This article was first posted about three weeks ago but has been slightly modified to make one or two points more clear and to enable a different e-mail address to be substituted for the original one

Although of mature years and experienced in dealing with young children, I am a new English teacher working in China so I am very much in the stage where I am gaining classroom experience that many other teachers may scoff at. However, I have encountered what, in China, could have been a situation with extremely serious consequences. Now, I can tell the story and make it sound immensely amusing - or potentially tragic - you decide which.

I was recently teaching a group of Chinese primary school children in Henan Province, China. I taught this group for about a month, each morning, seven days each week, from eight thirty until ten forty-five, with a break of around twenty minutes between the two teaching sessions involved. The class took place in a very large government school with a normal student capacity of around three thousand. The school was officially closed for the summer holidays but was used for a few extra-curricular classes, particularly those which taught English. On the day in question there was only one other class in progress and that was in a building about four hundred metres away. It might as well have been on the planet, Mars!

I had one three-storey classroom building entirely to myself. My students and I occupied one classroom that had been specially set aside for us on the first floor, whilst all the other classrooms in the same building were locked up. None of the regular school staff were on duty - it was, after all, their holiday too! I was one adult alone with a bunch of small kids.

There were exactly thirty children in the class, twenty-two of whom were girls. This disparity between girls and boys in extra-curricular English classes seems to be the norm in China, though I never have found out why.

Their ages ranged from seven years up to ten years. They were a very nice bunch of children who all acted precisely as you would expect children of that age to act - generally very well, sometimes badly, but always with a great deal of well-meant humour. They were all decently raised children and they did not appear to have a bad thought in their heads. There were a few fiercely whispered disputes and occasionally a dig or two, but they usually resolved their disagreements on their own and very quickly by the simple expedient where one of the protagonists went and sat in an empty desk on the other side of the classroom and refused to speak to the other. Only once did I have to intervene in a juvenile dispute. I got to the stage where I could silence most of the children just by looking at them over the top of my glasses and growling.

My job was to increase their English vocabulary and teach them very simple conversational phrases and rhymes. They were not able to hold conversations in English and I am unable to speak Chinese. However, they very soon understood such commands as "Be Quiet!"; "Sit Still!; "You - sit there!"; "Stop doing that!" and "No W.C.!" In short, very basic communication was soon established but nothing even remotely capable of dealing with what was to happen on this particular day.

The job of increasing their vocabulary proceeded quite well, most of the children paid due attention and some did not. Some became very good with their pronunciations and others remained lousy at it. As time went on, we all got to know each other and they all came to trust me. I ran the class in the manner of a benign tyrant. If they behaved well and studied properly, they found I was a nice, friendly man, but those who played around, found they had to deal with a merciless adversary.

The good kids all knew I was Mr Good-Guy, especially during break when they all tried their prowess at elbow-wrestling with me two or three at a time, or being thrown up in the air and caught at the last minute on the way down. They enjoyed having their arms twisted and even more they enjoyed being swung round in a circle held only by their wrists. Indeed, a number of them would queue up endlessly for this kind of treatment. They blew plastic bubbles and stuck them on the lenses of my glasses, which caused them huge amusement. In other words they looked on me as a nice friendly man and many of them had never even seen a foreigner in their entire lives let alone being taught by one. To have a real live one actually playing with them was definitely a high point for some of the children.

The others tried to muscle in too, but the children formed their own pecking order of preference and the good kids far outnumbered the bad kids. Not surprisingly, the bad kids had their work cut out to get close to me for this kind of fun - but those who did had their share also. I was under no illusions about all this attention I was getting during their break - I was being tested all the while. They were finding out both as individuals and as a group, just how far they could go with me.

I have repeatedly found that children of this age do not like to make their own decisions but prefer to be ordered around. It is much better in their minds when they are in the control of someone who treats them positively and firmly but at the same time is known to be non-violent and sympathetic. It did not take them long to find out how to "work" me. Once this rapport was established, the class settled down to a mixture of serious study and playing of games.

In the first session of each day, before the break, they sat at their desks and were taught to read a blackboard full of English words in parrot fashion. The words were categorised into subjects such as, "In the Home"; "In School" "In the Street" - and so on. My goal was to teach these children to recognise and read about three hundred English words along with a number of nursery rhymes.

