The RCEF Blog 博客

On August 24th, a new school term started at Guan Ai Elementary School. The textbooks didn’t arrive in time, so we spent the first week doing a public survey for our health education. The study was carried out over four days: on the first day, we went to the village to examine the problems of litter and pollution. On the second day, through calculations and discussions, we explored the ill-effect that litter has on people. On the third day, we asked the students to express their ideas of ‘uncivilized behaviour’ with sketches and stories. On the fourth day, once the students had an idea of the problems caused by littering, we took them out for a hands-on activity. It had rained on Saturday, so on Tuesday at midday the school organized an activity that involved an excursion to the village to clean up litter. What’s more, this activity will be repeated every week.

This year, Guan Ai Elementary School has entered a whole new phase. With the help of RCEF, it has committed to an overhaul of its systems. Lin Zhimei has painstakingly organized the timetable and lesson chart. The real breakthrough is a reform of the teaching structure: for Chinese and Math, each class will have its own specially assigned teacher. And Science, English and Social Studies now have extra class hours. In the past, because of understaffing and insufficient equipment, Science and some other classes have been considered secondary and have not been regularly taught. But this year, the school has made Science, Social Studies, P.E. and some other subjects a part of the standard curriculum. Moreover, there are people specially assigned by RCEF to help, discussing teaching methods and analysing current problems and ways to solves them.

Also, the school has organized ‘Hobby Clubs’ whose activities take place every afternoon. We now have clubs for soccer, paste art, diabolo, cooking, story-telling, drama, etc. This new initiative started on September 5th. It allows students to learn according to their personal interests, and helps them cultivate their own hobbies. The entire staff of Guan Ai Elementary School is communicating with and learning from RCEF, and, taking on the huge task of reform. I believe we can progress extremely fast and be at the forefront of local innovation.

In the last couple of days, I have asked Song Yunrong to prepare and give classes with me. One class was Chinese with the topic “The Swallow is sent to Chu”, and another class was Science with the theme of “Recognizing the Weather.” His method is to have individual segments for each lesson’s objective, test and method. In the process of experimentation, I realized there were two major problems: one was that the tasks were not allocated well when the class was split up into smaller discussion groups, and another was that time was allotted inappropriately for each segment, so sometimes the students got carried away with arguments, and the class ran out of time. But to be fair, he spoke well and knew how to control the class and motivate the students. For example, to make sure all the children were concentrating, he’d say, “I want to see everybody’s eyes.” Then he’d wait until every student was paying attention and wouldn’t start speaking until they complied. Song Yunrong also gave me advice on some specific questions. I think this kind of lesson auditing and support is extremely helpful; it makes me very happy!

At the moment, we are facing many challenges and many opportunities. Whether or not we can make the most of the opportunities for change depends on whether we have the desire to change ourselves and whether we have an active and positive attitude. Perhaps some of the teachers feel disheartened and don’t know what to do. This is only normal. It certainly isn’t easy to take on new concepts, but the most crucial question is one of outlook.  They should try thinking, which methods are the most beneficial to the students? Which do they enjoy the most? If something can be done to reduce the burden on teachers, isn’t it right that we think about it? Of course it is. I know that every teacher has his own concerns – mostly from the pressure of exams and from parents. Looking back at the three years that Guan Ai has been run, I would say that our students’ results have been middle of the road. It’s easy to come up with excuses about unfair examinations and all sorts, but we know that we still have not reached the maximum of our potential. If we are always tied up with worries about exams and parents, and do not make the effort to change, then our teaching is both meaningless and worthless. Instead, we should be bold and choose reform. You never know, there just might be the ‘tranquil garden’ awaiting us at the end of the road. So I hope our teachers can be positive and work hard, don’t give up, and work together to speed us towards a new dawn.