The RCEF Blog 博客

Last week, I talked to an 8th-grade social science teacher from Staten Island, New York. She had been teaching for 25 years, but when I asked her whether she still enjoyed it, the answer was a curt no. Why not, I asked. “Because teachers are not allowed to teach anymore. I am not allowed to [...]

中文翻译在英文后面 RCEF was officially started on April 28, 2005. That means that today we are 3 years old. I can’t believe how far we have come in just 3 years: we now have 4 long-term programs in China, 4 full-time and 2 part-time staff, 80 active committee volunteers, and about 100 Volunteer Program alumni. We [...]

A very interesting article in the New York Times today, on the limitations of teaching math through real-life examples. What do you think of it? Study suggests math teachers scrap balls and slices By KENNETH CHANG One train leaves Station A at 6 p.m. traveling at 40 miles per hour toward Station B. A second [...]

Sara recommended the following article. It reminded her of the 三下乡 activities that some universities arrange for their students to experience rural China. It also raises questions about our Volunteer Program. We try to prevent such exploitation by examining the motivation of volunteers during selection, but can more be done from the side of the [...]

中文翻译翻译文后面 Update: Xiaoqi herself has added a comment to the previous post. You can read it here. My post about Yu Xiaoqi’s presentation elicited a record number of responses, including some very elaborate ones. Here is a summary: 3 people thought the first group of answers came from rural students, the second from urban (Lan [...]

中文翻译在英文后面 At the CIES conference in New York, I attended a very interesting talk by Xiaoqi Yu from Kent State University. She asked students in China what they thought were the characteristics of a good teacher. Below are two groups of responses as described by Xiaoqi. One group of responses came from urban students, the [...]

“We’ve made a good friend and are even more motivated toward our work in education and international development.” Here is the rest of the report by Jessica Shyu, RCEF volunteer and Teach For America Program Director, about her meeting with Shum Sai Tak. Comments are very welcome. (Picture: Shum Sai Tak (r) and his son [...]

We received a report from RCEF volunteer and Teach For America program director Jessica Shyu about her meeting in January with Shum Saitak, a friend of RCEF who funds and leads educational innovation in rural China. Jessica was a Special Education teacher on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico with Teach For America from 2005-2007, [...]

Vivian Chow participated in the Volunteer Program 2007 and went to teach in Dongbaoquan Village (Hebei Province). Recently, she wrote the following fascinating and insightful article about the joys and frustrations of her summer teaching for the Beijing magazine tbjkids.com. What are your thoughts about it? By my third day of teaching in Dongbaoquan village, [...]

Teach For America (TFA) is an NGO that places American college graduates in schools in low-income communities in the US to teach for two years. Their teachers go through an intensive five-week training, in which they learn about lesson planning, classroom management, and effective teaching methods. TFA has been around for 17 years now and [...]