How I’m Helping A Migrant Kid Adjust To New School In China: Lessons For Parents And Teachers
I was stacking math worksheets by the door of my after-school classroom last October when I noticed 10-year-old Xiao Ming still hunched over his desk, hood pulled low over his eyes. Every other kid had bolted for the door, already talking over each other about the weekend Halloween party at the mall nearby. Xiao Ming’s worksheet was blank, not even his name scrawled at the top. I walked over and leaned against the desk, and he pulled the hood lower.
He’d joined my center three months earlier, after his family moved from a small town in Anhui to Shanghai for his dad’s job at an auto parts factory. His mom had dropped him off the first day, red-eyed, pulling me aside to explain that he’d been a top three student back in his old primary school. Now he refused to turn in homework at his new public school, wouldn’t talk to his classmates, and sometimes skipped lunch to hide in the bathroom stall. His public school teacher said he was lazy and defiant, that he needed to work twice as hard to catch up to the Shanghai curriculum. His parents worked 12-hour shifts six days a week, so they couldn’t sit with him to do homework or help him make friends. They just wanted someone to get him back on track before he fell too far behind.
I sat down next to him that day, and didn’t mention the blank worksheet first. I’d seen the lock screen on his cheap old hand-me-down phone was Wu Lei, the Chinese national team striker, so I nodded at the margin of his notebook where he’d drawn 12 tiny footballs in a neat row. “That’s a better starting formation than the one coach used for the last game,” I said. He didn’t look up for a full minute, then he nodded once, so slight I almost missed it. That was the first response I’d gotten out of him in three months.
A lot of people told me I should push him to make up all the missed work, force him to speak up in group activities, that letting him stay quiet would just make it worse. But I tried something different. First, I cut his homework down to three problems a day, no more. If he finished those, he could spend the rest of the time drawing football plays or just sit and watch the other kids play. No punishment if he didn’t want to talk. Second, I started asking him questions over WeChat after class instead of pressing him face to face. A lot of kids who are shut down hate the pressure of immediate eye contact and answers; texting lets them think before they respond. After a week, he started sending me one-word answers, then emojis, then short sentences about the games he watched.
The after-school center organized a casual 5-a-side tournament in mid-November. We were one player short, and no one wanted to play defense—all the kids wanted to be the one scoring goals. Xiao Ming was leaning against the fence watching, so I yelled over “You want to fill in? If you hate it, you can sit back down after 10 minutes, no questions asked.” He hesitated for a minute, then pulled off his hoodie and walked over. He blocked three goals in the first 15 minutes, and intercepted a pass that set up our only winning goal. After that, three of the other boys started crowding around him asking if he’d play with them at recess the next week.
That’s when it hit me how many of us get this wrong, especially with kids going through big transitions like moving across the country for a better life. We fixate on grades first, because that’s what the system rewards, and we assume a kid acting out or shutting down is just being lazy or ungrateful for the opportunity their parents gave them. But what a kid like Xiao Ming needs first isn’t extra tutoring or a lecture about working hard. He needs one small thing he’s good at, that doesn’t have anything to do with catching up on missed lessons.
If you’re a teacher or a parent dealing with a kid who’s shut down after a big change, these small, low-effort steps work better than big interventions. First, cut their academic workload way down until they start showing progress. One small completed task a day builds way more confidence than 10 half-done assignments that make them feel like a failure. You don’t have to rearrange your whole schedule to do this; just cross off two-thirds of the assigned work and tell them that’s all they need to turn in this week. Second, give them a low-stakes role that plays to whatever small interest they have, not just academics. If they like drawing, let them draw the posters for class events. If they like football, put them on defense when no one else will do it. It doesn’t have to be a big deal, just a way for them to connect with other kids without having to prove they’re smart enough. Third, if they won’t talk face to face, don’t force it. Use text, pass notes, let them write down what they want to say first. It takes all the pressure off.
Things aren’t perfect right now. Xiao Ming’s grades are still below the average for his class. He still doesn’t raise his hand in class at his public school, and his mom still calls me every other week worried that he’ll never get into a good high school if he spends too much time playing football. He still gets teased sometimes about his accent when he does speak. But he turns in his three problems every single day now. He plays football after class three times a week, and last week he told me out loud—no texting, no hiding—that he wants to try out for the district youth team next spring. He sits with the other boys at lunch now, and he smiles when he talks about upcoming games. That’s more than anyone expected six months ago. It’s not the perfect outcome everyone talks about, but it’s a start.
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