Experiences and Challenges

　　MLIS – Yiwu Rena

　　Lessons haven't started yet, I'm still in my dormitory getting ready, but I already can hear laughter, voices and music coming from the playground—students are getting ready for our weekly flag raising ceremony. It's the beginning of a new week, that brings new achievements, new challenges and inspiration.

　　My name is Rena, I came to China almost 6 years ago, and it has become my home. I can still remember how frightened I was when the school I worked in offered me an overseas internship—a middle school position in a government school in Xinjiang. Now I can say that coming to China was probably the best thing to happen to me.

　　Celebrating English fairy tale festival

　　Having fun on English day

　　Western and Chinese cultures, for sure, have a lot of differences, and it's not only the language barrier that gets in the way of mutual understanding between different nations. For me, it was and still is quite easy to be a part of Chinese society and for that I should thank all the wonderful people that I have met, those who helped me to assimilate to the new environment. I love the food, I love the language, I love the sense of stability and security, I truly appreciate how much more interesting, colorful and different my life has become since I moved to China.

　　Learning more and more every day

　　This is my first year of teaching in Maple Leaf. I used to teach at government school and in small language center, and, to my view, Maple Leaf combines all the advantages of both. We have quite big classes and yet we still can pay a lot of attention to English in all of its aspects.

　　I feel really proud to be a part of the Maple Leaf team, it's a well-known school in China and abroad. So far, working here has been a very fascinating experience—you can really feel that you are in an international school, and all the students try really hard to speak as much English as possible in and out of the classroom; we have a lot of different English activities and events—from weekly flag raising ceremony to speech competitions, art festivals, English days and etc, which make our work here interesting, challenging and helps us grow as teachers and develop our professional skills. We not just teach our students, we learn, dance, sing, laugh and discover new worlds of opportunities with them. And our campus looks like a magic castle! 枫叶百人故事