For 23 years, Eric Bergman has been teaching English at the Morgan school. He has constantly brought wisdom and insight to the Morgan Students through creative teaching methods and artistic mindsets. During the 2023-2024 school year, he was brought with an opportunity that would serve as a stepping stone for an entire new perspective on teaching.
In an email received by his friend, Mr. Bergman was offered a position as a Summer Instructor at Hanyang School, Affiliated Middle School to Shandong University. With this job, he would travel for 2 weeks in Jinan, the Shandong Province in China, where he would be expected to develop and deliver engaging project-based learning lessons to middle school students from grades 6-8 with his unique teaching style here at Morgan, while fostering a positive and interactive classroom environment that encourages curiosity and engagement.
Since teaching at Morgan, Mr Bergman has acquired a student-centered teaching style that has evolved greatly throughout the years, from constructivism to various types of one-pagers and project style classwork. According to senior Kierra Baker, “All of his classwork was extremely engaging, and helped me understand the depth of the topics by using hands-on activities.” When presenting these specific one-pagers from students of current and past academic years to the host teachers in China, it seemed like that type of material was exactly what students in China were desperately seeking. Mr. Bergman realized that “students at these schools tend to be very rote, test driven, and afraid to formulate their own opinion. These certain types of activities would engender more creative and innovative thought.”
When arriving in Jinan, it was an extremely different environment than the small and close-knit community of Clinton, Connecticut. He mentioned that the rapidly developing high tower buildings, businesses, and construction was beyond recognition, because it has become so urban. The language barrier was also a major issue when arriving at the school. Mr. Bergman was “led to believe that most of the students were proficient in English, which really wasn’t the case. Some were prepared, but some had been painfully ill prepared. Because of this, we had to use a series of translators in the classroom.” This was a struggle for a lot of the trip, since much gets lost in translation with teaching, but it was just another challenge to get through.
Along with the language barrier, there was a challenge of breaking the ice with the students. The classrooms were mostly similar to those in Morgan structurally, but the culture and the traditions were vastly different. There seemed to be a need for a strong work ethic, prestige, and status. With also an extreme lack of intrinsic learning, meaning a wanting to learn for the sake of learning. This differed from the small community of Morgan, because much of what the school stands for is togetherness and curiosity in the classroom. By going on this trip, Mr. Bergman was hoping to get these students to begin creatively thinking on their own, not just to take a test or an entrance exam.
Despite all the struggles going into this experience, the more Mr. Bergman got to know the students, the easier it was for him to connect with them. When he first arrived at the middle school, he entered classrooms with students standing up to greet him, all seeming to have an accustomed routine for their teachers. This was what he says was too much formality. “Although, once I loosened the reins on these students, they seemed to be just like Morgan kids, and that was pretty rewarding to understand that people are not that different from one another.” Namely, one student in particular stood out when working on story creation in the classroom. The student came up with a name for his character, “Cowboy Slim”, which ended up being his nickname for the rest of the trip, since it was difficult to pronounce a lot of the students’ names. When speaking about this student, Mr. Bergman mentioned that, “anytime you would walk in the room, he would just lighten up.” This went for some other students, by being in that specific setting it let them show their personality traits rather than being solely formal to their professors. Being able to form connections with the students and treating them similarly to those in Clinton; like giving them nicknames and thinking openly with them, was one of the main takeaways from his trip.
In essence, this trip led Mr. Bergman to believe that people are not as different as you think they are. He expressed that “…sitting in a room with someone and getting to learn about them leads us to discover that we all have the same doubts, worries, and fears. Being able to talk and get to know another human being is a wonderful experience, and it definitely opens up all of our worlds.”
