Contents
Evaluation
Creative Testing at Guan Ai School
Last month, in addition to their regular mid-term exams, Guan Ai students took special RCEF tests to assess their skills beyond the textbook.
Community Outreach
Reaching Out to Parents: Guan Ai Parent Meetings
Guan Ai held its third parent training of the year with a session on children's eating habits.
Professional Development
Pioneering Teaching Coach Looks Back on the Year
Math and Science Teaching Coach Ron Sung says farewell to Guan Ai School.
Learning From a Model
A Guan Ai Teacher reflects on her visit to a famous middle school.
Donor Updates
Recognition of Recent Donors
We warmly thank the donors to RCEF from March-May 2009
EVALUATION
Creative Testing at Guan Ai School
By Sara Lam, RCEF Executive Director of Programs
Evaluating and tracking student progress is very important to our program. For most subjects, county-wide exams only reflect students’ most basic ability to recall facts, but not their understanding. For example, a lot of the questions on the Science test are fill-in-the-blank questions taken straight from the textbook. Students can remember lines from the textbook without having any idea what they mean. In English, a paper-and-pencil test can show students’ reading and writing capabilities, but not their listening and speaking skills which are actually the emphasis of the curriculum at the primary level.
To fill this gap, RCEF Teaching Coaches designed internal tests for each subject area at Guan Ai School. In science and math, the tests asked students to apply their knowledge to solve real life problems. For English, every student had a one-on-one speaking and listening assessment. In language arts, we focused on evaluating spoken communication and essay writing. To test students’ spoken communication, we asked students to tell us what they would do if they were the principal of the school, and graded them based on aspects such as clear expression, giving reasons for their ideas, logical organization of thoughts and confidence. In social studies, we tested students on their ability to make judgments about social issues based on available information and their ability to support their arguments.
This is the first time RCEF has done our own comprehensive testing of students. The results will serve as a benchmark to measure students’ improvement over time. The next Guan Ai tests will take place right before the final exams. This time, we will also include assessment of skills in communication, collaboration and problem solving in addition to academic knowledge. Click here to read some examples of test questions on the RCEF Blog.
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COMMUNITY OUTREACH
Reaching Out to Parents: Guan Ai Parent Meetings
By David Pho, Communications Consultant
RCEF helps to organize Parent Meetings at Guan Ai Primary School. This year marked the first time that the school has actively and structurally involved parents in their students’ education. These initiatives allow parents to keep track of their children’s educational and personal developments. So far, three parent trainings have been organized on the following topics: “How to Communicate Better with Children”, “How to Help Children Make Better Use of Holiday Time” and “How to Limit Children’s TV Watching Time.” Last week RCEF organized a Parent Meeting at the school, with a focus on another common parenting challenge: “Limiting Children’s Intake of Junk Food.”
Mrs. Sun Huiguo was one of the Guan Ai teachers responsible for organizing the event. She has over 10 years of teaching experience and teaches Language Arts to 3rd graders at Guan Ai. Sara Lam from RCEF aided her in the preparations to make sure that everything went as planned. Here is brief report based on Mrs. Sun’s feedback and interviews with 2 parents who attended.
Long-distance parenting
Parent meetings are actually quite common in China. However, they are still not a standard practice in rural schools simply due to lack of time and resources. Often, principals and teachers know many parents personally and exchanges take place on an informal basis. This is obviously also effective, but it does not allow all parents to obtain an in-depth understanding of their children’s behavior and needs in school. Rural parents usually do not have time to raise their children since most of them are migrant workers and rarely come home. If the children are not boarding at their school, the task of raising the children is handed over to their grandparents. Mrs. Li Huidie is one such grandparent. She lives in Houjia Village and takes care of her grandchildren—first grader Li Chenxi and a baby boy. Li Chenxi’s parents work in a restaurant in Inner Mongolia. They come back home only once a year.
Mrs. Sun explains: “Most parents do business in the city and the grandfather and grandmother take care of the children but also need to do some farming. It’s very difficult to get in touch with both the parents and grandparents. Because we spend so much time with the children, we discovered that the children have some problems partially caused by being spoiled by their grandparents. In addition, it is difficult for grandparents to educate their grandchildren well because of the generation gap and lack of understanding of children’s needs. This causes the children to develop bad habits. It’s only through talks between the school and these guardians that we can help the children to correct themselves.”
