Program Report

After 6 highly successful years of TSI completion, we continued the endeavors to operate the Teaching Summer Institutes 2010, with this year almost doubled the scale of last year. The project this year operated in 7 teaching sites and recruited 86 volunteers, in which 12 volunteers from Hong Kong tertiary institutions were selected. With a very diverse group of audience, our mission for enhancing teaching effectiveness of local teachers was achieved; and our project was encouraged to run constantly and largely in the future years.

Preparation

Since the last Annual Summit held in September 2009 in Beijing that we had a consensus to continue our project of the Teaching Summer Institutes in a larger scale, preparation work for the whole year implementation has been carefully under progress since then. Evaluation data was analyzed and further discussion was held internally among the Hong Kong teams, aiming to improve on the Teaching Summer Institutes 2010. Decision was also made that the systematic teaching database should be established and shared among the different teams. The organizers for TSI from Hong Kong have also been contacting in a regular basis the co-organizers from other universities in Beijing, Shanghai and the US for better collaboration of the projects.

We started to liaise with the local Chinese officials to offer our advice and our volunteer’s favorable feedbacks on the operations in different provincial sites. Site visits were made by the mainland counterparts and we finalized the confirmation of our participation on the eight provinces which we plan to operate this year. In detail, there are places in Anhui, Gansu, Sichuan, Guangxi, Guizhou, Qinghai from June 2010 to September 2010.

Pre-departure Workshops and Briefing

One pre-departure workshop and final briefing session were accordingly organized on the topic of English teaching and classroom tactics by Professor Cecilia Chun and her colleagues Miss Sarah Ng, Miss Letty Chan from the Department of Curriculum & Instruction, Faculty of Education of CUHK on 18th June in the campus of the City University of Hong Kong. All volunteers were required to attend the workshops in order to get prepared for the program. Reference materials were provided during the workshop and the handwork they received afterwards.

A briefing session was arranged afterwards. Introduction of TECC and the Institute were included, and participants were briefed on the details and logistics of the Institutes as well. They were required to communicate with their teammates within the same site from mainland China and United States and prepare the teaching materials before departure, with reference to the teaching curriculum developed earlier.

Implementation

Education in many rural villages suffers from lack of resources, heavily out-of-date curriculum materials, and under-staffed or under-prepared faculty. TECC utilizes Internet-enabled education and communication tools in innovative ways to bring education opportunities to disadvantaged communities in the western part of China. Each Teaching Summer Institute focuses on developing the teaching abilities of the top 30-50 rural middle or primary school teachers in each region, specifically in English proficiency, teaching innovation and technology use in the classroom. By addressing the needs and questions of instructors directly, TECC is able to produce a sustained and widespread impact among their target students. The teachers are evaluated by volunteers on their ability to teach at the beginning and end of each institute, both quantitatively (by written knowledge tests) and qualitatively (ability to communicate effectively, demonstrating efficacy in the classroom).

The Teaching Summer Institutes focus on several main aspects: English training, Computer training, PE training and Music/Art training.

Despite the different teaching methods designed by the different teams, the English curriculum nevertheless aims at improving middle/primary school teachers’ speaking, listening, reading and writing skills. The volunteers were given face-to-face interviews before the start of the teaching sessions in order to provide qualified training that was more applicable to each individual teacher in the site.

Computer training includes the commonly used software and computer concepts that would be beneficial to their teaching in the future. The extent of their computer training reflected TECC’s mission: “technology facilitates education.” More advanced training based on their needs and interests is also available to the more advanced computer teachers.

The PE training and Music/Art training were the result of the local request by local education bureau and even school teachers. The volunteers brought not only the abundant content of teaching samples for the local primary or secondary teachers or even students but also passed the spirit of innovative and flexible teaching methodologies to the target audiences for their adoption in future.

The long-run impact is not only that teachers have access to a new set of tools, but that they can, as they have in the past, remain in contact with TECC project volunteers about education-related needs and questions in the future.

Volunteer Sharings

Roy Chung, Volunteer of the Guangxi Quinzhou site
All in all, I think what I gained is far more than what I’ve given. First, my Mandarin was not very good, students in GuangXi spared no pains to improve my Mandarin. I felt so warmed. Secondly, co-operating with other “teachers”, I have learnt so much from them. Especially the “teachers” from Beijing chapter, they were really delicate and passionate in teaching students. Last but not least, I understood more about China. HK is a part of China, but I know nothing about China. TSI provide a great chance for me to understand more about my motherland and let me take part in this meaningful humanitarian engineering project.

Shuang Cai, Volunteer of the Gansu Jingchuan site
Love every face long for knowledge from teachers and children! Love every hard-working and lovely silhouette of my teammates! Love Jingchuan where I was touched so many times and had so much to treasure and recall! Love TECC TSI where I gained another perspective for China and the world and which made me become more mature with so many fabulous memories and experiences.

Maggie Lu, Volunteer of the Anhui Wuhu site
Our team demonstrated extraordinary synergy, delegating well and each completing his or her part with responsibility and with outstanding results. Each of us contributed excellent ideas and not once did anyone feel undervalued or overlooked. This was largely because we had frequent productive meetings and we were clear on what each of our roles was.

Meng Zhao, Volunteer of the Qinghai Datong site
Perhaps the biggest gain I acquired is the friendship with my fellow volunteers. We 12 people are from different backgrounds, but we work together perfectly harmoniously. We help each other with the teaching, being assistants in classes. Also, since we are from different places, majors and attend universities in China, Hong Kong and US, we have a lot to share and learn. After the 2 weeks, I think I have a much deeper understanding of my counterparts in China and US.

Nina Sun ,Volunteer of the Sichuan Jiangyou site
I did enjoy myself and learnt a lot during my volunteering experience in Jiangyou. I think TECC TSI is something worth my recommendation to all the college students who want to get a better understanding of China and contribute to the society in their own ways.