The “Teaching Excellence Award” bestowed by Ministry of Education owns the reputation of the “Oscar of Teaching”. In 2021, two elementary schools in Tainan, Siancao Experimental Elementary School in Baihe District and Sindong Elementary School in Houbi District, both won the highest honor of this award－the Golden Award－for their distinctive teaching approach.
Siancao Experimental Elementary School is located in the well-known Guanziling Scenic Area in Taiwan. With profound humanities and history and ecological abundance, the area provides fruitful and easily accessible educational resources. Taking advantages of these granted treasures, teacher teams of Siancao step-by step developed its school-based curriculum with three main cores: Thinking of Travelers, Insight of Translators and Practice of Filmmakers. Students can delve into their homeland treasures through on-the-spot survey, nature observation and video records and so on. Trees and blades of grass, fluttering Purple Crow Butterflies and fireflies, and morning bell and dawn drum of ancient temples in Guanziling are involved in the learning scheme of the school-based curriculum, embodying the ideals of “To learn is to Travel”.
As the rise of multimedia in the current generation, texts, voices and images existing in kids’ lives have become quite common channels for learning. Teacher teams of Siancao therefore designed courses of media literacy to allow students to learn extents of audio/video resources. On top of that, those resources are well applied in creating audios/ videos in the school-based curriculum, formulating a very unique course of filmmaking literacy in Taiwan. Through their eyes and voices, students can record meaningful information happening around themselves and thus express their love to the land and the hometown by audio-visual media creations.
Every kid is expected to serve as a seed to the regional revitalization. Guanziling is a place which stimulates teachers’ creativities, enriches kids’ learning processes and nourishes growth of both sides. In the future, these kids, no matter where they are, can always remember Guanziling and keep their love and well wishes for the hometown in mind.
Sindong Elementary School is located in Houbi District, where is an important rice production area in Tainan (so-called “Rice Bun of Tainan”). Families in this area mainly earn their living by farming. However, despite living in the countryside, students are not familiar with natural environment and therefore school education is vital for them to receive cultural stimulation. Aiming at supporting students to go global, Sindong Elementary School designed a localized course scheme－Dream Incubation by A Grain of Rice.
Sindong Elementary School developed its school-based curriculum with five main cores－Going with Nature, Accommodating with Land, Responding with Humans, Technology and Internationalization. “RICE Leaning model” , comprising five concepts－Reflective, Investigate, Cooperation and Expression, is also applied, to help students learn to feel and explore spontaneously, to work and interact with others, to share their knowledges and to seek the common good.
Students in Sindong Elementary School have learnt how to make the most environmental-friendly bacterial fertilizers by their own and cultivated rice to feed themselves. All learning process are recorded by aerial photography drones and the school also attaches great importance of English education in other courses. Through the rice, one of the most localized agricultural produces, students convey their identity to the homeland and the importance of global sustainability, reveal the vision of “Heading to the World by Being Closing to the Land”.