A Review of the Process of the Educational Reformation of Arco School
Dr. Der-Jen Sun, Christ College, Taipei, Taiwan 雅歌教改之回顧，part three
The curriculum
The Vision and Mission
In speaking of education reform, it was necessary to reach the consensus through decent discussion of some questions. The questions should include the reason why the present system needed to change, and what was the feasibility for a new system. To get involved in a huge construction like education reform, every step was too important to be ignored, and the shift of paradigm in education began with asking the right questions. Sun often started her lectures with the following questions.
1. What kind of students do we wish to educate?
2. How can we guarantee that all students are capable of learning?
3. How will a student be willing to learn?
4. How should we teach?
5. What should a student learn so that he is well prepared to enter society?
For the key to these questions, Sun would tell many short stories that revealed the way of a school she envisioned. For years, she noticed that students in Taiwan were unhappy with the learning effectiveness because they were not taught how to learn. Schools did not appeal to students because what was taught did not seem to impact a student’s life. She believed that teaching how to learn was as important as teaching what to learn. For this reason, art education became a tool for students to learn and life education was poured into all subjects as the content to explore. While exploring life from many aspects, the need for knowledge and skills in each subject emerged and students became active learners.
A Multiple Intelligence Learning Environment
The vision of Arco was to set up a school that allowed students to learn according to their intelligences and allow students to move at their own pace. In preparing a learning environment implementing multiple intelligences, all subjects should be scheduled equally, and assessment should focus on its progress not result. Teachers must foster intrinsic motivation to engage students in an interdisciplinary collaboration.
At Arco, students were allowed to use their own learning styles and teachers had to accept them just as they were. In order for teachers to fulfill the needs of students in different paces, the classes were arranged with mixed age groups. Teachers decided which grouping was the best mixture for their own class. For example, an opera class might include the entire student body, a language class might combine two grades or three, and sometimes new teachers did choose just one grade in a class. An activity could be designed for the whole class, with different levels of worksheets assigned to students. People were surprised to see that students had different vocabularies in one class, or different worksheets from the same activity.
Suzuki Violin
Music was a part of daily life at Arco. Students started each day with violin lessons or gardening. With a student population under 40 students, Arco had its own orchestra. It took great concentration in learning music: to think by phrase not by note, to listen to each other, to come in at the right time, and to stay silent at the rest.
The application of Suzuki Violin was one of the activities that associated with art education that promoted multi-sensory learning to increase student’s attention spam. After two years of group lessons, students could choose an instrument for private lesson. Performances were given when needed: in recital, background music, or formal concert. Students volunteered to host the program. Stage was a common scene to see among students drawing of the school.
Theme based curriculum
The curriculum was organized around themes that helped students to explore life in a broad sense. Each theme wove activities into an interdisciplinary collaboration with all subjects. Teachers were trained to design activities based on the theme, and according to the goal of each subject. For example, a teacher assigned a cooking task to students of first and second graders with the directions on how to make one dish. In order to make a poster to tell the audience and win the votes as the best choice, they had to work in a team and complete their own task. The teacher would decide which goal was to be attained: language, math, arts, or science? The different work could be assigned to different people.
The theme was cycled every three years which explored the content of life education. The first year was to gain the connections: to oneself, to others, and to nature. For example, while acquiring awareness to self, students participated in all kinds of activities that explored how one was connected to many efforts that were taken for granted and learned to appreciate. The second year was the defining of harmony: working in harmony with one self, with others, and with nature. For example, students explored the world based on a multi-cultural perspective and learned to confront the conflicts encountered. As for nature, students explored inventions by learning how to discover and research based on others’ discovery. For the third year, it was a time to internalize the vision into an action. Students at this year went through many difficulties with the school, and learned to solve the problems instead of blaming others. Although the theme repeated every three years, the new atmosphere inspired teachers to innovate new activities that renewed the curriculum.
