Excitement and joy could be felt as students at Legae English Medium School in Botswana (博兹瓦纳), greeted their teacher Goitseone Ishmael with the Chinese phrase "nihao" before she began her Chinese lesson. "Today we are going to begin our class with a Chinese movie," she says, and the students jump up and down with joy. Some students ask if it's about the well-known actor Jackie Chan. Finally, she manages to get them to calm down.
Ishmael started her job as a Chinese teacher in 2022. Now she teaches around 350 students in 14 classes every week from Standard 3 to Standard 6. As a Chinese teacher, Ishmael has her main teaching work done like teaching Chinese songs and how to make paper cutting or lanterns. "Teaching a language is really interesting and kids always want to learn more, such as the Chinese culture and food. They even ask a lot of questions during my lesson like what the thing they like is called in Chinese," she says, adding that most of the students have dreamed to visit China one day.
The 33-year-old teacher encouraged people to consider a job in the Chinese language. "It is not only for communication, it will open another chance for them. There are different kinds of jobs that one can do after learning Chinese like working as a Chinese language teacher, a translator or an interpreter (口译员)," she says.
Since large number of students had shown a great interest in Chinese, Basel Ncaagae, head of the school, says their school carried out a full-time Chinese language study program called Confucius Classes in 2018. Kids learn how to greet, count numbers, introduce themselves in Chinese. Kids also take part in competitions like the Chinese Bridge where the winner gets a chance to travel to China.
