images

jinzhou students

class of 1997

Chinese universities classify students by the year they enter university rather than the American system of their expected year of graduation. So these students graduated in 2001.

Class 97-4's Graduation Photo.

This was my first class in China. I had them as freshmen and again as juniors when I returned to Jinzhou in 2000. I also gave them some "extra" writing classes this year as seniors to prepare them for their last big English major test. Now they are graduating and they are the first class I have shepherded from Freshman to Senior in China. I wish them all the best. [This is the class I wrote about in Chapter 4 which took me to Bijia Shan].

Sophia  
One of my brightest, hardest-working students. She hopes to become a college teacher after she graduates this year. She should be a great one: She passed the highest level English test for Chinese English majors, she taught college students at another local college this year, and she received one of the highest marks of all the students on her graduation thesis. She will be a great college teacher if she is given the chance.
 

SOPHIA UPDATE 2002:
 She achieved her dream. Well part of it anyway. She's now a Tutor at Jinzhou U.'s Xingcheng campus. (Still, she deserves better than that.)

Martha (Class of 97). She doesn't really look like this. She just did what lots of young women in China like to do these days: go to a photography studio and pay lots of money to have vanity glamour photos taken of themselves. To see an everyday picture of Martha, go here.