I did this in the pre-break 'formal' sessions by having them read all the words time and time again and then I started to draw circles around the ones they continued to have trouble with and to erase those they got to read well. I tested these by having individual children reading groups of words so that I could see and hear which words were learned well enough for that session. Then every so often, I would erase a few words to accompanying cheers from the class. This process of elimination became a matter of great pride on the part of the children. It would take around forty-five minutes and I swindled it slightly so that by the time their break came around, the blackboard had only twenty or so words left for them to master.

Surprisingly, they very quickly learned the big words, such as. "hippopotamus"; "volleyball", "television", "refrigerator"; "aircraft-carrier" and "washing-machine" but they often got stuck on words like "knife"; "knee", "saucer", and "violin". I did however leave the big words until the very last, because they all enjoyed reading them, so I pretended they were not reading them well enough. This allowed the children to read these words more times and they could eventually finish off the blackboard in a crescendo of big words triumphantly shouted as I rubbed them out one by one.

On return from their break, they knew that they could play a game (similar to musical chairs) once they cleared the blackboard of the remaining words (including the big ones). The second session was of fifty minutes duration and I ensured that twenty or thirty of those minutes were occupied in reading the difficult words left over from the first session. Once this was done, I had the children carry their stools out of the room onto a nearby open landing area and form a large circle. I sat slightly inside the circle and tapped rapidly on my stool with a stick. The children passed an old towel tied up into a ball around from one to the next and when I stopped tapping my stool, the one who was caught with the towel had to come and stand next to me and read a page full of English words out loud while everyone else listened. The words of course were from the vocabulary collection. The children enjoyed this game enormously and never tired of playing it. Some children - who in the classroom were quiet, shy little things - turned into raging tigers during this game. (Very relevant - as it was to turn out!)

The Dragonfly that gives this account its title, flew into the classroom one day just after break, about ten days before the class was due to finish. Chinese dragonflies can be very large things and some of them are of alarming appearance. This one was the size of a small fighter airplane and performed in a similar manner. It had a body around three inches long and a wingspan that was probably approaching six inches. It had a full array of feelers and other appendages bristling out of it and was brightly coloured. It's wings didn't buzz, they hummed deeply. It was a truly impressive and indeed, fearsome-looking insect.

However, it was out of its element and knew it - but it was not able to find the open window through which it had entered the room and it flew around in an agitated state just below the ceiling. At first, the children each just kept one eye on it and read the words on the blackboard with their other eye at the same time. The classroom had windows on each side of the room from the ceiling down to about waist-height and running the full length of each side.

Soon, the dragonfly began to seek its escape more urgently and rapidly became frantic. It began flying from one side of the room to the other banging quite loudly against the windows all along the room. In the process it began dive-bombing in and around the children.

Not surprisingly, that was the end of organised study for that day.

As the dragonfly flew from one side of the room to the other, up against the windows, the children began to run back and forth to the opposite sides. This happened maybe three or four times, with the children surging increasingly nervously and noisily back and forth from one side of the classroom to the other and then back again, clambering around, under and over the desks and chairs. Things were rapidly heading from bad, to worse and then to very much worse!

The poor dragonfly meant no-one any harm, it just wanted to get out of the room. Unfortunately and without any obvious decision-making process, my entire class of thirty children all decided in the same instant that they wanted to leave the room too - but all at once and all through the same door. Their next surge to that side of the classroom saw them all head for the door with great purpose.

Unfortunately for them, the door opened inwards, which meant that with the press of bodies against it, it wouldn't open at all. At this stage. it would have been possible to regain control of them and get them to move back from the door so I could open it to let them out of the room - but at this point the dragonfly zoomed right in among the crowd. It hummed around their legs, up under dresses and skirts, its wings and appendages fluttering against their legs. Then, next moment it was flying around their heads and in their faces. Then it was down amongst them again and in very short order none of the children knew where the dragonfly was or who or where it would strike next.

With this, the situation turned genuinely very dangerous indeed, for most of the children exploded into shrieking hysterics and redoubled their attempts to get out of the classroom. They began fighting and tearing at each other with a deadly seriousness. As fast as I pulled them away from the outside of the crowd so I could try to reach the door, they all shoved their way back again. The noise was unbelievable and I was genuinely surprised to find how strong and aggressive young children can be in such a situation.

The fly soon flew out of the crowd but it had been hurt and couldn't fly properly so I was able to catch it in a duster. I was then able to bring most of the children back to some sort of order. I had to ceremoniously eject the fly through a window so they could all see that it had gone.

Then I was faced with the aftermath.

