Local Culture

Over the course of this school year, fourth and fifth graders at Guan Ai learned all about sweet potatoes. Past lessons in this year-long unit included explorations into the history and culture of the sweet potato and how it is eaten and used in the village: [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3]. Principal Sun of RCEF partner Guan Ai Primary School  was a lead teacher on this project and describes the last steps of the project which took place in May and June.  To see a video, click here.

Selling eggs may just be an ordinary thing in the eyes of villagers but it can be an exciting learning experience for the students from Guan Ai Primary School. Five of our students, Sara Lam and I (Principal Sun) went to the marketplace as an out-of-school educational experience to sell the eggs from the chickens that students have been raising in their extracurricular elective class. Half of our eggs were green, which were apparently rare and drew excitement from the teachers and other villagers.

Guan Ai has a group of very inquisitive and energetic fifth grade boys. Last semester, they took an interest in the bees which buzzed around the school yard and crawled around water droplets on the faucets. For several days in a row, one or more of these boys would rush into the RCEF office, exuberant, bearing the latest live specimens they had captured and put in “habitats” fashioned out of discarded bottles, tape and wooden chopsticks. “What kind of bee is this?” they wanted to know. “Is this a wasp or a bee?