Two Taiwanese educators were honored at the annual Super Teacher Awards on Saturday ahead of Taiwan Teachers’ Day for encouraging their students in rural communities to enjoy the outdoors and get hands-on experience farming to build character.
One of the two, Kuo Hui-chuan (郭惠娟), was named winner of Taiwan’s best preschool/kindergarten teacher award.
Kuo, who teaches at the preschool tied to Jingmei Elementary School in New Taipei, was honored for cultivating an appreciation of aesthetics among her young students for the last 10 years.
She said her philosophy was to teach her students to live closer to nature, which has led her to get students outdoors in interactive classes that often involve working the soil.
Enlisting the help of local residents, Kuo teaches her students how to plant seeds, which she believes helps them build character and empathy.
Similar to Kuo, Hsu Yu-ya (許游雅), who captured the award in the elementary school category, stresses the outdoors in guiding her students at Nanhua Elementary School in Tainan.
With her school located in an agricultural area, Hsu has her students join their parents in local fields, such as mango plantations, to better understand their families and discover new ways to engage with each other.
Teaching in rural areas also offers the benefit of providing different types of cultural stimulation and experiences than what they would find in urban areas, Hsu said.
The winners in the other teaching categories were honored for using other approaches to motivate their students.
The winner of the junior high school teacher award, Chen Chao-hsun (陳昭勛), became an English teacher at Mu Zha Junior High School in Taipei after returning to Taiwan from Australia, though it was not how she planned it.
Chen had a background in traditional Chinese medicine, and she originally hoped to become a medical intern after returning to Taiwan.
Through paperwork mishaps, however, she ended up teaching at the Mu Zha school and also got involved in working with other teachers.
She leads a special class in which she conveys her educational philosophy and ideas to other faculty members to get them ready for the future as Taiwan tries to become a bilingual country.
For Liu Wei-wu (劉緯武), a Taiwanese mixologist who was honored with the vocational school award, teaching his students about cocktails is more than just giving them the necessary skills; it is about passing on a certain lifestyle.
Liu often teaches his students about the value of self-cultivation and being humble and adopting the etiquette observed in proper cocktail bars, and he encourages them to avoid Taiwan’s culture that puts drinking too much above savoring and understanding what they are drinking.
The annual Super Teacher Awards were initiated in 2003 by the National Teacher’s Association (NTA) to recognize the hard work of educators ahead of Taiwan Teachers’ Day on Sept. 28.
Since 2013, the National Federation of Teachers Unions (NTFU) has served as a co-organizing body with the intention of further honoring the best of Taiwan’s educators.
According to the association, traditional on-site judging for the 2022 award was challenging due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to the cancellation of classes or online instruction.
Education Minister Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠), who was also present at the event, praised the organizers for the time spent evaluating nominees, such as commuting to rural areas to assess candidates and showcasing the different work environments teachers face around the country.
He pledged that his ministry will continue to work toward reducing the hours teachers have to spend on administrative work so they can spend more time on educating students.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel