The RCEF Blog 博客

A while back I had heard of Waldorf education, but before last weeks travel in Chengdu my understanding of Waldorf was limited only to hearing about it. I really didn’t have any concept or understanding about Waldorf Education until the training started. The only understanding I had came from bits and pieces on the internet. [...]

RCEF provides opportunities for rural teachers to broaden their horizons by visiting innovative education programs 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”). [...]

Ron Sung is a full-time Teaching Coach at Guan Ai School. He is from the United States and earned a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin. After graduation he held a position as a middle school math teacher in Oakland before deciding to join RCEF. He now works with the Science and [...]

We invited some teachers from Dulangkou School to come and give some training to our teachers. We really appreciated them giving up their precious holidays to come, and we benefited greatly from their instruction. Firstly, we witnessed the admirable cultivation of a famous school’s teachers: their bearing was unified, graceful and cultured; it mixed modesty, [...]

The students returned to school today, running around in their colorful new clothes from Spring Festival. The textbooks, however, were tardy. Every semester, the textbooks don’t arrive on time and the teachers have to fill up the days. In the past, this usually meant a lot of babysitting, videos, and recess. But this semester, Principal [...]

Sara Lam and I were recently interviewed by Fred Dintenfass of eChinacities. He had some very good questions like: “What can Americans bring to education in China?” “What kind of cooperation do you get from the government?” “Have you had problems with teachers who were resistant to your programs?” Below are a few excerpts from [...]

Chinese kids don’t really play board games like American kids do, but like any game you introduce to kids, they pick up quickly, especially if you play the game in class. Little did they know they were actually reviewing math skills for their end of semester test that was coming up. The other function of [...]

Classes at Guozhuang have actually finished now and I’m now back in the safe confines of Guan Ai School in Shanxi. I do miss the students at Guozhuang though, as they really were a great bunch. Throughout the course and, I dare say, wherever and whenever I teach I try to teach students how to [...]

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 [...]

I’m coming to the end of my time teaching here in Guozhuang village and have taught the students many different things, including net browsing, word processing and email. But more than these specific skills I would like to think that I have also taught them how to learn for themselves, which is surely the skill [...]