There was no other adult around to help me. I was alone in a near-deserted school in a foreign country, with thirty distraught and frightened children, some of whom were injured and none of whom I could hold a conversation with.

The children had simply stampeded in a blind panic. They were all in a very emotional state, quite a few were crying hard. Some of them were hurt though not too badly but one girl, the smallest in the class, had been knocked to the floor at the base of the door and had been comprehensively kicked and stamped on. All the fingers on one of her hands were badly lacerated and she had cuts and bruises to her face and legs. Also, she was in a terrible state of hysterics, screaming at the top of her voice. As classroom injuries go, this was quite serious and required immediate medical attention. Had the school have been operational, she would have been taken to hospital straight away. There was a fair amount of blood, which although not of serious proportions, nevertheless further alarmed both the victim herself and many of the other children. Another girl sat in shock at a desk for the rest of the period and would not speak or move. She stared into space, trembling slightly.

I had no first-aid facilities, so I had to clean the trampled girl's wounds with water from various drinking bottles. I wrapped up her lacerated fingers with clean paper handkerchiefs that nearly all the children had in quantity, and secured these "dressings" with sellotape commandeered from one child's pencil-box. Fortunately, I was able to ascertain that the girl did not appear to have any fingers broken.

Other children needed minor attention too and for the next thirty minutes the classroom was like a juvenile field hospital. Some of the girls, without being told, assumed the roles of "nurses" quite spontaneously and in fact were a great help, as they were able to calm down some of the others. Gradually the situation returned to a state of relative emotional calm.

The classroom had been comprehensively wrecked. I got some of the boys to restore the desks and chairs back to their proper positions whilst books, bags, umbrellas, coats and other sundry possessions were collected and reunited with their owners.

I got the children, all of whom were now quiet except for a few sobs and sniffs here and there, to sit at their desks. I then walked up and down between them, patting heads and smiling at them, examining bumps and scratches and saying a few gentle words to them all in turn. After a few minutes they all seemed to be recovering somewhat - except for the girl who was still in a trance.

The incident was over.

Then the bell sounded the end of the class for that day and those who were least affected by the incident duly raced off to their parents (who were required to wait in the street outside the school gates). I walked the same route amidst a group of subdued and dishevelled children - all of them girls. The one with the lacerated fingers wouldn't leave my side and the one who was in a trance had to be carried. She however, came instantly alive when she saw her father waiting at the gate. She burst into loud crying and rushed into his arms.

Fortunately, the first children to leave the classroom had arrived at the gates two or three minutes earlier and blurted out what had happened. Although none of the parents had yet understood clearly, they nevertheless knew that some big disaster had occurred up in the classroom. So I told various parents the full story translated by a Chinese colleague who had been waiting to drive me away from the school. I stayed around for the singular purpose of telling parents in a proper way, what had happened to their children. Whilst I was in no way seeking hero-worship, I will confess to having a nice warm feeling from their appreciation.

The next morning most of the children were waiting as usual when I arrived for the class and I received quite a few chocolate bars, peaches and bags of crisps by way of gifts. The father of the girl with the lacerated fingers then arrived with his daughter - who by this time had obviously had professional medical attention to her hand and face. He spent a few minutes giving the class a big speech in Chinese - following which they all cheered. He then revealed that the heavy parcel he was carrying was a case of beer which he gave to me, bowed deeply, said "Thank you" in well-rehearsed (and therefore, perfect) English and left.

I turned to survey my band of war-torn children, all of whom were smiling up at me. They all sat silently and I smiled back at them. One girl then pointed at the blackboard behind me and I turned around to see the previous day's difficult and big words still written on it.

From behind me her small voice said "Washing-Machine" and then another voice said "Refrigerator" and another said "Hippopotamus". The whole class then took it up of their own accord and the room reverberated.

It was a moving moment.

However, the point of all this is that I suddenly found myself in a situation that was not my fault. It can happen to any teacher who deals with primary school children, and when thirty small children go on a panic-driven rampage, there is no stopping them. In the classroom that day, one or more of those children could very easily have been seriously hurt or even killed. I realised that I was utterly unprepared to deal with even the smallest of injuries. No-one to help me. No first aid facilities anywhere near me. As a result, when I next go to teach a primary school class in a generally deserted school - I shall definitely carry with me a small first-aid kit and at the start of the course of lessons I shall first ascertain where I can go for fast assistance - even if it is merely for someone who can speak the language. It was potentially a teacher's nightmare.

The End