The use of Parent Meetings
The recent meeting consisted of three parts: 1) A presentation by Principal Sun Huimiao explaining the goals of the school and the efforts that the school has made towards these goals in the last few months; 2) A discussion between teachers and parents about how to encourage children to eat fewer snacks and waste less money on junk food; 3) An English class that parents sat in on so that they could see the educational approach of the school in action for themselves.
Traditionally, teachers in China are not only responsible for teaching the standard curriculum, but are also expected to contribute to the moral upbringing of their students. This is especially true in rural China as parents expect teachers to do a large part of the parenting. A 61-year-old grandmother said: “We sent my grandchild to Guan Ai School because the education quality is good. Students learn well and teachers are very responsible. My girl eats well and she likes to come to this school. I expect that my child will perform well and not fight or scold others. I hope that the teachers will be stern and keep her on a tight leash.”
Ms. Sun adds: “It’s only through these parent meetings that we can understand the real situation at a child’s home situation which allows us to take the right action towards him or her. To give you an example: the mother of one of my students is never at home and his grandparents spoil him too much. His mother told me at the meeting that I should teach him well. This gives me permission to do my job well.”
At the meeting, both parents and teachers spoke up about the need to work together to solve common problems like children eating junk food. On the one hand, parents agreed to give their children less pocket money and only enough for school supplies. On the other hand, with the parents’ approval, teachers are happy to assist students in managing their pocket money and keeping an eye out for how it is spent.
Mrs. Li found the parent meeting useful because she received a lot of practical tips about how to raise her grandchild. “I learned a lot about how to deal with her habit of eating a lot of snacks and ice cream. It’s bad for her health and it’s a waste of money! Now the teacher can help me to manage the pocket money so she doesn’t ask me for money as often. She now understands things very well and knows how to use reasoning!” she remarked. She looked surprised as if she did not expect this from a little girl. Another grandmother from Hanyang Village, Mrs. Zhang, added: “After the parent meeting, I was able to have discussions with my granddaughter and didn’t hit her anymore.”
Reaching out to parents
It is still hard to reach most parents so RCEF’s strategy is to involve the most active parents or grandparents from different villages. These representatives can then explain what is going on at the school to their neighbors and spread the word about effective parenting strategies that they learn at the meetings. Mrs. Li suggests putting good manners and hygiene on the agenda of the next meeting. She explains: “Village children are often bad-mannered and should learn good manners like talking politely and greeting elderly people in a proper way. It would be useful to discuss this at the next parent meeting and talk about what the school could do to improve this. Also, hygiene is an important topic.”
Reaching out to the students’ guardians is a huge challenge, since the parents are never at home and many grandparents are illiterate. Sending letters by email or post mail is not very effective, so the school relies on contacting them through the phone or home visits. RCEF recently tested out an online text message service which can help the school to regularly contact and update parents using messages to their mobile phones. More needs to be done to reach other parents and to obtain their active support for the school and RCEF’s work but we are hopeful that this can be achieved.
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PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Pioneering Teaching Coach Looks Back on the Year
By David Pho, Communication Consultant
Ron Sung has worked as a teaching coach at Guan Ai for the past year. His main task at Guan Ai was to assist math and science teachers. This included coaching local teachers on teaching techniques, writing lesson plans, and facilitating math and science curriculum meetings. He also taught Chinese Yo-Yo in the afternoons, which is one of the many extracurricular classes at Guan Ai.
Upon his departure, many of Ron's tasks will be taken over by local teachers. This big change is necessary to ensure sustainability of the new practices, which is a crucial element of RCEF’s Integrative Rural Education Program. Last year, we interviewed Ron and asked him about his first impressions. You can read his interview here. Six months have passed since that interview and we were anxious to learn about his experiences and observations in the past year. Below is what he had to say. We thank Ron for his creative work and dedication to RCEF and wish him the best in his future career.
Looking back at your previous experiences at the Teach for America school in Oakland, CA, USA and at Guan Ai, what were the main differences and similarities of the role of teachers and their interaction with students in the US and China?
