July 16-18, 2007
<Normal People's Idealities and Sentiments>Dandelion School Semester End Reflection and Expectation toward New Semester
Host: Dandelion School Sponsor: World Education

Before the end of the second semester, a total of 34 Dandelion faculties went to Long Qing Xia located at the north of Beijing to conduct a three days two nights semester reflection and assessment report. The reflection started with Confucius's philosophy of being a gentleman and the philosophy of idealities, Dandelion teachers reviewed and shared their personal point of view, and discussed their working objectives and directions toward the next semester.

By sharing the history of Dandelion teachers witnessed in the past two years according to the number of years they have been working at Dandelion, everyone was taken back to the time when Dandelion set up and all the precious moments and memorable milestones that school management team, teachers and students built together. Participants not only shared with each other how a good teacher should look like from their point of views, they also told their own stories of models that inspired them become teachers. Through the activity of "Getting to Know You through the Eyes of My Minds", teachers were given a period of quiet time to reflect the values of their colleagues and the excellent examples set up at Dandelion School. The whole faculty also saluted and expressed their appreciation toward teachers who taught grade 9th in the past year for their hardworking and tremendous efforts they devoted to the first batch of Dandelion graduates.

September 4-28, 2007
<Love is in Action – Dandelion Transformation Project>
Facilitator: Dr. Lily Yeh Sponsor: World Education

September 4-28, 2007
<Love is in Action – Dandelion Transformation Project>
Facilitator: Dr. Lily Yeh Sponsor: World Education

The Dandelion Transformation Project is a year-long project (from September 2007 to the end of 2008), facilitated by Dr. Lily Yeh, an American Chinese artist who has been dedicated to public arts around the world, with the hope to help Dandelion School and Shou Bao Village in the neighborhood, to transform from an landscape with much attention to become a beautiful campus and community full of hope, beauty, love, caring, and creativity, in order to receive even much more respect and attention from our own and from the society.

 

Through the Transformation Project, Dr. Lily Yeh would like Dandelion teachers and students be able to experience their own creativities, be open-minded, have a much better confidence, and be able to understand the fun and energy of group work. The whole process integrates multiple levels of efforts and activities that bring in elements like history, geography, music, art, humanity, dancing, literature and poems, to help teachers and students to discover the characteristics and beauty of individual province, including its culture and traditional arts. Through social studying and research, students not only learn to utilize information, materials and resources around them, they also learn to reflect their own in the process.

During the time when Dr. Lily Yeh was in Beijing, she made a speech about "From Desolation to A World Full of Beauty and Vitality" to teachers from Dandelion School, Foreign Language and Electricity School (FLES) and Tao Xing-Zhi High School at FLES, to share stories that inspire and motivate her to continue her public arts work in various communities around the world.

At Dandelion, students and teachers looked carefully at the exhibition of work of arts Dr. Lily Yeh brought that captured the public arts she created with local people in Pennsylvania, Rwanda and her interactions with students who were deaf in Taiwan, which really opened our minds. Dr. Lily Yeh worked with Dandelion students from grade 6th to grade 9th, through the process of painting on the big clothes, drawing and outlining life trees, designing and decorating various walls and corners in the campus, and producing paintings to demonstrate individual inner world, it gave Dr. Lily Yeh a better picture of how Dandelion students feel and expect toward their living and studying environment. During her stay, Dandelion teachers also gained a great deal from the various workshops that enable them to pay more attentions to student's creativity and desires, inspire them impromptu to write poems, and through the process of doing smaller sizes of mosaics in groups, teachers experienced the excitement, happiness and hardworking of teamwork. Dr. Lily Yeh is going to re-visit Dandelion in the end of April for three weeks. We look forward to her visit to nourish Dandelion with us together!

October 9-23, 2007
<Life Skills Exploration I: Decision Making Skills>
Facilitator: World Education Ms. Estelle Day,Mr. David Kahler, Sandy Chou

The objective of Dandelion School is to develop a new generation of children, who are healthy both physically and emotionally, be able to develop their full potential and give back to the society. How to develop and build a faculty team who are full of ideas, passion, enthusiasm, and are able to acquire opportunities for their own growth and achievement is also a crucial objective the school would like to achieve along the process. However, when Dandelion teachers first got admitted to the school they were advised well in advance, "working environment is harsh, teaching students is challenging, and the salary is never high". At the same time, teachers at Dandelion are always expected to never dislike or give up any single student. The time and efforts that Dandelion teachers have devoted and committed to their work is tremendous. Except for necessary time for rest, teachers spend almost every single minute and second with their students. All these requirements already present the urging needs of psychological support to Dandelion teachers.

