Since we went to Juela School last August to lead the ” More Reading, More Happiness” project, the school has formed a “Happy Reading Group”.  Six teachers who were trained with us at the time continued to lead the students in the reading groups. The reading group was for student after class, and they could participate according to their wishes.

Beginning in September was the first of the ” Happy Reading Group” session.  Children were very enthusiastic about enrollment, there were 53 students participated, mainly third and sixth grade students.  Due to the large number of students enrolled, the school divided them into two groups: Chinese and the Tibetan groups.  Additionally, the Chinese group was divided into three sub-groups, and the Tibetan was divided into three sub-groups.  Each was led by a teacher for three hours on Saturday afternoon.

The teacher would take the children to read the idiom stories and shared their experiences.  However, given the long-term education environment there, the children were not good at sharing their true views and ideas.

Therefore, in the reading session, the teachers would first take the students to play some games, hoping to let the children escape from the serious atmosphere in an ordinary classroom and enjoy the fun of reading in a more relaxed setting.

Most of the books we prepared last year were mainly in Chinese.  After communicating, we learned that because the students in the school were mostly Tibetan, children also needed Tibetan books. With the help of teachers’ recommendations, we selected two Tibetan documents at the end of December. One is a Tibetan celebrity story and the other is an excellent composition.  Each title we provided twelve books for the school. The volunteers in Xining helped us carefully numbered these books and they were sent to school for the ” Happy Reading Group” to use.

In these past few months, the happiest thing was to receive feedback from the school teachers on the reading sessions.  Listening to the teacher’s narrative, many children gradually liked to read, and took the initiative to read extracurricular readings and absorb knowledge in different fields during their spare time.  Watching them grow up with the books every day made us feel very relieved.  Through our communication and adjustment with the school teachers, the long road ahead gradually clears up. We believe that ” Happy Reading Group” will surely progress more smoothly, and we look forward to more children being inspired by the joy of reading in the near future.