The main similarity between teachers in rural China and teachers in low-income areas in the US is, unfortunately, their expectations of students. In many ways, teachers in both places do not believe in the ultimate potential of their students. Teachers in low-income areas in the US will write off poor-performing students, blaming cultural, social, and family factors for their lack of interest in education and inability to achieve at school. In China, teachers refer to these students as “different” in the pejorative. Both teaching environments and mindsets fail to offer much interest and effort toward poor-performing students. This situation allows them to slip through the cracks of caring and into the zone of neglect year after year.
Give us some examples of ways that you have you seen Guan Ai teachers change their practice.
The most important change I have seen in the classroom is how teachers interact with students organized into groups. After trying student groupings within lesson plans the first semester, Guan Ai instituted a school-wide policy of organized seating patterns for every classroom to form student groups. The efficacy of the student groups differs with each teacher, but the notion of using student groups is now inherent in every class. In these groups, students have the opportunity to discuss ideas and to help each other with class work, as well as form teams for activities and projects. Teachers also use groups to monitor classroom behavior, such as handing out positive feedback in the form of group points.
Group points is another practice introduced by the teaching coaches and widely accepted by the teachers at Guan Ai. Many of the teachers this year had little teaching experience, and even some of the older teachers struggled with classroom management at the beginning of the year, especially 1st, 3rd and 5th grades. Group points for good behavior allowed the teacher to award visible, tangible positive feedback when students did what they were supposed to do. At the same time, this gave the teacher a tool to correct unwanted behavior without harshly criticizing students, as is the norm in rural China. By giving and taking points, the teacher could allow the students to track their performance at the end of each day. Later on, some teachers instituted both group and individual points in tandem.
Overall, teachers at Guan Ai try harder than before to engage students. Rural China teachers rely almost completely on rote learning; student-centered ideology is not encouraged. At Guan Ai many teachers engage students by planning classroom competitions and allowing students to use individual blackboard space in math and hands-on experiments in science classes. Science teachers have been particularly willing to try out student-centered methods in the form of experiments to supplement the science curriculum, sometimes even deviating from the science textbook in order to plan science experiment lessons for students.
What did you learn from the students?
Students at Guan Ai taught me how to be a better teacher by being eager to try out new things and by being lethargic when faced with boring activities and tasks too difficult to complete. Rural Chinese students expect and desire the same from their teacher as my students in Oakland: interesting knowledge to learn, engaging methods of classroom instruction, and fun. My Chinese Yo-Yo students challenged me every lesson to come up with effective ways to teach such a large group of students because I had never taught Chinese Yo-Yo to more than fifteen students at a time before this year. Managing so many students in such a complex task of learning and performing Chinese Yo-Yo has forced me to broaden my range of teaching techniques.
What do you think are the most important qualities of a good teaching coach?
A good teaching coach needs to be a good teacher, and the most important quality in teaching is to be adaptable. As a coach, my work consisted of teaching teachers anything from classroom management to lesson planning and everything in between. Every teacher, like every student, differs in their style, strengths and weaknesses. Some teachers want to do things exactly as they are used to doing them, but they want their students to achieve better results. Some teachers want to try new ways of doing things, but they want someone to guide them through step by step. Other teachers want to find some way of improving test scores, but they also want better students. A teaching coach needs to adapt to the needs of different teachers and offer different tools, methods, and support accordingly.
In what ways do you think teaching coaches can be of most benefit to teachers?
Teaching coaches should create more interesting and innovative lesson plans for teachers, and hopefully by doing so, change their perspective to teaching. By developing science experiment lesson plans early on during my time at Guan Ai, science teachers soon began to rely on them as an integral part of the science curriculum. When they could not arrange science experiments out of the textbook, they asked me to develop extra-curricular projects because they knew students would find them more engaging than the science textbook at hand. Teachers can easily see how interesting projects and creative lessons excite students, and many teachers will want to integrate them into their classrooms if the lessons align with the teaching standards in the textbook.
Improving teaching techniques, such as classroom management skills, organizing student group work, developing higher student engagement through speaking out, and so forth, can supplement the lesson plans created by the teaching coaches. Moral support is obviously very vital to all of these.
Which Guan Ai student and teacher has left the deepest impression on you and why?