We met Professor Wang Xue-Fu and his wife Ms. Sun Wen in Nanjing in our "Appreciation Education" study tour in May in 2007. Professor Wang's curiosity of getting to know more about Dandelion School and the challenges and issues teachers and students at migrant schools facing pushed Professor Wang and his wife to finally make a trip to Beijing on November 17-19, 2007 to spend three days with Dandelion teachers and students to listen to their needs. They spent their daytime conducting one-on-one psychological counseling with teachers and students one after another, and used nighttime to facilitate two workshops to demonstrate how psychological counseling look like and the importance of "listening" and "understanding the key information". Through several case studies, professor Wang helped teachers to practice their "empathic skills" by using different phrases to express we do care and how we can apply the empathic skills in our day-to-day interaction with students.

January 26-28, 2008
<Educators' Responsibilities>Dandelion School Semester End Reflection
Host: Dandelion School Sponsor: World Education

The Chinese movie "Assemble" was a huge hit during Chinese New Year. A total of 46 Dandelion teachers and staff also saw the movie together to begin the two-day long "Educator's Responsibilities" Dandelion School semester end reflection and assessment report. Looked back the past two and a half year of Dandelion's history, participants' minds and hearts were filled with all the precious time and unforgettable moments they went through. Presenters from all departments of Dandelion, including political education, academy department, department heads, grade heads, pre-vocational training, publicity, volunteer activities, finance, general affairs, inventory, kitchen and mess hall, security, library and donors' affairs, all presented their assessment reports for the past semester and received constructive feedback and suggestions from teachers participated in the event. In the meantime, teachers observed the "Project-Based Learning" workshop at International School of Beijing also had a chance to present their experience and lessons learned to teachers who were not able to go. The retreat was wrapped up by teachers checked their performance against their wishing list developed in the previous year as a way to conduct individual reflection and assessment and look forward to a better improvement in the coming year.

March 15-April 2, 2008
Transforming the Learning Outcomes of Every Learner at Dandelion:
Strategies for Teachers to Utilize the "Multiple Intelligences" of Each Student
Facilitator: World Education Ms. Estelle Day and Sandy Chou

Students who do not perform well in Language or Math classes – Are they really "low ability"?
In March 2008, World Education conducted two workshops regarding "Transforming the Learning Outcomes of Every Learner: Strategies for Teachers to Utilize the ‘Multiple Intelligences' of Each Student" at both Dandelion School and the Foreign Languages and Electricity School at Haidian District, to introduce the Multiple Intelligences Theory developed in 1983 by Dr. Howard Gardner at Harvard University. We discussed and analyzed various learning pathways and approaches that might be compatible and effective for learners born with different intelligences, including Linguistic Intelligence, Logical-Mathematics Intelligence, Musical Intelligence, Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence, Spatial Intelligence, Interpersonal Intelligence, Intra-personal Intelligence, and Naturalist Intelligence, and through brain storming and cross sharing, we also explored many practical strategies that would help teachers better utilize and integrate multiple intelligences into their classroom.

Before the workshop, World Education facilitator Ms. Estelle Day worked one on one with two volunteer teachers from Dandelion, Mr. Wang Han-Yu, math teacher for grade 9th, and Ms. Lu Xiao-Juan, Language teacher teaching grade 6th, for two days. We provided the two volunteers a short preview session of the idea of multiple intelligences, and encouraged them to demonstrate how they utilize the multiple intelligences concept into their lesson plan when they introduce a new topic/content, and how they provide choices for students to demonstrate their understanding of the learning objectives and knowledge through homework in front of their peer colleagues in the workshop. In addition, participants in the workshop also discussed the five key strategies for teachers to utilize multiple intelligences in their teaching and had hands-on practice opportunities and had their own action plans for the semester.

The concept of multiple intelligences challenges educators:
- To re-think what we do in the classroom
- To re-think how we assess learners (– are they really 'low ability'?)
The concept of multiple intelligences gives educators the opportunity to:
- Look at the strengths of all learners not the deficits
- Allow all students the chance for learning achievement