Went to Kunming for the first time about a week ago. This was my first trip to the Mainland since Covid, and my first trip to Yunnan province. PolyU has been building up an offshore base for Service-Learning in Wenshan 文山 in southern Yunnan in the past several years., near the border with Vietnam and Laos This is an area with many minority groups such as Zhuang 壯族 and Miao 苗族, and many others. We have been partnering with Yunnan University and Yunnan Minzu University who are sending their students to work with ours, and are also developing their own SL program.
On this very short trip, we ran a half-day workshop for the staff at Yunnan Minzu University 雲南民族大學 and another at Yunnan University 雲南大學. On a Friday, I spoke for 3 hours in the morning and another 3 hours in the afternoon. In Putonghua!
It was very tiring but also exciting. It is gratifying to speak with people who share the same vision, who are eager to understand and discuss. The focus this time is not so much to persuade people of the merits of SL, but to explain how to do it academically, with real impact and great learning outcomes. Many in the audience seemed genuinely impressed with the vision and our experiences.
Three hours is enough just to provide a general idea of what it is about. But far from enough to actually prepare the teachers to teach. So we will have to come back, perhaps not to a brief visit to the campus, but to take the teachers to the project sites to observe, and to run a week-long teacher development course. Something that we have been doing in Hong Kong and several countries already, often with some targeted adaptations, including Cambodia, Philippines and Malaysia.
To run such courses, away from Hong Kong, is rather challenging, time consuming and exhausting. But nevertheless gratifying. We feel being part of a great movement which brings real benefits to the students, teachers, universities and the communities.
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