Contents
"RCEF's 4th Anniversary"
We look back at RCEF’s recent past.
View a celebratory slideshow that shows the history of RCEF, and "Dispatches from the Field" a special collection of blog posts from the past year.
Expanding Horizons: Rural Teacher Professional Development
Sara Lam, RCEF Executive Director of Programs, explains about RCEF’s strategy to send rural teachers on trainings and invest in their leadership development.
Serious Fun: Physical Education at Guan Ai
Jiang Peng, RCEF teaching coach, talks about his approach to teaching Physical Education.
Click here to watch Jiang Peng's class in action.
Students Investigate Smoking in Rural China
An anti-smoking project takes students into the village to explore the situation of cigarette smokers.
RCEF's 4th Anniversary
By Wei Ji Ma, RCEF Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board
It is my pleasure to write a few words on the occasion of the 4th anniversary of the Rural China Education Foundation. RCEF was officially incorporated on April 28, 2005. At the time, it consisted of only a few people contributing in their spare time. I could not have predicted that just a few years later, we would have six full-time staff permanently on the ground working alongside rural teachers in an experimental school in China; that we would have completed four Summer Volunteer Programs, which laid the foundation for our current work; and that we would have gained the respect and support from established foundations and philanthropists.
All of this has been made possible by many people, first and foremost the rural teachers and villagers who see a future in improving education, and the dedicated educators who are willing to work in China’s countryside for one or multiple years. Equally important are the talented volunteers who participated in our programs and dedicated their time to our committees. We would not have succeeded without everyone who supported RCEF with their advice, donations, and spreading the word.
The RCEF communications team has created two special publications to give you an up close and personal view of what it has been achieved over these past four years:
- "A History of RCEF" slideshow with pictures.
- "Dispatches from the Field: Reflections of RCEF in rural China 2008", a selection of writings from the RCEF Blog. It highlights characteristic examples of our programs that give an idea of what RCEF stands for and how it is different from other organizations. You will also find reflections on our philosophy and our strategy for the coming years.
A lot has happened, but not enough. Thank you for support in the past four years and please do continue to support us in the future!
Wei Ji Ma
Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board
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Expanding Horizons: Rural Teacher Professional Development
By Sara Lam, RCEF Executive Director of Programs
Quality rural education can only be possible if quality rural teachers are available. Thus, teacher professional development is essential to RCEF's mission in rural China. Currently, RCEF has hired outsiders as Teaching Coaches to be based at our main site--Guan Ai Primary School. They mentor and help local teachers to improve their methods. Now, it is time for them to start preparing Guan Ai teachers to take on the role of becoming coaches to their peers.
Starting this semester, one Guan Ai teacher in each subject has taken over the role of subject team leader from the RCEF Teaching Coaches. This means that they facilitate subject meetings and help other teachers stay on track with their teaching goals. Last semester, this role was only performed by RCEF Teaching Coaches. The transition to local leadership gives Guan Ai teachers a larger sense of responsibility for advancing reform and is a chance for them to take on the role of Teaching Coaches themselves.
We have given some teachers opportunities to attend conferences or to visit other organizations and schools based on their individual areas of interest. For example, the teacher who is in charge of the library and reading project attended a conference about school library development in Shanghai. Another teacher joined a workshop at the Chengdu Waldorf School on physical education. The Guan Ai principals and other teachers visited schools that have undergone reform in Gansu and Shandong. This is a chance for teachers to broaden their horizons. It also shows that RCEF considers the local teachers as professionals and provides incentives for teachers to develop an area of expertise.
Three Guan Ai teachers attended a conference organized by another NGO for several rural schools that they support in northern Shanxi. The NGO wants to encourage and support teachers’ innovations in those schools, but they have not had much success so far. We sent three teachers who are already implementing new methods in their teaching to share their experiences as examples to those teachers. Before going to the conference, the three Guan Ai teachers were reluctant to attend because they were worried that they did not have anything of value to share with the teachers there. Through interacting with the teachers there, they saw how far they have come, how they are different from regular teachers at other rural schools and that they do have valuable experiences to share with others.
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Serious Fun: Physical Education at Guan Ai
By David Pho, Communication Consultant
China's President Hu Jintao has a "Sunny Sports China" plan to increase daily physical activity in China's schools, covering around 270 million school children. However, like most non-core subjects (副课), Physical Education (PE) is often regarded as low priority at many schools in China--especially rural ones. Some schools don’t even offer PE classes. Full-time PE teachers are rare; almost non-existent. Often, teachers without any PE background are assigned by the school management with the main task of keeping the children busy. This might also be the case for many non-core subjects like art and music. At Guan Ai, every subject is taken seriously, including PE. Teacher Jiang Peng (江鹏) teaches PE twice a week for every grade, except for first grade. David Pho (Communications) and Marco Flagg (Materials Design) observed one of his classes and asked him about his approach to PE.
Introduction
Jiang Peng is one of Guan Ai’s dedicated teachers who has been working for the school for one and a half years. He teaches Physical Education (PE) and coaches other teachers to become good PE teachers. He’s young, open-minded and keen to learn, and shares new ideas with others.
Serious fun
Mr. Jiang takes things seriously - including his classes. He often has a serious look on his face and the students seem to accept his authority in class very naturally. His kind nature shows from little things, like when he encourages the children by joining the game himself or by patting one of them gently on the head. They seem to respect him, but not out of fear. This is what he said about his own approach to PE teaching: “My classes usually consist of two parts: warm-up exercises and sports games. At the start of each semester, I will fill in a form for every student. This form documents their ability to do certain exercises, like how often they do the knee bend stretching or frog jump exercises. Then I will increase the number of exercises to reach today’s level.”
Warm up exercises are an important element of Mr. Jiang’s classes. He explains why: “Firstly, it’s the start of each class. When the teacher manages these exercises well and the students are committed, they will have a positive effect on the atmosphere and quality of the class. Secondly, it will benefit the students’ health. You can achieve all of this in only 10 minutes.”
Beanbags
In today’s class, Mr. Jiang taught “throwing the beanbag” (da shabao) to the fourth grade. This game is already common among kids, but Mr. Jiang made some minor changes to make it more challenging and fun. The idea is for two teams to compete against each other using one beanbag. One team tries to hit the other team with the handmade beanbag. When hit once, you are allowed to continue by hopping on one foot. When hit again, you’re out of the game. The children just loved it, judging from their happy faces and loud laughter. They were all having fun while getting exercise!
When asked about the objectives, he explains that his main aim is to improve the physical health of the students. Mr. Jiang: “The objective is indeed to improve their health, but I also design classes to include other elements, such as teamwork and the concepts of cooperation and competition.”
Mobile playground
Guan Ai doesn’t have a fixed playground. At the back of the school, there is a big dusty playground made of yellow earth - no fancy gym or hard court playground with neat white lines, so Mr. Jiang needs to improvise and create a mobile playground. He explains: “During today’s class, I used spring ropes to mark the play areas. I often use this method, because spring ropes are very simple tools. They are also easy and fast to use, especially compared to chalk or other materials.”
Rural schools usually don’t invest much in PE teaching materials and related facilities. Mr. Jiang explains: “This is a major obstacle in furthering development of PE classes. Therefore, when designing my PE classes, I try to consider our limitations in staff and resources and opt for very simple, and quite often, the cheapest materials. These games can also be taught by any rural teacher, without the use of much equipment. This is an important consideration of my approach."
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Students Investigate Smoking in Rural China
By Sara Lam, RCEF Executive Director of Programs
RCEF’s mission is to promote education for people in rural China that empowers them to improve their lives and their communities. Recently, third to sixth graders in Guan Ai have been participating in an anti-smoking project that illustrates how we do this. Your browser may not support display of this image.
Anyone who has spent time in China knows that smoking is a huge health problem. Most men smoke and it is considered socially acceptable to smoke anywhere, including in enclosed spaces and in front of children. Pei Laoshi(our Mathematics, Science and Physical Education teacher) , himself a smoker who is trying to quit, launched the anti-smoking project hoping to prevent Guan Ai students from “naturally” becoming smokers. He hoped the students could even have an impact on adults in their homes.
The first step of most community projects is to develop an understanding of the problem. The four classes went to different villages to interview villagers about their smoking habits. In lower grades, the teacher supplied interview questions to students while the older students came up with their own questions to ask. Some thought of rather pointed questions. For example, the fourth graders asked interviewees what the hazards of smoking are, and then followed that question up by asking why they still smoke if they know how bad it is for their health. After the interviews, students summarized their fundings with reports and graphs. This was a chance for them to put what they learned in Math class about statistics into practice. The students’ research confirmed that the percentage of village men who smoke is indeed very high. However, we were pleasantly surprised to find that most smokers have either tried to quit before or desire to quit.
In the second phase of the project, students learn about the hazardous effects of smoking. Teachers provided information such as newspaper articles, statistics and photos. The school also invited a local doctor to come and talk to students about the issue. The students were asked to synthesize and summarize all of this information into their own reports. During this process, they learned how to identify the most important and relevant facts from a large amount of information and practiced their skills in report writing.
During the rest of this semester, students will take action to educate smokers, not only about the negative effects of smoking, but also methods and resources for quitting. They will produce publicity materials, give presentations in the village, and draft recommendations to the school for creating a smoke-free campus.
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RCEF Newsletter Survey: We are All Ears
The RCEF Newsletter is an important channel for us to share what we have experienced and learned about rural education in China. We try our best to create tools for you to suit your information needs, because we need your support to help prepare rural students for a better life. You might have noticed that we have changed the format of the newsletter. We have added more audiovisual materials to show more of what is happening on the ground, mostly at Guan Ai Primary school, which is RCEF’s program site in Shanxi province. Besides the newsletter, we have improved our website and our blog.
Therefore, we are curious to learn what you think of the newsletter. This month you will receive an email survey. We kindly ask you to spend a few minutes of your time to answer the questions and help us improve to better serve rural education in China. We look forward to your opinion and suggestions! Please contact us at: editor@ruralchina.org.
The RCEF Newsletter is a monthly publication about the educational experiments being carried out at Guan Ai School in rural Shanxi Province, China.
Read more about RCEF's mission and program site Guan Ai Primary School.
From our website:
Returning from Waldorf Training
Our physical education teachers attended a training on the link between children's mental and physical development.
Work for RCEF
RCEF seeks energetic individuals to join our full-time staff team in China. Staff members must be able to commit at least one academic year (September-August).