Just inside Homei Primary School, a tiny campus of 0.27 hectares and 55 students, is a fish cultivation pond that is ten meters long and divided into three sections. The pride and joy of both town and school, it was donated by Taipei Sea World in exchange for special breeds of fish contributed by Homei parents over the years.

Homei Primary School is nestled against the northeast coast's scenic Lungtung Bay. Many local parents make their livings harvesting the ocean's bounty. Whenever they catch fish more pleasing to the eye than to the palate, they place them in the school's fishpond to be appreciated and studied by the students or send them to Taipei Sea World. Homei and Sea World have a symbiotic relationship of sorts.

As a small school, Homei is particularly flexible and lively. The smiles of the children are as bright as rays of sunlight reflected off the ocean.

School within a school

The pool has seen more than its share of blue star damsels and scissortail sergeants. It also has pineapple-shaped pinecone fish and exquisitely camouflaged flounder, blinking upward from their sandy hiding places. Because of the feisty fist-sized box crab, the bottom of the fishpond had to be equipped with special secret passageways--escape routes for the small fry.

Once we've finished surveying the pond and the fish swimming lazily therein, we head to the Northeast Coast Ecology Center, overlooking the sea from another corner of the campus and packed with hundreds of fish fossils as well as shrimp and crab specimens for students to study. The crab specimens were all manufactured by the Ilan County Crab Museum and obtained through exchanges of interesting shrimp and crabs caught by the parents.

"Homei has the nation's smallest campus, but its biggest swimming pool," explains Principal Chang Po-chiang. The nearby Pacific Ocean and the East China Sea combine to form the school's iridescent swimming pool.

While many schools have been paying a great deal of lip service to locally-oriented education, an idea that has been growing in favor in recent years, they never really integrate it into their curriculums, "Homei's local studies, taught once a week from the first to sixth grades, incorporates three teaching plans focused on progressive development and dedicated to making the students courageous and wise defenders of the sea," continues Chang.

Other examples from the school's unique "ocean classroom" in addition to the school's ocean water fishpond and the Northeast Coast Resource Center, include lower grade students observing the special plants and animals they find along the tidal flats and writing their own "ocean journals"; kids in middle grades learning to fish and to use snorkeling equipment; and upper grade students, already skilled in the water, getting to know the ocean and observe the changing tides during dives.

Homei Primary School is surrounded by the bizarre geological formations of Lungtung Cape, so the school has set up a nature trail. It also offers a course close to the hearts of students--fishing village culture.

In the nature trail course, students start by learning about Lungtung Cape's geography and climate, then about its unique rocks, geological strata, and ocean-eroded topography, while learning how to tell others about the terrain and biodiversity of the northeast coast. Once the children realize that Lungtung Bay's Ssuleng sandstone is not only very hard, but 35 million years old, they understand why this area is a world-class rock climbing area. In addition to snorkeling, the students are required to learn another skill--rock climbing.

"The sheer rock faces had always been forbidden territory for the children of Lungtung," explains Chang. Afraid that kids might lose their footing while climbing, parents prohibited their children from entering the area. Chang, however, feels that rock climbing and snorkeling are fundamental skills for people who make their livings from fishing and collecting shellfish and agar-agar along the coast. Children should be taught how to perform the required skills correctly to ensure their safety, rather than ordering them to stay clear of these areas out of fear for their safety.

In light of the occasional tragedy involving fishermen falling to their death, middle-grade students are required to wear flotation vests and shoes with nonskid soles in fishing class. Many were shocked this past March when a local parent, a deep-sea fisherman for many years, fell to his death while on these rocks.

Every summer, Homei Primary School's graduation ceremony requires that graduates snorkel in the ocean. It's an unforgettable experience and something the kids can look back on with pride.

At the crossroads

Homei Primary School is tucked between the ocean and mountains. Walking along the Lungtung nature trail, which hugs the school's perimeter wall, a teacher points out coastal plants and teaches about the ocean to the crashing of waves as the group of students he leads makes its way to the trail's highest point to view the boundless Pacific Ocean and East China Sea.

