Emily is Canadian. She chose to teach in rural China and documented this special chapter of her life.
Her videos show rural classrooms, children's smiling faces, and the four seasons in the mountains. She teaches children English; they teach her dialect and nursery rhymes.
Emily says teaching in the countryside made her rethink "education": good education is not just passing on knowledge, but accompanying and seeing every child.
From Canada to a mountain village in China, Emily's story moved many people. It is the most precious treasure of her life, she says.
Emily is a Canadian girl who chose to volunteer-teach in rural western China. Instead of staying in a city after university, she came to a mountain village primary school to teach children English.
Her choice: she joined a teaching volunteer programme to China - "I wanted to go where teachers are truly needed." The school is simple and remote, but children innocence makes everything worthwhile.
Content: "a Canadian teacher rural school days", "children first English class", "art class in the mountains" - warm and real.
Going viral: her "last day - children sang Auld Lang Syne to send me off" video spread; she cried holding the children, and viewers teared up too.
Observations: "village children English basics are thin, but their imagination is astonishing" - she had them draw their dreams in English: universes and oceans.
Significance: she is a microcosm of international volunteer teachers - showing education can cross mountains and seas to connect different worlds.
Plans: she will return every year with new English books - "I want to watch them grow up." She writes letters from Canada, one by one.
For readers: her videos move you with children innocence - love needs no translation; a hug is a language.
She remembers one moment: on a sick day, the naughtiest child quietly refilled her thermos with hot water and dropped in a candy. "That moment I decided to give these children my best self." She is preparing a "rural children English starter" kit for fellow volunteers. "One teacher leaving is not an ending but the prelude for more teachers" - she hopes her story inspires more young people to enter villages.
On her leaving day children asked "will you come back?" She said yes. In her Canadian home hangs a drawing - her at the podium, children around, a big sun. "The best drawing I have ever received." She is contacting new volunteer programmes, planning to return in half a year. "Rural children deserve the best teachers; I want to be one." Her story makes more people believe: the road of love and education has no end.
