But something simply “felt right” about the project. Our board enthusiastically agreed, and even came up with extra money for the program since we had not included it in the budget.

What started with School No. 47 soon expanded to School No. 2 and to the Erqi District of schools. Then, last spring, I received an e-mail from the Zhengzhou Municipal Education Bureau (ZMEB), the governing body of the entire school system, which has 1.3 million students and 90,000 teachers and staff (by comparison, the Chicago school system has 405,000 students). Henry Xu, an administrator in the provincial office who had visited our campus, asked ZMEB to meet me and discuss making our master”s degree available to teachers in the entire system. As a result, next year we will have more than 100 Chinese teachers enrolled in the program. Although we cannot teach Bible in this program, we can teach early Eastern Mediterranean literature, along with Hebrew history and law.

Professor Chris Templar crafted this master”s program in 2007. She started going to China in 1986, and has made 10 trips, first through “Friends of China,” then ELIC, and since 2007 through Johnson. Templar also assumed the important role of orienting the teachers in the Visiting Teacher Program to the Johnson community.

 

Confucius Classroom

During my first trip to China, I overhead a discussion about a “Confucius Classroom” program. It has nothing to do with Confucius or Confucianism. Rather, Hanban, a private, nonprofit Chinese agency loosely associated with the Ministry of Education, sends Chinese teachers all over the world to promote Chinese language and culture. Hanban covers the teachers” salaries and pays a stipend to receiving institutions to cover expenses for the program.

I suggested to principal Guo that perhaps we could work together to create a Confucius Classroom in Knoxville, and we did. For the first three years, Duan Hua lived on our campus and taught in this program at The King”s Academy (TKA) near our campus. For the fourth year of the program, Hanban agreed to send a second teacher, Wang Yan, who now teaches at TKA, while Duan has moved to Seymour Elementary and teaches Chinese culture classes at Johnson.

 

Henan Institute of Education (HIE)

Henan Institute of Education is a premier teacher education university in China, and one of more than 70 higher education institutions in the metropolitan region. Our connection with HIE came about through an effort to get our name changed (from Johnson Bible College to Johnson University) on the website of the Ministry of Education in Beijing. All of my efforts to effect a change had failed. I asked Duan if she knew someone in a Chinese university who had connections in Beijing who could help. She called her alma mater, HIE, and was transferred to the director of the office of foreign affairs, Gao Wen. Gao and Duan had been classmates there 14 years earlier, but had not spoken since graduation. Within three days, Gao had managed to get our name changed.

More importantly, she engaged Duan in a discussion about establishing a partnership with us, a conversation that her supervisor, Dr. Li Jinming, a vice president and professor of physics, soon joined. Li had spent six months in Knoxville doing post-PhD research at the University of Tennessee and had worked at Oak Ridge National Labs. He had visited our campus with some American friends. Li said, “I know your campus; I want a partnership with your kind of school.”

Li, Gao, and another colleague came to our campus last spring. We hammered out an agreement, later approved by the Chinese Ministry of Education, to establish a joint program resulting in a Johnson degree in early childhood education.

Having undergraduate Chinese students on campus presents a different challenge than having graduates here during the summer. To meet that challenge, we will equip a cadre of our students to serve as peer-mentors with the Chinese undergraduates, comparing individual hopes, dreams, and worldviews.

 

American Teachers in China

The opportunity for Americans to teach in Chinese schools has been an important consequence of our partnership with China. These teachers are paid by the Chinese schools and provided living accommodations and transportation. One of our graduates, Ryan Mouldin, taught in Zhengzhou for six years and was awarded the American equivalent to the “keys to the city” at a banquet hosted by the mayor. One of our master”s graduates, Angela Holt, serves on the faculty of the Henan Institute of Education, and three others teach in School No. 2.

 

Chinese Studies Concentration in Intercultural Studies Major

These partnerships have forced us to be more informed about China. The world”s most populous nation, with 1.35 billion, people, China has a fast-growing economy that is second in size only to the United States, and holds $1.2 trillion of U.S. debt. As our experience at Johnson confirms, many places and people in China remain open to dialogue about our ideals.

Thus, we have created a Chinese studies concentration, including two years of Mandarin, in our School of Intercultural Studies. We believe that to influence China, we must understand its culture.

 

A “Mysterious Power”

As the varied programs with Zhengzhou unfolded, I kept wondering why Principal Chen Fengshan came to Johnson in the first place. He has important political connections in his city and has a reputation for building a successful school. Why did this powerful Chinese leader come to our campus?

He answered that question at a banquet celebrating the 10-year anniversary of our involvement there. At the banquet, attended by a delegation from Zhengzhou and representatives from the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., Chen said he noticed how his students responded differently to the Johnson teachers. He wanted to find out why, and he wanted that difference to infuse his campuses. At that banquet, he described Mary Lou Martin as “an angel sent to China from Johnson.” He also said some inexplicable “mysterious power” was behind our partnership.

We agree on both counts.

 

Gary Weedman serves as president of Johnson University in Knoxville, Tennessee.