Hour 12
Devin Ankeney
Hongmei Li was about to hit her 12th working hour of the day. She had started working at 6 a.m.
She only taught one class on Tuesdays, but she’d had to work on a grant proposal in the hopes that she’d have even more work to do in her little free time.
At 5:57 p.m., the students in Hongmei’s class looked weary. They were downright exhausted. It was a two-hour-long sprint class, so it wasn’t entirely unjustified.
Hongmei is always trying to improve her classes for her students. She’s brought in snacks, given the class breaks and changed assignments to accommodate students’ learning.
However, as the clock neared hour 12 of working, Hongmei had a different idea to improve the dreary class.
“I’m going to sing,” she said.
The entire class looked at one another in slight disbelief.
Was she being serious? She’s going to sing? She can sing?
Turns out, Hongmei spends as many moments as she can doing things just for herself. She tries to focus on the moments in front of her and seize them. So, she’ll sometimes teach herself to sing from YouTube videos.
Hongmei believes that classes are for the students, that learning is most important and that she should do everything she can to improve her classes. So, she tried something new.
Moments later, with her students still utterly confused, Hongmei opened up the lyrics to a song in Chinese on her phone and began to sing.
She sang the entire song.
The room filled with pervasive smirks and muffled chuckles. She wasn’t bad at all, but the students didn’t quite understand what was happening.
Needless to say, they were wide awake now.
The song ended, and the class of not more than a dozen students erupted in claps and cheers.
“Wow!”
“That was great!”
The class settled down, and Hongmei grinned a huge smile — as she often does.
It was a success.
