The RCEF Blog 博客

RCEF provides opportunities for rural teachers to broaden their horizons by visiting innovative education programs

A picture made of stones.

in other parts of rural China. Last week, I traveled to mountainous western Hunan Province with Ms. Xie, a teacher from Guan Ai School. We visited sites of a rural art education program called 蒲公英行动 (here translated as “Dandelion Action”). In most rural schools, art class is seen as a luxury that requires teachers with art degrees and special materials that are expensive and hard to find in villages. To change these views, Dandelion Action trains teachers who usually teach other subjects to have the confidence to teach art as well. In the beginning, it sent volunteer art professors to work with teachers on designing practical lesson plans using locally-available materials. We saw art projects that used hay, tree bark, stones, and leaves. Their work depicted themes from the rural environment or their own Miao minority culture.

Ms. Xie asks a local art teacher about students' work.

The trip left a deep impression on Ms. Xie. Like the teachers we met in Hunan, she has no formal background in art. Her main occupation is being the math and homeroom teacher for fifth grade at Guan Ai School. However, because she likes art as a hobby, the principals asked her to take responsibility for teaching art to the whole school. Ms. Xie has been very resourceful in designing projects that recycle boxes and bottles found around the village or use materials from nature. In fact, a lot of the Dandelion Action projects we saw are similar to projects that Guan Ai students have made. However, not much has been done at Guan Ai to document the process or display students’ work so that it can be appreciated by more people. After seeing the display galleries at the other schools and the books that Dandelion Action has published to clearly inspire and show others how to do art projects, Ms. Xie is determined to spend more time planning and documenting her art classes so that the projects are more diverse, organized and well thought out.

Sculptures made of hay, a readily available and free material.

Ms. Xie says she is also inspired to incorporate rural culture more purposefully into future art projects. Dandelion Action focuses on using local culture as an inspiration and source for art education so that it expands students’ appreciation of their cultural heritage and natural environment. For example, we saw a demonstration lesson in which students learned about what traditional designs on Miao clothing stood for and then created their own “shirts” out of newspaper and paint. Villagers with skills in handicrafts have been invited to share their skills at the school and students also go into the villages to collect materials and learn traditional skills from their parents and neighbors that would otherwise not get passed down to the next generation.

Some other impressions:

Principals are Key: Dandelion Action doesn’t only train teachers, it also trains principals. Having principals participate was essential in their early success because principals are the ones who have to mobilize teachers to take responsibility for teaching art and make sure that art time doesn’t get crowded out by other subjects. In an innovative twist, Dandelion Action invited principals to attend teacher trainings so that they could see for themselves how practical the methods were, the benefits of the projects, and how feasible art education could be at their school.

Extracurricular Innovation: A big factor in the success of the program at the schools we visited was that they are boarding schools where students have a lot of extracurricular time. The art program was actually incubated as an extracurricular class that students signed up to attend during their afternoon recess. Only a limited number of students were accepted which made class preparation more feasible and allowed for projects that take multiple days to complete. However, it remains a challenge to see how these projects can be adapted to the regular curriculum schedule, which usually only allows for art class only once a week and has set textbooks.

Sustainability: The sustainability of the project requires everyone involved to clearly analyze why they think it should continue, what they want to get out of it, and what they can do to help it be sustainable. This includes government officials, principals, teachers, and the Dandelion Action volunteers. Many achievements have been made but it requires constant communication and reflection amongst all relevant parties about what exactly has been done that made them successful and what relevance this has for their future strategy. This is an important process that RCEF needs to go through as well.