Our Voices

To most of his fellow students back in Beijing, Michael Li is best known for his talent on the basketball court. But visiting Botswana this week, Michael has been developing a whole new set of skills – working with children who have disabilities.

Michael, along with 14 other students from Peking University High School International Division who are currently in Botswana, has been working on “service learning,” a pillar of the educational approach at their host school, Maru-a-Pula. Service learning is mandatory for all students at MaP, and involves projects to support both fellow students and the community living around the school. Its aim is well summed up in the words of Mahatma Gandhi: “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”  

On Wednesday, 1 February, the Beijing students traveled with their new MaP buddies to a Cheshire Home that cares for children with disabilities. MaP students make weekly visits to the centre, which allows staff there to take a little time off. On this visit, students helped the children into wheelchairs, and brought them for a walk around the grounds, chatting with them and finding out how they were doing. 

On Thursday, the Beijing students traveled to another centre for children with disabilities, the “I Am Special” Home, which cares for youngsters with Down’s Syndrome. During the visit, students played with the children, helping them to paint and draw pictures. It was a great experience for the students from Beijing, says Michael. 

“I worked with a girl called Bambi,” he says. “She’s really good. She likes drawing pictures and using different colors. Sometimes she listens to me and sometimes she ignores me. I enjoyed working with her, but I realized I need to improve my communications.” 

Fellow student Rebecca Liu also found herself thinking about the world in a new way after spending time with a young girl at the centre. “She couldn’t speak and she couldn’t stand up,” Rebecca says. “It was a really interesting experience for me thinking about what she wanted to do. It was probably the longest time in my life when I had to think about what someone else was thinking.” 

Visiting MaP has opened the Chinese students’ eyes to the possibilities of service learning. The Botswana school is regarded as a pioneer in this area, and has included service in its curriculum since it was founded 40 years ago. Back then the idea was still quite unusual, but today schools around the world run service learning programs. In part that’s because students applying for universities are increasingly expected to be able to show that they have worked in their communities. “Everyone else is catching up with us,” laughs Brenda Turnbull, who runs service learning at MaP.

She believes MaP was fortunate to have begun service learning right at the start of its existence. “It started very informally,” she says. “The kids were piled into the back of a pick-up truck and driven out to work in Gabane village.” But those activities hardened into a sturdy tradition, one that continues to this day and which places service learning on an equal footing with academic work. “You don’t miss an academic lesson, you don’t miss a service activity,” says Brenda. “To us service learning is not extra-curricular but co-curricular.”