The Small Pond Kingdom
A significant tradition at Arco was to perform a children’s opera小池王國, The Small Pond Kingdom, every three years. The founder composed this award winning play in order to demonstrate an interdisciplinary curriculum. Throughout the whole semester, teachers prepared students to give a formal performance. The story was about a small pond that was badly polluted by humans. The tadpoles in the pond built a kingdom with top technology to measure the world, and great passion to fight with the cancer, yet were not able to understand that there was another world above the pond. According to the theory of Dr. Tadpole, the greatest scientist in the pond, a world was not considered to exist if unreachable by a tadpole’s tail. In exploring the content of the story, teachers in all subjects helped students to construct concepts that were related to the subject according to student’s level. Students design the mini stage to get the feel of the stage and recorded their voices into a DVD for the sound track of the performance.
The opera was prepared in an approach that focused on student’s spiritual growth instead of performance outcomes. However, it was always amazing that when something inside a person changed, the transformation of the appearance emerged. The rebirth of the story eventually led to the rebirth of a student’s life. There was no decision from teachers to assign the cast; students picked their characters in a harmonious way with everyone involved. The entire school was revived from this play. The performance was given at the city concert hall before a full house. It was amazing that the audience included families and friends from young to old, yet the performance caught everyone’s breath all the way through. Professor Hsia Hsue-Li, a drama critic, thought the audience was incredible and the performance was a cultural miracle.
The evaluation
A MI school evaluates students’ learning based on progress instead of results. Students were graded under three categories of progress: R (rapid), S (steady), and N (needs help). Each subject were evaluated according to its subdivided goals and recorded with the motivation students exhibited.
There were three types of motivations in students’ learning: intrinsic, extrinsic, and indifferent motivations. For educators who believe in rewarding and punishment, extrinsic motivation was a tool to enhance learning. Intrinsic motivation, on the other hand, was the enjoyment of doing something for the sake of its own with no regard of reward. It was important for teachers at Arco to observe students’ motivation and correlate with the progress of the subject to identify a child’s strength and weakness of their intelligences. As a child showed indifference motivation and needed help in the progress, a weak intelligence was discerned, while the intrinsic motivation combined with rapid progress indicated strength intelligence.
There was another kind of situation beyond the three types of motivation mentioned: the trouble maker who needed attention. To Arco, these students were in need of healing before learning. Teachers would spend extra time to build relationship and trust and avoid labeling. After a while, these students began to notice that teachers did not respond to their challenges but saw their good behavior right away so they changed. There was a student who made a big change in his conduct and credited that to his teacher, “inside my teacher’s heart, there hid an album which only collected my best pictures. I wanted to be good because she could always see that.” Besides progressive evaluation, Arco sent a qualitative evaluation report to parents in a constructive way to describe a student through the teachers’ eyes. Parents and students enjoyed reading it together and felt blessed.
Research Project
Another course that attracted people from everywhere to observe was the research project. Students at Arco began their learning through the research perspectives. Each semester, a student picked his topic and developed the project for the entire semester, and gave a presentation at the final week. Each week, research teachers would conduct an interview with students one by one in a radio station circumstance. Students would talk about their progress and mention their discoveries. The purpose of the research project was to learn the skills for information processing, a part of learning how to learn, and to present it to the entire class so that students might learn from each other.
During the presentation, students had to choose a method to show the result and give a brief abstract within three minutes. Students were required to focus on the key points with the clear sequence and use their own words. Students would gradually extend their file by gathering data from their continuous readings, and teachers would ask students to process the data into a table format to reduce the length of their articles. Students were very dedicated to their research because it was the choice of their topic, and presented according to their type of intelligence. Arco required every student to complete two books every semester. Besides the research project, the journal 美的分享, or beautiful sharing, recorded the learning and reflection from every day which conversed with parents and teachers.
Home Works
There were many ways to present home works. For instance, teachers might ask students to prepare for an event which included designing the blessing announcement in the form of a poem, dance, music, drawing, making some gift or baked cookies. The student had to describe why the gift was offered and what was the symbolic representation of the gift. In a class with mixed aged students, the many possible ways to complete a task provided a good demonstration that inspired students’ creativity. It was clear that everyone in a class seemed to know what he was doing.
