Teaching English in China occurs both inside and outside the classroom. I see many of my students around the campus or community. There are greetings, compliments, playful punches, and bizarre questions. When they move from the primary school section to the middle school I don’t see them as much. Those kids study hard.

After four year I’m not certain I can count the number of kids I have taught. A lot. My first term I had 960 students a week. Multiply that by four-and-a-half years…

At the start of the term I visited the middle school section. The Vice Principal, the teacher appointed to the section, and moi, walked through the corridors of the Grade 7 and 8 classes: My students from years before.

The VP said some words at the door of the first class. The students were more interested in the pretty American that would be their teacher than the aging, slightly uncool man with a title. They crowded their new teacher, boys and girls too huge to be in Grade 8. They looked like uni students.

One boy pushed through. He put out his hand and said, “Long time no see.”

Alex was in my class in 2006 when he was a smart but sullen Grade 5. His coolness gene had just starting to act up. He and his classmates did their best to push me. I would not be pushed. The eventual ceasefire led to detente, and then fun. Alex went from sullen to active. He was bright and he tried hard.

It was parents’ day that forged a bond between us. The parents sat in my classroom as their children performed songs and skits. The students, after weeks of rehearsal, acted out a section of the storybook we had been reading. Each student took a turn as narrator while the other acted the roles in costumes I had cobbled together from a dollar store (actually, a 2 yuan store, but the same thing.)

Alex stood at the front of the class, forty-plus parental eyes focusing on him. He had to read a brief paragraph, something he’d practiced a hundred times. After the first few words he started to stutter. Stress. A single syllable became three. His anger was as visible as his concentration. My stomach was as knotted as his.

I stepped up behind him and put my hand on his shoulder. I read him the lines in a slow, near whisper. He repeated, the stutter not gone but far less pronounced. He finished the paragraph and sat down. The next student picked up and the show continued.

I haven’t seen Alex much since then. Once or twice a term we would pass on campus. He remembered me, I remembered him.

“Long time no see.” He was six inches taller and fuller in the face, not the young man I knew. He was smiling, not something I remember him doing much as a Grade 5 student.

“Hello Steve,” he said, shaking my hand with a slight bow. “How are you?” Then he returned to his seat.

When I saw him the above remembrance flooded back. The fact he remembered me gave me unmeasurable joy. I felt like I was in a sappy Saturn commercial. I didn’t get choked up, but could have if the encounter had lasted longer.

History is littered with those who wanted to be immortal, who wanted to live forever, spanning the ages. Have I achieved that? No, but he will remember me when I’m no longer walking this planet. Maybe his son or daughter will be told to respect their English teacher when he has a dim remembrance of Grade 5.

No, not immortality, maybe something better.

s

<

p style=”padding-left: 120px;”>And your heart beats so slow
Through the rain and fallen snow
Across the fields of mourning
Lights in the distance

<

p style=”padding-left: 120px;”>Oh don’t sorrow, no don’t weep
For tonight, at last
I am coming home
I am coming home

U2 – A Sort of Homecoming