Spring 2007 - College of Education - Michigan State University

Li reads a book to students gathered in the expansive
library of Averill Elementary School in Lansing.
Cult
When Guofang Li
was a young girl, her
eldest brother passed on to
her a gift that would ultimately
change her life.
The present was a big, old
radio. While she could have
prized the gift as a way to listen to
pop music like most youth of her
generation, what most fascinated
Li were not the catchy songs but
the short-wave news broadcasts
direct from Voice of America radio.
In the beginning, it was less about
the context because she could only understand
a few words. But soon,
the small girl from a rural
village deep inside central
China became fascinated
by the English language,
listening intently to VOA’s
slow and deliberate pronunciation
style that helped
her follow along.
“It was almost like it
represented another world
outside,” Li recalled of
knowledge that crackled
forth from the radio as
she listened inside her
mud-brick country
home, located near the
banks of the Yangtze
River. “It connected me
to the world beyond my
village. I had never been
anywhere, had never traveled—and
yet here was this
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new educator