Photo: Guo Yingguang/GT

Parents send their children to kindergartens hoping to keep their little angles occupied with something useful and educational so they can become social elites in the future. Mostly, that involves stacking blocks and kicking them over. For that kind of thing it might seem that children need supervision (lest the blocks become projectiles), but not really instruction in the fine art of block-topping. But at Leyida Education Center, Meng Wei works as possibly the world's first full-time building block instructor.

Are you one of the first group of building block teachers?

Yes. Since we use Lego blocks as our education tools and adopted the classes from America, as far as I know, other kindergartens don't have this kind of class. They only teach how to deal with Chinese traditional building blocks.

What are the differences lay between China traditional building blocks and Lego ones? Will these differences affect the teaching progress?

I think our traditional building blocks, the ones that have windows or doors printed on, would block children's creativity. While using Lego, children can create windows, doors and other things, they can arrange where to put them, what's more, the traditional ones cannot be fixed in place, which to some extent, influences children. To teach this class, I first say a phenomenon that children have seen a lot and then introduce a more complex one then finally to the point we will do this class, like letting them say wood and key, which one is heavier? And then ask them why a ship, which is much heavier than a key, can float on the sea and then, I will let them create their own ships. They first need to draw a blueprint, then build a 2-D one and then to a 3-D one. There is no principle of good or bad, if they use their imagination, they all do a good job.

How did you get involved in the job?

Actually I was majoring in exhibition planning and design in college, so it's far away from what I am doing now. I happened to be a teacher in this center last year when I was searching around for a job. During my first couple of days, I read many books from America on building block teaching, principle of machinery and studied many times on blueprint of how to build the required things such as a truck, a Santa Claus or a park. I still remember my first class when I took 40 minutes to guide children to the main point of the class, which should only have taken 10 minutes.

What do you gain from this job?

I gain happiness and pains. I want to be a teacher that children admire instead of threatening them to obey my rules. So far I've taught more than 100 children, and I get hurt from time to time by them. I treat myself as one of them in the class, they take me as friend, thus, they shout and beat me when I am not focusing on them. I remember once a boy threw a piece of building block at me in the face and left a scar under my right eye. I often get slapped on the back, or hit, or anything they want to do to me. I don't think it's kind of disrespect, rather than that, I think they doing this to me is because the relationship between us is very close. I think I've became stronger in the body than one year ago.