When I got to school, I bumped along and rubbed my back. At first I didn't know if it was an old factory or a place that had been abandoned for a long time. As I fantasized, I saw not far from the gate with neat two lines of teams. As the heat wave blew over, I quickly turned to greet my teaching partners and walked to the gate. I saw a line of children at the door, they are very excited to meet our arrival, some children have even clapped their hands and jumped up. We greeted each other, briefly introduced ourselves and they led us into the classroom. The classrooms were completely different from any other school I had ever known. The dim light fell on the worn desks and the scraped blackboards. In contrast to the surrounding environment, in such a shabby environment, there are young and intelligent eyes staring at us everywhere.
 
I picked up the chalk, and the scraping noise it made as it kissed the blackboard drowned my senses. This is my first time as a teacher. In front of fifty eager faces, I wanted very much to teach all I knew, but suddenly my mind went blank. I started by trying to get them to remember with simple spellings, but as I looked at their confused eyes, I worried that I might be making things more complicated. My hesitant rhythm confused them. However, the slow pace can be more complicated for these children, making them struggle. I was nervous, my chalk hands wet with sweat, but the students gave me positive looks of encouragement. I started trying to use some tricks to remember words by writing down a familiar word, like -berry, and prefixing it. I also use it to combine some vivid pictures with real fruit for my lessons. This makes them very happy to learn and win the berries they get. Just as they are happy after memorizing every word, they cherish what they have learned from us. Just as I was drawing to the end, I didn't see any students eager to go home, but all the students were like hungry wolves eager to get more knowledge. When I finally finished teaching, I felt relieved and appreciated the difficulty of teaching more than ever.
 
As I left the blackboard, I looked at the children in their seats and got a very timid look. It was a little girl with a ponytail. I carefully caught her eyes and went to her seat. She was holding a notebook with more than half its pages missing, and I leaned over and asked her if my speech was a little hard to take. She blushed and nodded, telling me that her class had never learned English and that she had only discovered the meanings of words from comic books. She opened her notebook to show me, and I could see that she had carefully copied my notes from the blackboard, without any overall understanding of its role on the page, even though each letter seemed to have been scrawled. I asked her which pronunciations were difficult to understand and used consonants to help her remember. I remember how difficult it all was to understand when I was young -- when everyone was impetuous and lacked the intense thirst for knowledge that comes with age. I soon learned that the children in the area were very studious despite lacking a solid foundation like ours. Unlike what I often see in American classrooms, these kids are hungry for knowledge and serious about learning. This attitude of eager to learn knowledge is very important and necessary. Only by eager to learn knowledge can we truly bring ourselves to the height we want to be through our own efforts.
 
After class, the students gather around, they were very grateful for the gifts and fruits we brought, and gave us their treasured candy as a farewell gift. I was delighted to see their hearty laughter when they learned something new. At the same time, I recalled my resistance to learning when I was the same age as them. I did not have their desire and joy after getting it. We walked all the way from the classroom to the gate. As soon as I saw the bus turn the corner, I shuddered to imagine the bumpy ride ahead. Then the sound of a gust of wind scraping through rusty metal caught my attention. My eyes followed the sound. Beside the gate, there was a row of neatly stacked but rusty old bicycles. It struck me that these students weren't going to ride their bikes to and from school every day, were they? My belief was confirmed by the teacher riding in. She told me that they all went to school this way, sometimes even before her. By contrast, I think of my primary school days - how easy it was. Instead of enduring the cold or the heat every morning, we just need to sit in the car and go to school. But even so, I'm late four times a week on record. In that moment, I truly realized how much I had taken the conveniences of American life for granted.
 
There are moments in life when something as seemingly insignificant as an old bicycle can change our entire view of the world. Until then, I thought everyone had the same basic privileges. Sometimes the monotony of our daily lives -- the same cars, the same highways, streets and schools -- can blind us to its privileges. However, after this personal experience, I know that in remote areas of China, children have neither good education system nor good living conditions. Nevertheless, the children I taught were thoughtful, and their hunger for knowledge and joy at it reflected their desire to excel in life. Now, whenever I complain, I think of the children and their rusty bikes. And I promise you, I have never been late again since then.