My First Half-Online Teaching Session

This semester, all three children I tutor have entered the third year of junior high and need to prepare for the senior high school entrance examination, so the Chinese medicine teaching also needs some adjustment to lighten their burden. The Chinese medicine class, which had started as a full day per week, was reduced to a two-hour class per week, and the recitation tasks have also been temporarily suspended. During the sprint stage before the entrance examination, the Chinese medicine course will have to be paused for a while.

Today was the first class of this semester. One student who lives nearby, together with my son, still attended the lesson in person in the study, while the other student attended via a WeChat voice call.

Because we have been teacher and students for more than three years, even though we switched to this way of attending class, when we discussed and exchanged ideas it still felt as if everyone were sitting together. The atmosphere in class was the same as before and was not affected. It was convenient for the student who lives far away, and the Chinese medicine teaching was maintained.

My intention is that I do not want my three students to interrupt their study of Chinese medicine. During this special period, the approach is changed to maintaining interest-based learning. The teaching content is still the unfinished Shanghan Lun (Treatise on Cold Damage), which I continue to explain section by section, interspersed with some common knowledge of Chinese and Western medicine and of history. I hope the children can build up a broad field of vision; only with a broad vision can one have a mind as vast as the sea that takes in all rivers, rather than holding sectarian prejudices.

Medical education requires perseverance. I hope to keep teaching them for ten years, using slow time to carefully polish the children. Studying medicine is about learning medical skill as well as cultivating one's inner character; only long-term education can achieve this purpose.

I insist on not doing large-group "canteen-style" teaching online because I once tried that approach and know full well that that kind of education cannot cultivate genuine medical talent. Between teacher and students, besides the transmission of skill, there should also be other subtle influences in order to achieve effective inherited teaching.

The times are advancing, and technology provides us with many conveniences, but there are also some things technology cannot replace, such as face-to-face emotional communication and the cultivation of character. I hope I can stick to the goal I originally set and train my three students to become accomplished people.

This morning I saw patients all morning, in the afternoon I handled many miscellaneous chores, and after dinner I taught the children from six to eight. The day was still fulfilling. Being busy has become the norm for me, but the habits I have formed help me: no matter how busy I am, my basic work, study, and life still proceed in an orderly way. I have confidence and expectations for the future, and this is also an important reason I always have the motivation to keep going. Heaven does not fail those who are devoted; I believe the children I am mentoring will become rising stars in the medical field.