On Friday, March 30th, 2018, I went to Woodville Elementary school in Richmond, Virginia, to teach the second and third graders all about China and Calligraphy!

This event was organized with the help of Heather Riddell, a teacher at the school who specializes in reading. Since she came to the school, the kids’ test scores have more than doubled! She is a great teacher and truly nice person.  Also helping was Professor Ying Liu, from The Confucius Institute of The College of William and Mary. She provided ink and brushes and paper for the calligraphy demonstration.

About 50 kids attended the event.  I spoke about my experiences traveling in China, about learning another language and showed some slides of The Great Wall, Beijing, Xian and Chengdu.  I think the kids’ favorite were the photos of the baby pandas in Chengdu.

We then talked about The Great Wall and shared all kinds of facts and history of the largest man-made wall on earth!

The kids asked lots of great questions and it was so much fun to have my first experience as a real teacher.

After the presentation on China and The Great Wall, we moved on to learning about calligraphy. We distributed brushes, ink and paper, but first did some practice with pencil, learning to draw the words for “Life” and “Fish.” Once the kids got the hang of writing the words, we moved on to trying it with the ink and brushes. Here are some photos:

 

At the end of the day, the kids left with their finished calligraphy and Mrs. Riddell and the teachers and principal of Woodville Elementary school gave me this gift of a school t-shirt and lanyard:

This was one of the best days ever!  I hope the kids had as much fun as I did.