Happy Birthday!
Wang Tian and Mike Downs
We sat together drinking tea in the hotel restaurant the morning after the long day of interviews. I had invited Wang Tian (Tina) to meet with me in the calm after the storm a little over twelve hours after the decision had been made.
Joining us for tea was a good friend of hers who had also been selected the evening before, so they had each other to imagine together what lay ahead.
They were both surprisingly quiet and seemed to be somewhat in shock. As I answered their questions, it became clearer to me the true scope of the change coming soon in their young lives.
Contributing to our group's sense of the significance of the previous evening's decisions were the desperate attempts by several of the rejected candidates to reverse those decisions. In fact, one rejected candidate was able to convince one of our heads to add her as a second teacher. It apparently got around to the other rejected candidates that this had occurred and that perhaps some tears had been a factor in the change of heart.
At breakfast prior to my meeting with Tina, I was learning of this from two of the heads at my table when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around to find standing over my chair a candidate from the day before whom I had interviewed. Less than a minute into her seemingly prepared speech about how much better she was than her interview had shown, tears were flowing down her cheeks and she was sobbing openly.
This was clearly a high stakes enterprise for these candidates, some of whom had traveled over 20 hours to reach Shanghai, having beaten the odds to go from one of 360 to one of 60. Our first round of interviews reduced the number further still, to 34. The final number to be hired was first 18, then 19.
And here they are, the morning after, Tina and her friend Norman, drinking tea with this large American telling them this and that about what to expect. I would like to believe that they heard what I said, but I don't mind if they were just trying to let sink in the fact that they had actually MADE IT!
"It can be very cold in the winter in Minnesota," I tell her, "but beautiful." I'm not sure I am successful at explaining the significance of layered clothing, but she brightens with curiosity when I describe snow, lakes freezing over and people sitting in tents over holes in the ice looking for fish.
It was her bright smile that first caught my attention the day before. Tina was the tenth person to come through in the morning session and struck me immediately as a warm and genuine person. My initial notes read, "eager, confident, bright smile," and later, "honest. Top 1."
Much of our new teacher's success will rest on her own strength of character, love of teaching and native intelligence which, in the short time I spent with her seemed to be abundantly in evidence. She will also be called upon to adapt to both a new culture and new teaching methods. It was all of this that appeared to be dawning on these two young English teachers, soon to be Mandarin teachers, over tea on Friday, June 23rd-Wang Tian's 25th birthday.
And because I didn't realize until too late that our meeting over tea took place on her actual birthday, I say now: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TINA!
And welcome to MPA!
Mike Downs with Tina and Norman