Poetry lights children's imagination

Kang wants to help the children record the memorable moments in life and to help them express their feelings and opinions, especially when they are not happy.

"What's great about poetry is that it can help one to find a way to communicate with oneself, even if nobody listens to you," she says.

The exchanges of feelings and opinions via poetry pulled Kang closer to her students, who admired her as their "understanding elder sister" for girl students, or "the bigwig" for the boys. She received an increasing number of poems from her students, especially when they heard that she was leaving in July 2017 and would study overseas.

A volunteer's motivation

Back in the summer of 2015, when Kang was about to graduate from Renmin University of China, she had already been admitted by a research institute at the university to further study economics, but she wanted to do something else.

Since being a college student in 2011, Kang had been a volunteer teacher at primary schools for migrant workers' children in suburban Beijing. However, since 2013, she was too busy working at the research institute to continue her volunteer work.