Written by Sara Guo
17 year old Juntao Ren is the co-founder of Spring Sprouts, a non-profit organization guided by youth whose main focus is to improve the quality of education for students in rural China. I had a virtual chat about the ‘why’ behind the organization, their impact, the challenges of teaching amidst the global pandemic and, their achievements up to date.
S: To start off, can you just tell me a little bit about yourself and your position in the organization?
J: I am Juntao and I am the co-founder of Spring Sprouts. I can give you a more comprehensive introduction verbally… It started off as just my sister and my dad and I going back to my grandpa’s native village in China. My great uncle was actually the retired principal of the local elementary school and he didn’t feel satisfied with the current curriculums and the teacher quality that was presented at the local elementary school. He decided to start this summer enrichment program which with our advantage as native English speakers, we took it as an opportunity to present these kids with more fun learning styles. Because the original teaching style was really repetitive and focuses on repetition and memorization, what we tried to do was bring this new kind of teaching style to give them a positive cultural shock, such that they can be reinvigorated in their passion for learning. That was the end goal. Over the past years, we’ve recruited members from across the world, from Taiwan, Canada and even China itself and of course in addition to America….to again, give these kids this cultural shock and for them to bring their teaching styles to the village such that they are not only exposed to new cultural information. In cities like Shanghai and HongKong, you see McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken etc, but, that’s not something you’d see in rural China… So, in addition to plain English, math and the course subjects, there is also a lack of cultural diffusion to rural China which we also seek to bring so yeah, that’s kind’ve what we’ve been doing the past five years.
Juntao teaching English
S: You mentioned that volunteers from around the world come to teach, from your website I noticed that a number of them are youth, in your opinion, why is it important to have youth and not just adult volunteers teach and talk about their experiences?
J: Hhmmmm… That’s a very good question. I’ll be a little careful with my answer but I’ll give you the full perspective. So… I mean, definitely, one of the incentives is college, that’s the biggest one. But, I think that a lot of the time, these kids aren’t that much younger than us. They could be malnourished so they don’t eat that much...so maybe a sixth-grader looks like a second grader to us but the age gap between us, especially five years ago when I was in Junior high, I was partially teaching people that were my age. But, it’s that small age gap, regardless of the incentive that made them go back to the village initially, it the age gap, or lack of, that established pure connections with the students. In addition to the teacher-student relationship, we could interact with them during class time, the children in the village would reach out to us during non-school hours.
It’s easier to find people your age. If you tell them that you are not an adult, you don’t have work experience or anything like that, it’s much easier to connect with…. And, the kids wake up really early. Their parents go off to work early, their grandparents go off to the fields early, so you know, they come to the class at six-am and leave the class at like nine. So the entire day with youth volunteers we are able to interact with them and establish those relationships beyond teacher-student relationships. So, not only do we get to learn a lot about them and their culture, but, with this type of relationship, there’s less of forced respect and more of a friendship connection. In my opinion, it helps the learning experience.
S: Can you share one or two stories of individuals whose lives have been changed (impacted) because of your organization? It can either be from a student or a volunteer, or even yourself
J: Hhhmmmm… Okay, I’ll talk about my self because I like talking about my self! I think... My life has been changed beyond just the volunteer experience in rural China, I think that is something a lot of people go through and even like, being moved by how passionate these kids are… I think that… While I shouldn’t downplay it, I think it is pretty common for people to do. But, I think for me personally, since it was my native village, I really felt a special connection. It’s like this place that you’re physically born but also familiar with.
It’s like everywhere you go, there’s like stories of your parents’ life, that mimics yours so well that it’s like ‘wow, I used to live here all the time’ I didn’t actually though. So, going to the village really opened me to this second home. Throughout the year, I would also be thinking of preparing things back at the village so it’s definitely changed my life a lot as you can maybe tell by how much I talk.
I’ll move on from myself. A lot of the friends I’ve brought back, and I’ll provide you with specific examples… I think one friend that we’ve brought back, she goes to an international school in China but she really likes English. She would watch Doctor Who or Harry Potter series..Her English even though she grew up in China was without an accent, like it was spot on. So, seeing her at the village really helped her to not only strengthen her English, but also to be able to teach it to other people and her experience, how she’s self-taught is I think, super important given that a lot of these kids have their parents working in the cities year-round… To find that passion to learn for themselves, I think was life-changing for her and also for the kids. And, In addition to that, the kids speak in a very specific dialect and, I think that it was like a third language, it was something she wasn’t used to but she found that passion to learn a language again… So, I guess what I’m trying to say is that, beyond just the surface of teaching kids English and being exposed to rural China culture, everyone that goes back finds a specific part of themselves that they are able to improve through these experiences.
S: I was doing further research on your website and it says that since 2017, you guys have been developing new grammar and vocabulary curriculums for students, focusing more on memory techniques and practical application so that they can improve independently throughout the year. Could you explain this process a little bit? Like, how did you develop this curriculum and any challenges you’ve encountered along the way.
J: Yeah, and again, it just started with what I previously talked about… This desire to give them that positive cultural shock. It kind’ve starts there and combined with the fact that we have more and more recruits going back to the village every year, they kind’ve ad their own style and after the first two years, we realized that everyone had such different teaching styles and different ways of interacting with the students that trying to find a structure or trying to find a formula was in my opinion, no the best way to go about things. Instead, letting them express themselves in their teaching was…. Like you said, with youth organizations, as youth, we have extremely bold ideas that we want to try out. Not limiting them to a certain curriculum was something, although maybe counter-intuitive, in my opinion, it was beneficial for both the students and the teachers.