One Sunday afternoon, I was biking toward the township when I just happened to see Qi Kanglong going back to the village. As we approached each other on bike, he yelled at me to get off the bike. In front of him on the road was an elderly woman lugging a cart uphill full of junk to recycle for a bit of money. I had seen carts and people like these on the rural roads all the time, but I had never really noticed them before, and of course I never cared about them in the past. But that day, Qi Kanglong and I got off our bikes and helped that elderly woman push her cart up the hill. Afterward Qi Kanglong asked me how much an automobile would cost so that perhaps the students at Guan Ai could fundraise to buy the elderly woman one; that way, she wouldn't have to tire herself out to reach the top of the slope, and her life would be so much easier. I will always remember the generous spirit displayed by this twelve-year-old boy that Sunday afternoon.
I know I will remember every teacher at Guan Ai, but I will especially miss working with Mrs. Sun Huimiao, principal of Guan Ai and 4th grade science and language arts teacher. Not only does Mrs. Sun manage the classroom well and treat her students with dignity and respect, she also dares to try innovative teaching techniques at every turn. Never settled with the regular, rote-memorization curriculum at the school, Mrs. Sun continues to find new ways of engaging students while trying her best to prepare her students for the stale examinations. She reminds me of great teachers I worked with last year in Oakland: those who stay for the long-run and who work for the best of every single student in the classroom.
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Learning from a Model
By David Pho, Communications Consultant
Much has been written in China about the Dulangkou Middle School located in a rural town in northwest Shandong Province. RCEF has already dedicated some blog posts to this school which is highly regarded by many Chinese educators. They have opened the doors to their teaching and management secrets, but interestingly enough, they do charge an entrance fee of 65 yuan. According to their website, more than 260 thousand people have visited the school.
Dulangkou's student-centered teaching approach is one important similarity with RCEF. They have achieved impressive results in student performance and RCEF made it possible for Guan Ai teachers to visit the school to see firsthand how they work. Continuous professional development is one of the pillars of RCEF’s Integrated Rural Education Program (IREP). The IREP aims to improve the quality of education and motivate teachers to continue teaching at rural schools, instead of moving to urban schools.
Visiting Dulangkou
In the last week of April, three Guan Ai teachers and three RCEF staff members visited Dulangkou to exchange experiences and methods with the school management and teachers. One of the teachers was Mrs. Yang Lina, who teaches English and Science at Guan Ai. Mrs. Yang lives in Xinle Village which is only a few miles from Guan Ai. She graduated from the Yuncheng Teacher Training College and the Taiyuan Normal College in Shanxi province. The study trip to Dulangkou was Mrs. Yang’s first visit to Shandong. The teachers spent 4 days at Dulangkou, observing classes and talking to teachers and students. I asked her about her experiences.
“Return the classroom to the students”
Mrs. Yang is clearly impressed by Dulangkou. She remarks: “Their building and campus look very modern and impressive.” But she remains critical and straightforward as always: “We can learn their methods, but we shouldn’t just copy everything. The most important thing to learn is how to increase the students’ love for learning! I personally believe that teachers should return the classroom to the students and that teachers should create a pleasant study atmosphere which might positively influence the students. This kind of environment is not only beneficial to train logical thinking, but it also allows us to better tap into and unleash latent potential of students. This is also the idea behind the saying ‘the more you use your brain, the more it will be stimulated’.”
Small group learning
One of the topics discussed with Dulangkou teachers was small group learning. In February of this year, three Dulangkou teachers delivered a training session at Guan Ai. During the training, small group learning was introduced and implemented afterwards in the Guan Ai classes. Dulangkou has a strong focus on results. This is also expressed in how they create the groups. Mrs. Yang explains: “They strive to create the right balance within each small group. Every group consists of two excellent students, two average students and one below-average student. The idea is that the good students will help the poor-performing ones. Each group receives points based on their group performances. Their score depends on the results of the poor-performing students. This is good, since it cultivates a sense of responsibility and it allows the underachievers to get the attention they need.”
Guan Ai School uses a similar system to create groups. However, the selection is more based on personality (introvert/extrovert) and less on results. Group leaders play an important role in class management and group dynamics. Mrs. Yang: “We usually choose the group leader based on the student’s leadership ability and organizational skills. S/he has to be very active and motivating.”
