The RCEF Blog 博客

Every day, many things happen at Guan Ai Primary School. The usual day contains many different kinds of matters big and small. Once one task has been completed there is always another to do and, often, the more important goals and plans get pushed back. Only after a long day’s work do we finally have some time to sit down and think.

The busy teachers here have little time to think thoroughly about how their future will be. In five years time, what kind of person should they become? What is Guan Ai Primary School’s future? These kind of important questions all need to be thought through clearly in order for teachers to achieve their aims and be motivated. Simply put, we should work together to develop teachers’ career paths and draw up a blueprint for Guan Ai’s future.

Consequently, one evening after the day’s work was over, all the teachers sat down together to analyze the current situation and look to the future. First, the teachers formed 3 groups and did a SWOT analysis for Guan Ai. After an active discussion, each group’s representative gave a summary. The result exceeded expectations. We did not think that the teachers would have such a deep understanding of the current situation or would have such open minds and confidence about the future. Here, I want to share several teachers’ opinions with everyone:

• Win parents’ trust and society’s support thereby freeing the school to develop its specialties.
• Achieve success in teaching reform so that our teaching methods are more advanced compared to surrounding schools. Later we can train other school’s teachers and help to motivate surrounding schools to reform.
• Consider creating a “chain” of schools that includes a primary school, junior middle school and senior middle school that have consistent ideology and characteristics.
• Develop special curriculum and allow this to become highlights of Guan Ai.
• Liaise with colleges and universities. Link their educational concepts with our practice and enable Guan Ai to become an experimental ground for testing out new methods.
• Teachers need to develop well-rounded knowledge, especially in child psychology studies. At the same time the school should give teachers more study opportunities so that in the future, every teacher can become an outstanding instructor and trainer to others.

The ideas they brainstormed just about covered every aspect of our future development including teaching and curriculum reform, extracurricular activities, teacher’s career development and the school’s overall direction etc. It seems that the teachers’ vision is spot on and all the critical issues were seen and considered.

Then we moved on to considering the implementation of these long term goals. We need to divide them up into different stages of planning and devise practical operating methods and strategies. I used a PowerPoint to show a demonstration. It raised 5 aspects that should be looked at in the school. They were: 1) class activities; 2) extracurricular activities; 3) social awareness; 4) parent and teacher relationship development; and 5) the most important of all, teacher development and improvement. If the teachers don’t improve, the other four points are just empty talk. I suggested that teachers could strive to become “innovative educational experts”. This would mean that every teacher at Guan Ai Primary School should not only possess adequate“educational expertise” but also innovation and creativity.

In the Chinese countryside, this is almost a non-existent area of study. At the end of the evening, we advocated that, aside from pursuing the overall school plan together, the teachers should all have their own personal goals. For example, teachers should each cultivate a expertise in one or more specific areas such as improving students’ reading and writing ability, class management, tutoring slower students, etc. Every teacher should develop their abilities and turn their personal interests into a strong point in their teaching careers.

The way forward is there. Let’s see if we can achieve it.