Student Life orphanage trip, to over 20 service experiences; service clubs emerged; and Interact’s charity fashion show began. This phenomenal growth in service activities during the 1990s created a new culture of service at the High School. A few weeks ago Ms. Talbot and I met with HKIS couple Edward Tsui and Trisha Yeh (’00) about their desire to get back in touch with HKIS and do more service work. As Ed explained, “When I reflect on my experience at HKIS, the core value that comes back over and over again in my mind is the service of others. While the outside community may associate HKIS with affluence, privilege, and exclusivity, from [my perspective of] an alumnus who spent 7 years at HKIS, the key value I took away is of service. In particular during my high school years, I don’t think there has been a comparable stage in my life where service was more encouraged and advocated by my surrounding environment. It was not only “cool” to serve with your peers (SOS, Interact, Amnesty, Mother’s Choice, etc), it was the norm. If you were an HKIS student, service was a part of your life.” The next step in the development of service occurred with the turning of the new millennium. Inspired by a visit to Ateneo de Manila High School in the Philippines, Mr. George Coombs and myself offered the first service learning course in January, 2000 called “Service, Society, and the Sacred.” Three years later we brought the key concepts in SSS into “Humanities I in Action,” a core double-period interdisciplinary course that students can choose in Grade 9. In class we study urgent contemporary issues such as genocide, globalization, and the environment, while out of class students engage in about 10 experiential learning outings in Hong Kong, such as Crossroads’ “Refugee Run” simulation. For many students, the highlight of the course is a weekend of taking care of children at the Foshan orphanage. The combined study and experiences in Humanities I in Action has been a powerful motivator for many over the years, but perhaps it has not been better expressed than by Tiffany Chan (‘08), who wrote in her senior year:
“Before a journey begins, there is a moment … when a darker side of the world is thrust upon us. The journey begins when the blindfolds are untied and fall away from our vision; it is when we see. When we went to Foshan in my freshman year, I saw. When I went to Mongolia that same year, I saw. It was a slow stirring of my soul, an insistent urging to go further out, to see more, to do more, feel more, give more, empathize more with the rest of the world. My journey began at the draw of a window curtain, at the flick of a light switch, at the light of a matchstick. It was ultimately, the ignition of a fire that I hope will never cease to burn.” It was about this time that Mike Kersten, who was serving as a Lutheran missionary in Taiwan, enters the story. Pick up the story, Mike. A New Story of Education The first time I came to HKIS was in 2005 for a Lutheran education conference. Marty Schmidt had led a workshop on service-learning and as I approached enthusiastically afterwards, he invited me to bring students from my local school in Taiwan on one of his trips to a state-run orphanage in Foshan, 26
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China. The following summer I joined him and, like so many Humanities I in Action students before and since, the experience changed me. In the same way that Tiffany described, a fire was ignited and I knew that my classroom would never be the same. I came to HKIS in 2008, intent on teaching Humanities I in Action, and two years later proposed a semester elective follow-up, a service learning course that has been doing work in rural Cambodia. The core conviction which animates our students and motivates me is that in a globalized, informationsaturated world, what we need more than anything is to put some soul back into the machine. Our industrial model of educating students in standardized batches is functionally and morally bankrupt. We have brought the modern world to dizzying material heights. But at what cost? People are suffering on both sides of the wealth gap — poverty on one side, depression and disillusionment on the other — while the planet groans under our consumptive lifestyles. At younger and younger ages, we find students who believe that figuring out how to navigate this dual crisis is the most important challenge they will face in life. In our classes, we see that they are hungry for a vision of education that tackles these big questions. And yet, they often feel caught between worlds, yearning for a new story of a whole people for a whole planet, while at the same time working tirelessly chasing an older story of success that requires jumping through hoops, climbing ladders, and enduring a fragmented personal life. As the incongruity of the new and old story becomes apparent to students, together we search in classes for solutions, such as social entrepreneurship, spiritual practice, and lifelong service to society. We ask ourselves and our students: are we fulfilling the task? Have we found our soul? Writing a New Story One of the benefits of the attention brought by our TED Talk has been the opportunity to ask this question to you, alumni, in this article. How are you handling the “one special task” spoken of by Rumi, the “one needful thing” Jesus commended to Mary, the “stirring of the soul” embraced by our students? At HKIS, we have seen your passion as students carry us from a single “Day of Giving” in the 1970s to a robust program of service clubs, service-learning interim trips, and social conscience courses. How are you keeping it going today? We would love to hear from you. Let’s keep lending our hands to the healing of the people-planet divide. Let’s keep writing a new story that stirs the soul. With blessings on your journey,
Marty Schmidt
Mike Kersten
Write to Marty and Mike at mschmidt@hkis.edu.hk and mkersten@hkis.edu.hk!