The RCEF Blog 博客

Teacher Yang has never really been too comfortable teaching science. At heart she’s an English teacher, and she always seems a bit hesitant to explain some of the more challenging science concepts in class. But when I bring up science projects for her students to do, she’s always more than eager to try them out. [...]

Guan Ai’s annual New Year’s (Yuan Dan 元旦） Celebration took place yesterday on a chilly but clear day. After breakfast, motorbikes started piling up outside the school gate as students’ guardians arrived. Some of the them had just returned from working in cities and hadn’t seen their kids in weeks or months. Each class set [...]

Sigh! it’s that time of the year again. Final exams are just three weeks away and Guan Ai teachers have pulled out their secret weapon…… practice tests. Starting from about two weeks ago, various practice test vendors started visiting the school. They would come on their motorcycles, on which were bundled heaps and heaps of [...]

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 [...]

Recently, I read a paper by Huhua Ouyang called One-Way Ticket: A Story of an Innovative Teacher in Mainland China (Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Dec. 2000). It chronicles the journey of “Cheng”, a highly decorated English teacher from a rural area. She received free training at an urban university aimed at raising her English skills [...]

I brought lots of glass bottles to the science experiment class because I thought that plastics bottles would be easier for the students to knock over.  Ron Sung watched the class and offered some suggestions for improvement. He asked me, “How do feel the class went?” I said, “Not too bad, though perhaps a little [...]

 
Last year, construction at Guan Ai Primary School began with the building of two new wood buildings donated by Canada Wood, a non-profit organization. The two buildings are being used as offices for the teachers and RCEF staff members so they have space to design lesson plans, attend trainings, and reflect on their teaching. This [...]

Over 300 million Chinese citizens are smokers. According to a study reported in the British Medical Journal, 75% of Chinese men smoke and nearly 50% of them will die from smoking-related illnesses if present smoking levels remain unchanged. The problem is especially pronounced in rural areas. According to Professor Teh-wei Hu at the University of [...]