The Graduation Ceremony
Time flew by and the students grew up so it was the time for a graduation ceremony. Students were to plan their own version of the ceremony. Usually students would think of something to make an award for everyone. A performance of music was arranged for the graduates of 2001, with a personal biography presented on the screen background. Music was a movement from a sonata level. The biography was developed for the entire semester to exam one’s life in many perspectives: what did he believe in his life? What was his dream? What character did he need to work on in order to carry out that dream? In answering these questions, a student needed to read biographies from many great people to set a role model for oneself and review his own life to make a plan.
Among some educators there was some doubt about the achievements of students from alternative schools. After the ceremony, many guests were deeply impressed and wondered what would happen to these graduates? Would they be happy after middle school? What would they achieve in the college entrance competition? Six years past, these students now were selected into the most desirable universities in Taiwan and admitted under their priority choice at large. The Arco legend was not just a story.
The key to success- a school of quality
Bonstingl identified a school of quality in a status that students enjoy coming to school when teachers focus on ways of enabling every student to succeed (2001). Quality was the key to success. Arco had worked very hard to insist integrity in the process of its education reformation. Quality came from being faithful to what one declared he would do and substituted nothing to what was important. Quality comes from being a person with integrity and integrity demanded a status of whole person. The school of quality must help one to establish a positive difference in our experience of life- mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
Humanism vs. character education
The education reformation during the last decade demanded liberation of form in a school system in which discipline was the most difficult part to handle. When the rest of the alternative schools focused on the concepts of humanism and emphasized equal respect to all, Arco disagreed. It was the founder’s belief that students who honored their teachers would perform better in the academic achievement because they followed the instruction with full attention. This attitude was emphasized in Arco’s regulation with three respects: respect to the teacher, to oneself, and to the environment.
The respect for the teacher was a part of the character education because attitude was the key to effective learning. At Arco, teachers received the ultimate respect that everyone should listen when the behavior was considered improper by a teacher. Second, everyone should respect oneself by doing what one was responsible, and avoiding what was regarded a shame. Third, every one was granted the freedom to live happily so that one’s freedom could not win at other’s expense. It was a very simple regulation and the penalty to stay out of school for a day, was considered cruel.
The Limitation of a MI School
MI theory has been a trend for the last twenty years and caused an impact to the educational system within and without. Howard Gardner, however, cautioned that 'we must figure out how intelligence and morality can work together to create a world in which a great variety of people will want to live' (Gardner 1999: p4). To a school implementing MI theory, the limitation inevitably was the confrontation of discipline. In speaking of evaluation, to respect children in their own style and to honor their own pace was to tolerate the lack of progress in a traditional standard. Many of us needed to know that when education focused on the change of life, it took time and required patience. In other words, pouring water into a cup to see it filled with water was easier than watering the seeds inside the soil and to see it budding into a life hidden within. The evaluation of an education reform usually cut in at the time when achievements did not come as expected and the character did not build up in a quick way. But it takes patience to become a teacher of character education, and to be patient was to know that there was time for everything. Students remembered that how teachers were patiently walking through the rebellion time with them, yet they learned to respect others from how they were respected and how teachers insisted the bottom line in a gentle way.
Sun had sensed the need for a character education in stabilizing the reform at the beginning of the experiment. For years, she kept developing the theory of a character education and reached a new definition that was well stated in Chinese. Character building was the key that made one seek the highest quality of one’s life and expand the greatest capacity of a person. Character education could not be taught in a passive text but must be learned from an active attitude.
Bonstingl in his book “school of quality” gave a comparison in describing the shift of paradigm in education. One change was that in traditional classroom success was artificially limited to a few winners while in a quality school continuous improvement and successes were the objectives of schooling (2001, pp.101). This description reflected from a fourth- graders a few months after Arco appeared at Chung-Lin. A transfer student in a trial session told her father that she definitely wanted to transfer to Arco. “Usually, it would not take long to find the best student in a class,” she said, “At Arco everyone could be a star in a different time.” She found that the class was mixed aged and the teacher allowed everyone to be different in pace and style. The teacher was not someone to judge and condemn but a guide to help complete a task. A class was not a single-discipline instruction but interdisciplinary learning.
