A Hurting Heart Finds Healing in China is a memoir of Jean Harris's trips to China to teach English in the Chinese Summer Program and her reasons for going. This book encompasses the high and lows she experienced in the deaths of her oldest son and the death of her mother, soon after that.
She needed a salve to heal her from the pain and the anguish she was experiencing after the loss of her son. She found comfort in her faith in God and returned to school to acquire her degree. It was during her college years that her desire to return to China began to intensify.
Her Spanish professor invited her to China to teach English in Jinhua to tenyear- old students. She gladly accepted. She was one month away from going to China and from her graduation when her mother passed away. Would she be able to complete her college education? Emotionally, would she be ready to teach English in China? Her two college friends, Lucille and Karen, were instrumental in her decision to finish. She graduated Magna Cum Laude and was able to go to China.
This book tells you about the passion she possesses for the Chinese people and for teaching. The teachers in China always said to her, "You have crossed the big ocean to come to teach us English. You must really love us, and we love you." After classes, the students would take her books back to her room. She tried to dissuade them from doing this at first, but they claimed she had taught them all day, and she must be tired; furthermore, they told her, it was their duty.
She tells of her teaching method of using gesticulations, which were so eff active. The Chinese teachers loved to learn and sing English songs. She made sure that singing English songs and playing games were part of her daily program. Their favorite songs were "Old McDonald Had a Farm" and "Home on the Range."