Why are these fishing grounds important? How do you read ocean currents? How did our fishing ancestors take advantage of ocean currents and tides to quickly and easily travel back and forth from the sea? With each question, the children learn to be prouder of and to treasure more Lungtung Bay's magnificent panorama.

Three years ago, an unusual guest, a huge sea turtle caught by one of the parents, took up residence in the school's aquaculture pond, but the children discovered that it kept crashing itself against the pool's walls. They learned from the Internet that it was a hawksbill turtle--a protected species, so the entire school, faculty and student body alike, launched a project to get the turtle released.

"This morning, we returned the hawksbill turtle to the ocean. It looked really excited. It kept slapping itself with its flippers. When it was released, it made a huge splash!" Their brief encounter with the hawksbill turtle stirred the children to love wildlife and steeled within them the determination to protect the ocean's resources.

"Every year, we teach children how to snorkel out by the ocean. It's not unusual to see divers armed with spear guns hunting fish," laments Chang, shaking his head. What's more, many tourists lack common courtesy--they litter and they go overboard collecting shells and things. One result is Lungtung's famous agar-agar is gradually disappearing. He hopes that Homei Primary School can become an oceanic information center for Taiwan's northeast coast and that after they finish their studies with the school, the children will serve in the frontline to protect the environment and teach visitors about the ocean and environment.

Every summer, Homei Primary School's graduation ceremony requires that graduates snorkel in the ocean. It's an unforgettable experience and something the kids can look back on with pride.

Schoolwork first

Homei Primary School not only boasts a curriculum that focuses heavily on ocean studies, it is known for the large ratio of students that go on for advanced learning, including master's and doctorate degrees as well as students going abroad for further studies.

Because Lungtung Bay parents are engaged in the dangerous and strenuous work of fishing, as many as one-fourth of all students are raised in single-parent households or by their grandparents. Even if parents were willing to take children to cram schools, the closest ones are more than 20 kilometers away in Keelung.

With the permission of parents, the school has undertaken the responsibility of after-school lessons for Homei's entire student body. First and second graders attend classes in school all day. Homei students are able to focus on their studies free of the city's myriad temptations. In the five categories of this year's Juifang area elementary school English contest, Homei brought home two silvers and three bronzes. Nothing to sneeze at by any means.

As a result of the teachers' dedication, parents place a great deal of importance on education and are staunch supporters of the school. Furthermore, although the number of students is low, it is stable.

A couple of years ago, Homei Primary School arranged the local studies curriculum into three study tour packages for both parents and children, so that children not from Homei can also see Lungtung Bay's rugged rock formations up close and personal, enjoy a plethora of marine organisms while diving in the ocean, visit the abalone cultivation pools and see how the shells are made into brooches and pendants, personally cook agar-agar, and taste the agar jelly made from it.

Homei Primary School's study tours are only offered during summer and winter breaks, because there are already plenty of holiday tourists on the north coast at this time. But they more than welcome students from other elementary schools to carry out exchanges any time, because the operative word in "study tours" is "study."

As a member of the community, Chang Po-chiang explains as he gazes at the blue sky, "Surrounded by this god-given natural beauty, Lungtung Bay is a rock climbing and snorkeling mecca for the people of Taiwan. It doesn't need us to promote it. What does need promoting, however, is the protection of marine resources. Taiwan is encircled by ocean. I hope that "sea culture" becomes an increasingly important part of our children's lives and that their concern for the ocean doesn't start and end with the edible parts. The seeds of environmentalism buried within the heart of each Homei child will become the fundamental energy required to transform the Lungtung Bay community.

Every summer, Homei Primary School's graduation ceremony requires that graduates snorkel in the ocean. It's an unforgettable experience and something the kids can look back on with pride.

The sealife made by Homei children out of papier-mache is exceptionally expressive.

Wearing flotation vests and nonskid shoes and accompanied by teachers and parents, the children take their fishing class.

Situated on Lungtung Bay, Homei Primary boasts a world-class rock climbing area. The children here are all expert rock climbers.