How It Started and How Its Going

November 21, 2021

Written by Estelle Shen and Edited by Stephanie Sun

At the start of the 2021-2022 school year, a fascination about English-based opportunities available to children living in China stirred in me. Most Chinese schools already provide students with a basic understanding of the English language. However, these classes are limited in allowing students to develop their skills, get real-life practice, and learn about American culture. English is a lingua franca; the ability to speak and understand English is crucial in an international work setting. Chinese students realize the importance of English and yearn to take initiative and get as much experience in English as possible.

From this realization, I thought to myself: wouldn’t it be amazing if Chinese students could receive English lessons from a primary English speaker? What if these lessons could be taught by youth, whom children relate to more and are more comfortable around? Better yet, could these said lessons be taught by youth in the United States, whom Chinese students rarely experience speaking to?

As I started to envision Building Bridges as an organization, I reached out to potential team members. Stephanie was the first person I contacted. When I explained my proposal about Building Bridges to her, she was extremely enthusiastic about the idea. She quickly understood the impact we could make by using our education to help out others who lack the same opportunities we do. Stephanie was just as dedicated to the cause as I was, and together, we took the steps to make Building Bridges a reality.

With an idea in mind of providing a learning experience where Chinese youth were taught directly by native English-speaking youth, Stephanie and I co-founded Building Bridges. ​​Building Bridges is a non-profit organization that establishes and stimulates a connection between Chinese youth in China and Chinese youth in America. Our mission is to create bridges of connection between youth in China and youth in America using unique learning opportunities. Building Bridges aims its efforts towards children in a disadvantaged situation, such as children with a low socioeconomic status.

Building Bridges launched its first class on September 4th, 2021. Since then, we have held consistent weekly classes. Each class is one hour long and has a 2:7 teacher-to-student ratio, which allows teachers to frequently interact with every one of the students during class. For teachers, there is a rotating schedule of when each teacher teaches. This not only ensures that classes are not overwhelming for teachers but also allows the students to experience different teaching styles.

In one class, we talked about different aspects of winter.

Our classes are made up of a few general aspects. First, we start each class with a conversation topic. Topics can range from specific questions, such as “what is everyone’s favorite food?” to broad subjects, such as what everyone did this week. Each student talks for about 1-2 minutes before moving on. Next, we continue the lesson. Typical lessons include reading stories, role-playing real-life scenarios, or learning about American culture. We select stories that are challenging and represent the students’ reading abilities. With the students, we examine the elements of each story, such as the plot, characters, or conflict, in addition to providing new vocabulary words mentioned in the story that enhance the students’ understanding and usage of English. Meanwhile, our lessons on American culture encompass a variety of topics, such as holidays or common daily routines. After the lesson, we have a quiz or discussion on material presented in the class. To wrap up, we play a game that is fun and intriguing. It is also educational in the aspect that we explain and play the game in English. We encourage every student to actively participate in the game. At the end of the lesson, we leave the students a small homework assignment, allowing them to review what they learned and continue practicing their English outside of class. The goal of all activities completed in Building Bridges classes is to enable students to practice holding meaningful conversations in English and apply what they have learned to real-life situations.

In another class, we read a story and discussed it.

The Building Bridges team of teachers currently consists of six Chinese-American volunteers who excel in both English and Chinese. We have both male and female teachers who are in their freshman and sophomore years of high school. Each of our team members showcases qualities of initiative, leadership, empathy, and patience. Every teacher is passionate about interacting with younger students and genuinely enjoys teaching class; they regularly dedicate time to prepare material for class and find ways to improve their teaching methods. Before each lesson, teachers take around two hours to create each lesson. Lessons are completely original content made by our teachers, with the exception of stories. Through the teachers’ passion and empathy, they maintain a learning environment that is comfortable and engaging for the students. Building Bridges has received lots of positive feedback from parents saying that our teachers are very patient and that they whole-heartedly care about students.

Our starting team of teachers from left to right: Estelle, Stephanie, Kaden, Ivy, Emily, Kaelyn

In the future, Building Bridges plans to expand our program to benefit more people, such as youth in China with strong English abilities. We have started to advertise our program to parents and high schoolers in both China and the United States to recruit more students and qualified teachers. After we accumulate a significant number of students and teachers, we will create an additional, higher-level class. The creation of different classes allows the students to have more specialized instruction suitable for their current level. We are also in the process of building our own website and social media accounts to provide a location for information and to document our successes. As a program that is just starting out, we have many plans and ambitions to reach even more people and create a larger impact on society.

Building Bridges is an organization that not only connects high schoolers with children living in China but also improves the students’ understanding of the English language. The teachers leave a positive impact on every child they work with by giving them new opportunities and perspectives of learning English that they may not have had before. With each class, youth from both the United States and China are able to interact and learn from each other, building a bridge and maintaining a positive relationship between two countries on opposite sides of the globe.