Amazing Training

July 12-August 7, 2009, 98 teachers from China’s main religious schools, including Buddhism colleges, Taoism colleges, Islam colleges, Catholic seminaries and Christian seminaries and from several provincial religious bureaus gathered together in Beijing Normal University. We had 4 weeks pedagogy training. This was an amazing training.

Amazing 1: different religions, close communications. In the day time, we were in one classroom listening to the lectures on different topics of pedagogy. At the night, we had dialogues focus on different religion by turns. We even had a party one night, every religion showed its own characteristic programs. Christians sang hymns. Protestant sang Amazing Grace and catholic priests sang it with us. Priests sang a popular Chinese worship song “In Love We Gathered”, pastors sang with them. Taoist performed Tai Chi and taught us how to live a longer life as well as how to keep young. A very famous imam sang Alcoran. It really liked a Soul. Islamite danced in Sinkiang music also. Another imam sang an Arab song in three different melodies. Buddhists sang together with the sound of woodblock and bell. A Buddhist nun sang a very sorrow song of mourning people’s death. It greatly shocked everyone, for the song directly came out of her spirit. 
Amazing 2: State Administration of Religious Affairs was the one who offered this training. They paid everything during our stay in Beijing Normal University. Have you ever heard such a good government? This kind of class might be very rare in the whole world as I thought.
Amazing 3: Pedagogy knowledge was abundant. We learned how to design a course, how to evaluate teachers, how to create evaluation forms, and what pedagogy is about, etc. all together 36 subjects! It proved to be quite useful for us. Professors were excellent in guiding us on learning and discussions. Most classes were interesting and fruitful.
After coming back from this training, I bought some books that professor recommended. I am going to study it and not only apply the principles into my own teaching but also train other teachers in our school to make classing teaching more efficient. I also begin to record in my Chinese blog the progress and the improvement that I have achieved in my work and self study, sharing with those of my classmates. I feel that from now on I will play better and better in my role as a teacher.