What Arco achieved in the search of education reform was incredibly enormous, but there were limitations, too. First, the environment that provided multiple intelligences in teaching, learning, and evaluating was not easy to develop at that time. Second, with the theme-based curriculum an interdisciplinary collaboration and the mixed aged instruction, required teachers who were highly competent in their subject areas and patient enough to guide instead of teach. Third, the least important factor that in the end turned out to be the fatal limitation was the legal land and financial problems in creating a private school.
A School based on Christian faith
The name Arco, literally in Chinese means “Song of the songs”, gave an impression that Arco was a music school. However, after sharing the education philosophy and knowing more about the school, guests usually regarded it as a Christian school although it was not sponsored by a Christian denomination. The way students were educated, the way teachers trained, and the way parents were empowered, shared the same spirit from a biblical foundation.
Students: every student has his own talent and should be accepted just as he is.
In the book of Mathew, Jesus told a parable of the talents. In the story, a man entrusted his money to three servants according to their abilities. As he returned, the one who received five talents gained five more, the one who received two talents gained two more, and the one with one talent did not make any. In responding to the results, the master was equally pleased with the first two who gained as much as granted, and threw the one who made no effort outside.
The story may seem strange to many because the one who gained two was treated the same as the one who gained five. However, students at Arco would have no trouble comprehending this situation because all intelligences were not discriminated in their school. God granted each of us different gifts and expects each of us to be faithful to what we have received. They were just smart in different ways and one needed to hold on faithfully to whatever was given to them.
At Arco, children were granted two stages to accomplish this vision: the stage of intelligence enhanced their capability in learning, and the stage of life developed the passion for learning. For the stage of intelligence, Arco exhibited an equal value among all different intelligences. Children at this school soon discovered that they were all treasures in the teachers’ sight.
Teachers: there were only incompetent teachers but no incapable students
As an educator who trusted multiple intelligence theory, Der-Jen Sun believed that there were only incompetent teachers but no incapable students. As a conductor who often helped players to develop their highest potential, she knew that there must be a way to reach those who need a lift, and an environment to restore those in sleep.
Teachers at Arco were not trained to teach, but to guide students’ learning. The learning environment was to be prepared before the class given so that students may stay awake at all times. In doing this, the example of creation from the book of genesis was studied by teachers in order to understand how God as a teacher: a teacher who prepared the environment before students arrived, a teacher who organized materials in a system that made sense to students and easily followed, a teacher who set examples before he asked students to operate, a teacher who evaluated his work after he performed it, a teacher who planned his work and worked his plan, a teacher who made his students into active learners, and finally, a teacher who knew how to stay focused.
Parents: It takes time to learn a skill, like parenting.
The empowering of the parents is one of the major activities at Arco. As a matter of fact, parents were the first resource to establish this school. Regular seminars were conducted to parents so that they were on the track of what students were learning at the time. There was a radio recording of 14 speeches on the topic of “how to guide a child’s learning” for prospective parents to listen and give feedback. Sun even used Biblical characters to describe the success and failure of being a parent.
Students had to apply for the certificate of pet care by going through a process of parenting experiences. Students from grades 3-6 conducted research on the topic of their pets and devoted care for their pets. Parents usually learned a great deal from their children at this period as they examined their own parenting experiences. In viewing the change of the environment and life, there was a time for everything. As is mentioned in the book of Ecclesiastes chapter3:
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.
Hope: to establish an alternative school
To establish an alternative school meant to provide hopes for students who needed another option. The Arco Declaration was a solution for all the questions encountered in years in which four beliefs were proposed to establish an alternative school. In the Arco Declaration, Sun believed that education was not a matter of pouring knowledge into a student’s mind but a process of transformation in life little by little. The journey of education was to search the meaning of life by getting three keys to open the door of the future: truth, vision, and character. Without truth, life is helpless. Without vision, life is powerless. Without character, life is hopeless.
What Arco progressed in trying to become a legal private school may seem to be a small step, but the philosophy within the curriculum was a big step for educators at that time. As a Christian who looked at the success in a different perspective, Sun had come a long way. However, her devotion would not turn out a sacrifice because “all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. Romans 8:28.
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