Although we didn’t want a set curriculum, parent expectations were hard to match. I don’t know if you’re familiar with this, but a lot of the parents would be like ‘oh, page 47, what’s the third line? Can you recite it for me?’ so we also had to match those expectations. Even though they are not paying for it, sending their kids, maybe across two villages to this camp and having their kids spend time… we had to find a medium between teaching liberally but also having set deadlines, I guess. We only had a month of summer, so, with the curriculum development, we try to find proven ways that would help the kids understand the material faster. Year after year, we would say like ‘okay, his week we’re going to try this type of teaching.’ Maybe we’re going to focus on pure vocabulary to see how much they process, not just academically but also intellectually...if it’s taking a mental stroll on them, we take that into consideration as well. We would take experiences from the village and also year out- like pay attention to the tactics that teachers use like, the ice-breaker that our teachers use…. And condense those into formulas that we would incorporate into our classes.
A typical day of teaching
S: And, do you go back every single year?
J: Yeah, since 2015, I’ve been going back every summer… We try to give as much individual attention to each student as possible so, with more people, it’s always more helpful… except for this year, we couldn’t go back
S: With COVID-19 and the world being in lockdown like you just said, volunteers are no longer able to physically travel to rural China and teach, so, what alternatives are you doing to ensure that the students are still receiving the education they need?
J: Oh gosh! You’re asking me such big questions! A lot of the information about education in rural china is written in publishing papers which is largely unattractive to the population so one of our goals is to turn this information into blogs and to present information other than a negative view on education in rural china to the general public. Issues like vision impairment, malnutrition, parental migration…. These factors aren’t talked about too often, we try to talk about them in our blogs. The second thing we have been working on is turning our experiences in the past years into videos and worksheets to help these kids “check” their learning.
Especially during the pandemic, we want to use this opportunity to move online and get these resources to kids not only in the village but also to villages across rural china. So, it would be the resource packages that we give… and the thing about these resource packages is that, I’m sure that these kids could go out and find their own worksheets, I’m sure they are not too motivated to do that as technology still isn’t a big part of their lives. But, at the same time, there is that sense of familiarity. These are the same worksheets that people from the past five years have designed jus for you so it’s that kind of idea. And, at the end of the summer, or the end of the year, we hope to put the information we learn from the blogs, videos and worksheets into one proposal to local authorities so they know the factors that are attributed to better education in rural China and these are the resources that we have provided with those factors combined.
S: What has Spring Sprouts accomplished up to date? It can be the past or present
J: Personally, My favourite is that we got flushed toilets. It used to be just a hole in the ground…. It would be really smelly and at the same time, it would demotivate people from using the bathroom on a regular schedule, so that was the first thing we fundraised for and our first fundraising project. It not only helped us and the teachers a lot, for people coming from America or Canada, it also helped the class environment because there wasn’t that smell that wreaked during noon. It also took take of so many sanitary issues… before there were so many flies in the classrooms and now it's much better. That was in my opinion the best thing we fundraised. Other things mentioned on the website include air conditioning, desks and chairs, whiteboards… A lot of the fundraising is hoping to better the classroom environment. For example, a lot of the tables we use are retired tables from the local elementary school, so, they have splinters, they’re unstable, and they have a lot of holes… It’s very uncomfortable. Overall, the equipment doesn’t promote productivity which is why we fundraise for new sets of them.
S: You mentioned that you fundraised? How and what do you do? Do you sell homemade products? Receive donations?
J: So, the first one that we did with the toilets… I’ll just say bathrooms, we bought chargers and power banks from Shenzhen, where it’s relatively cheaper… If we bought it for 10 yuan there, we would sell it for five dollars here and earn a small profit. We earned enough to buy two flush toilets. A downside to that was that it took a lot of connections and reaching out to people so we also tried GoFundMe and lemonade stands. A lot of other donations come from family members and relatives and friends who are pretty generous with their donations.
S: This is the last question. What is the organization’s vision? What is it that you ultimately want to achieve?
J: Wow, you came with the good ones! Okay…. That’s a very good question. I’ll be honest with you, up until 2017, in my mind, it was a thing for college like, ‘a couple of years done type of thing’ but I think spending more time at the village, feeling that adrenaline rush, and waking up at six in the morning and not feeling tired but excited about the day for a consecutive month. Over time that made me realize that this was more than just a fifty-word slot on a college application.
I think that the end goal, now that we are reaching more organizations, it to spread this to more villages. I think that the experiences that we have learned and nurtured with the students and volunteers at this village are worth spreading to more villages. And on a much larger, it is going to more impactful. I’m really interested in learning more about rural education. Maybe someday I can research a publication of my own. I know that this pretty broad and not too specific but I think the end goal… At least an achievable one is to spread what we’ve learned and spread our organization to more villages across rural China. And, then, if you were to go way long term it would be helping sections of China with their education, releasing content or creating a policy across rural China…That would be a super ambitious long-term goal but I think as of right no, spreading beyond this village and utilizing this opportunity to go online to push everything we’ve learned at this village onto the internet.
Volunteers teaching at the village
S: Thank you for being with me today. I think it’s so important to focus on education because it gives us a knowledge of the world around us beyond the test scores, it can impact you as a person and how you approach life and its difficulties
J: Yeah, that’s the ultimate goal, I would say, more than just monetary funds.
S: And I like that you continued this organization. I know of so many other organizations that stop because they no longer need it for college applications. I want to say thank you for your passion and your continuous dedication to expand and help more people. Thank you for joining me today!
J: Thank you for having me!
About the Author
Sara Guo is a Grade 12 IB student attending Monarch Park C.I. Some of her hobbies include playing badminton, piano, art and swimming. She has co-painted a 10.5 ft by 13 ft mural at South Riverdale Community Health Centre to help those struggling with substance use and her passion for creating change can be seen through her involvement as an excutive member on her school's MINGA Social Justice Club.
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