Class participation
Dulangkou encourages student participation in class by limiting teacher lecture time. They strive to contain student quiet time to 5 minutes, which means that the teacher is not allowed to speak for too long. This rule reflects their motto ‘Return the classroom to the students’. Back at Guan Ai, Mrs. Yang experimented with this rule in her English classes. She reports: “I tried it several times. I prepared everything and wrote out all the rules on the blackboard in advance. It didn’t work out as expected, because students need to express themselves in English. Their vocabulary is simply too limited to speak out all the time. Besides, Dulangkou is a middle school and we are a primary school. Our students are mostly very lively and love to talk anyway. But they are younger and very spontaneous which makes them more difficult to reason with than older students.”
Mrs. Yang always encourages her students to speak out as much as possible by allowing students to repeat and summarize what she says in English. She also emphasizes that encouragement is key, which is also the case at Dulangkou. During the Dulangkou classes she attended, she only heard one teacher criticize his students. Most teachers seemed to be quite encouraging to students. “Students should feel that it’s fine to make mistakes and they will be encouraged to do it right the next time. But this requires a lot of patience”, she explains.
“Increase the students’ love for learning”
Mrs. Yang concludes her observations with an explanation of how her overall approach to teaching is shaped by her former teachers. Mrs. Yang: “I believe that we should not give the students too much pressure and force them to learn. This is especially true for Chinese parents. Instead, we should teach them to enjoy learning and avoid the possibility that they will start to hate learning. This applies especially to introverted children who are afraid to speak out. This is also my problem with Dulangkou. They seem too strict for the children. Their students never seem to have time to play and relax. Even after class, they often stay in the classroom discussing school-related issues. Instead of focusing exclusively on results, we should also try strengthen their self-confidence and positive attitude.”
She refers to her own experiences in primary school: “I will never forget one of my teachers. He was always fierce, angry and liked to scold me when I gave the wrong answer. He never allowed students to explain why they came up with their answers and he would even hit us! I know how misunderstood I felt and he is exactly the opposite of the type of teacher I want to be. On the other hand, my middle school teacher was very kind and supportive and we felt so guilty about letting him down that we were encouraged to perform even better."
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DONOR UPDATES
Donor Roll
We are grateful to all the supporters who donated to RCEF in March, April, and May 2009! (A complete list of donors through the years is available here.)
Grants
The Global Fund for Children
Echoing Green
Staples Inc.
Bronze Sponsors ($100 to $999)
Judy Chow (Hong Kong)
Joy Geng (Davis, California)
Anthony Gooch (New York, New York)
Nikita Guo (New York, New York)
Hay Boon Mak (Kingston, Ontario)
Anne May (Aiea, Hawaii)
David Pho (Purmerend, The Netherlands)
Jean Tsao (New York, New York)
The Da Vinci College Kagerstraat, Venture Artistic Encounters (Leiden, The Netherlands)
Trinity School (Croydon, UK)
Supporting Sponsors ($10 to $99)
Owen Gibbins
Helen Kwan (Hong Kong)
Carmen Kwan (Hong Kong)
Hongzheng Lu (Pittsburg, Pennsylvania)
Annette Mackenroth (St. Paul, Minnesota)
Microsoft Matching Gifts (Princeton, New Jersey)
Yifan Shi (Salt Lake City, Utah)
Rongxun Wang (Redmond, Washington)
Stephen Potter and Ailin Zhu (Seattle, Washington)
Karen Yau (Hong Kong)
The RCEF Newsletter is a monthly publication about the educational initiatives 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.
Contact Us
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Checks payable to "Rural China Education Foundation" can be sent to:
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Donations can also be made online!
From our Blog:
Guan Ai Adult English Class
Since the beginning of the school year, RCEF's Sara Lam and Kiel Harell have been leading an innovative adult English class every Tuesday and Thursday at Guan Ai Primary.
Pilgrimage to Dulangkou
Dulangkou Middle School is located in a rural township but is one of the most-visited schools in the world.
Examples from Tests
See the kinds of questions Guan Ai students answered to test their skills beyond the textbook.
Click here to read more
Hands-on Technology for Rural Children
RCEF's Steven Liu reports on an Intel Learns curriculum that teaches computer skills in rural schools.
Click here to read more
RCEF History Slideshow
Four years ago, RCEF was incorporated as a nonprofit organization. This slideshow marks major milestones in our development.
Dispatches from the Field
A special collection of blog posts gives an up close and personal window into our experiences on the ground in rural China
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).
Past Newsletters
RCEF posts monthly and quarterly newsletters on our website.
Click here to read past issues