Located in Cheng­gong Township on Provincial Highway 11, about an hour’s drive from downtown Tai­tung, He­ping Elementary’s track oval offers views of the blue Pacific Ocean on one side and the rugged peaks of the Coastal Range on the other. Most of the students here are Amis. Since principal Shi Xiu­ying arrived six years ago, she has been exploring methods best suited to educate these Aboriginal children. She has discovered that how students learn and how teachers teach are equally important.

In accord with the special character of the school, and to highlight the special qualities of its educational methods, Shi began calling He­ping an “arts elementary school” at the beginning of the school year. In terms of setting a basic orientation for curriculum planning, the new name highlights the characteristics and strengths of Aboriginal children.

Experiential units that take students out of the classroom keep boredom at bay.

The school decided that on September 26, the Friday before Teachers’ Day (September 28), it would let the students understand teachers’ responsibilities and burdens by “swapping roles.” Fifth graders Wu Wan­jing and Chen Yi­feng were chosen to serve as teachers that day.

When the bell rang that morning at nine, the adults who had become students dutifully sounded off as they filed into the classroom. A projector displayed the lyrics to the song “Thank You, Teachers!” After the whole school sang that song, the students divided into small groups, picked up their tablet computers and in Google Docs looked up circled vocabulary in the lyrics. A representative from each group then went up to the front of the room to offer a report.

The classroom quickly span out of control: Rather than conscientiously looking up words, mischievous Lin ­Jian­xiang (the physical education teacher on most days) was constantly chattering, throwing paper notes at other students and playing with his cell phone. A teacher told him to stand in the corner. Xue Miao­zhen (head of curriculum) was also causing trouble with her intentionally ridiculous answers. She said the “kungfu” (hard work) quoted in the song thanking teachers was a reference to a Steven Chow movie. The behavior irritated the teachers, who ended up angrily shouting: “Quiet! Everyone sit still!”

Xue Miao­zhen, the teacher responsible for planning the activity, pointed out that giving students the opportunity to stand at the front of the classroom and teach while teachers misbehaved at students’ desks intentionally upended conceptions about the classroom, offering students both a multi­layered learning experience and a better understanding of the challenges that teachers face.

The two students who were guest teachers for the day, Wu Wan­jing and Chen Yi­feng, had prepared for a week, copying the way the teachers handled their Google Docs lessons, such as by splitting the class into groups for directed discussion. But they discovered that guiding the lesson while simultaneously maintaining classroom order was not easy. “In class I was constantly interrupted, so I became very tense,” said Wu afterward. “And with everyone being so noisy, my voice grew hoarse and I ended up with a sore throat!”

She also divulged that her partner Chen Yi­feng tends to be disruptive in class, frequently asking inappropriate questions. Consequently, the teachers intentionally gave him “a little taste of his own medicine.” For his part, Chen said he knew exactly what the teachers were doing. When asked if he would like to be a teacher next time, Chen smiled sheepishly and answered: “No!”

Under the direction of homeroom teacher Chen Haoyi, students use their tablet computers to look up new vocabulary.

Chen ­Haoyi, the arts and fifth-grade homeroom teacher, adopts a “flipped classroom” approach. His easygoing style is far removed from dry pedantry.

For the upper grades, Chen first gathers relevant Chinese texts, which he sorts into several themes. He uses tablet computers with synchronous editing capacities, so that every student can participate and add notes.

Take the term’s first theme: ecology. On the very first day of “earthworm week” the children nailed together some wooden boards, dug up earthworms, and added soil, creating their own earthworm boxes….

Four days later, the fifth- and sixth-grade students were studying Chinese. The students were all holding their own tablets and typing out vocabulary items as they discussed the lesson’s text. Later they brought their chairs outside, and the teachers asked everyone to classify and list the attributes of earthworms and to add to the previously created mind map. Then they went to a corner of the schoolyard and had an open discussion about the earthworm boxes.

The class could be called Chinese, but it could also be described as a nature, arts & crafts, or information technology class. It naturally connects various realms of knowledge.

Chen ­Haoyi has discovered that standard textbooks, worksheets, evaluations and teaching methods don’t suit the children of Tai­tung: “As far as they are concerned, Mandarin is a second language, and the content of the texts is too far removed from their daily lives. It’s best to adapt materials to the children’s own styles of learning.”

Chen, who grew up in Taitung and has Amis and Pu­yuma blood, continues: “The children here aren’t suited to an educational system based on paper-and-pencil tests, and they’re not going to get the kind of test scores needed to enter prestigious schools, but real ability is more important than academic degrees. We ought to be cultivating their skills via hands-on experiential education.”

 

The year before last He­ping Elementary invited tribal elders to come with the whole school as they walked up into the mountains to learn to cut bamboo and weave wild grasses. Working hard, the students helped construct a traditional Amis home with a living room and bedroom in one structure, as well as a separate kitchen. One result of studying snail ecology was a unique snail recipe. And the students have learned how to make paper from black nightshade fiber.

Every Wednesday morning, Chen ­Haoyi leads students into the mountains, where he teaches them to estimate distances by counting their own paces, thus getting exercise and practicing math at the same time. Sometimes they throw around a baseball, or simply go out for a walk in the mountains or along the seashore.

What’s more, Shi Xiu­ying believes that located as they are in a rural part of Tai­tung, it is very important to leverage the Internet to reduce their remoteness.

Last year, Shi applied for several grants from the county education bureau to purchase tablet computers, create a school-wide Wi-Fi network, and establish a platform for ­Junyi Academy educational materials. Today, the students each have their own tablet computers, which they can log on to at any time for practice. The ­Junyi Academy platform allows students to supplement their learning whenever they want to, and it is also an excellent tool for remedial education.

The Junyi Academy went online in 2012 with the aim of creating a Chinese version of the Khan Academy (a non-profit educational organization created in 2006 by educator Salman Khan to provide “a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere”). Currently, ­Junyi has more than 5800 videos on its site connected to elementary and secondary curriculums in Taiwan. Its math videos, for instance, range from basic arithmetic to high-level differential calculus.

All the students at He­ping Elementary have set skill-level goals for themselves. Fifth-grade class monitor Wu Wan­jing has attained a level of 129. Nevertheless, noting that Gao Si­xuan, who has already graduated, set the school record with 200, Wu says she still has a long way to go and can’t slack off….

This model of creative education has already shown tangible results among the students. A student who transferred in for fifth grade and graduated this past year made the biggest impression on Chen ­Haoyi. At first he wasn’t familiar with Mandarin Phonetic Symbols (used in Taiwan as a literacy teaching aid), and he would often misunderstand instructions. Chen still can’t forget how the child choked up with tears when he explained that he couldn’t write Chinese characters.

Chen requested that the student practice every day using computer-based Chinese entry systems. Meanwhile, Chen had him watch and discuss some motivational films. Taking small steps, the student had made visible progress by half way through the semester. Recently, Chen has heard glowing reports about the student’s performance in the first year of junior high (seventh grade). The word is that he “is frequently praised by teachers for working hard and being responsible.”

This year He­ping Elementary has a new fifth-grader who moved from Xin­dian in New Taipei City. Sean, the girl’s father, can’t mask his surprise at the creative educational methods and abundant resources found at the school. “My daughter has never had her own computer at home,” he notes, “but at school each student has one and needs it for class.”

Shi Xiu­ying is happy with the growth that the students have shown. Any small remote rural school will face its share of difficulties, she acknowledges, but she is proud that the teachers here have become educational coaches for whom a big part of their job is to stand beside students and offer encouragement.