I have discovered that I can use a calm and gentle approach to do things.

    - A staff trainer shares about the change of an 8th grader

The above were the simple words of an eighth grader Xiaoting.

It happened when our lessons in the resilience and pathfinding programs are almost over, and it was her birthday that day. At the end of the day, we invited her to the front, held her hand high, and the whole class stood up and sang her a birthday song. With the music accompaniment to the “Happy Birthday” song in the background, she smiled brightly and turned her head towards one of the trainers and said “Teacher, I have discovered that I can use a calm and gentle approach to do things.” The trainer was very moved when he heard this, and the worry buried in his heart was much relieved.

The story went that, two weeks ago during a day camp, the student exploded in anger after some small misunderstandings. She had problems in managing her emotions and did not know how to process failures. She even wrote “How meaningless it is to live…” and made all of us worried. In our debriefing session, she became the center of our care.

Actually, right from the beginning of the program, she has stood out among her peers as the class prefect of her class. Whenever her classmates chatted in class, she stopped them in high decibels. During class she always looked bored, as if thinking about her own matters, and never wrote much in our growth journal. Eventually, she started participating more, and even began to stand up on her own to answer questions. This delighted us at the beginning, until we found out that whatever she said, whether right or wrong, she also expected others to affirm and accept. Otherwise, her emotions will follow a roller coaster track and fall right from the peak to the valley bottom. She would become very upset and look very disappointed and angry. We found out from her group members and schoolmates that it is quite common for her to have such reactions. She would put in a lot of effort in her class affairs and seem to really care about her relationships with other students, but once she encountered some disappointments, she would become very angry.

In our resilience program, especially the last three lessons on “Understanding Difficulties Positively”, we helped Xiaoting to analyze “personal factors” vs. “environmental factors” when facing failures, as well as differentiating between “controllable” vs. “uncontrollable” factors, “general thinking” vs. “specific thinking”, “temporary thinking” vs. “permanent thinking”. Xiaoting listened very patiently, and tried hard to change step by step.

At our last day camp, we witnessed how other students teased her in a way that was somewhat crossing the line, and we were worried that “the volcano would erupt”, but we saw how Xiaoting, with hair half covering her face, only pretended to be angry and chased after those who were joking with her, happily having fun with the big group… This girl who originally lived in the two extremes of ice and fire in emotions, has really started to adopt a gentler, calmer approach to life. Our hearts were warmed.

Some changes seem to come suddenly and appear unexpected. But when we consider it, it is definitely no accident. Xiaoting’s change could not have been brought about without the volunteers’ unconditional acceptance and loving company throughout the year, and could not have happened without the large and small things that happened this year.