Report 2006: Education
Amity Teachers Program
The 2006-2007 academic year saw 42 teachers invited to teach at 24 schools in the following provinces and autonomous regions of China: Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangxi, Sichuan, Guangxi and Gansu. Twenty-seven of these teachers were placed in 13 colleges in the western provinces of Sichuan, Guangxi and Gansu. The teachers offered English and Japanese language instruction, and came from a total of 11 different countries: Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Japan, Norway, the Philippines, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.
We had 14 new teachers coming in the summer of 2006, and a three-week Summer Training Program was held for them in Huzhou, Zhejiang.
Summer English Program
In July 2006, 62 volunteers from Canada, Germany, the UK and the USA came to China for four weeks to help Chinese middle school English teachers with their English skills. Grouped into teams, the volunteers were placed in 15 teaching sites in the following 10 provinces: Jiangsu (2), Fujian, Shandong, Hubei, Hebei, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan (2), Gansu (3), Inner Mongolia (2). Priority was given to the underdeveloped areas in western China. Teachers focused on the improvement of the trainees’ listening and speaking skills and organized a variety of cultural exchange activities.
Schools for Children of Migrant Workers
In 2006, Amity sponsored a calligraphy & drawing contest called “Describing the World in Seven Colors” at schools for the children of migrant workers in Nanjing. Over 120 students from 10 such schools participated in this contest, and 20 students came to the final.
In 2006, Amity supported two migrant schools to build their own libraries; one school with padded playground tiles, and one with teaching facilities including computers, a copy machine and musical instruments.
Amity introduced 11 international students and one Amity teacher to do volunteer English teaching at three different migrant schools.
Love for Poverty-Stricken Students
In the year 2006, 30 primary students in Honglan Township, Lishui County were able to continue their studies at school with help from Amity.
In the same year, Amity started to help poor senior middle school students in Lishui. Amity supported 14 students (orphans, children from single parent families and children of ill or disabled parents).
Service Learning Program
In 2006, 52 people from overseas came to participate in service learning programs. Most of the students and adults did service related to English teaching, while some helped with other aspects of Amity’s work. Through the services, participants also had opportunities to communicate with each other, and learn from different cultures and from each other.
• In March, 13 students and two teachers from Davidson College, the U.S.A. came to Xinyu College. They taught English to Xinyu students, attended a course of lectures on Chinese culture and history, participated in students’ activities and got a chance to witness the production process of the famous local hand-made ramie cloth.
• From March to April, a student from International Christian University in Japan came to participate in the Amity service learning program. She worked for the Amity Home of Blessings, taught English at a migrant school and visited important local Amity projects and historic sites.
• In April, seventeen students from Hong Kong came in two groups during their Easter vacation. One group went to Mingguang Shuangyu Migrant School to lead English activities and then to the Nanjing Union Seminary to share experiences with the seminary students. The other group participated in a few local Amity teachers’ English classes. Both groups visited some Amity projects such as the Printing Press.
• In July, a group of five people from PNME (Pacific Network for Mission Education) in the U.S.A joined Amity’s service learning project. Amity provided an orientation including an introduction to Amity, lectures on Chinese history, and visits to Amity projects and places of historical interest. Three members of the group went to teach English in a middle school in Yangzhou, Jiangsu, and the other two went on to visit Amity projects in northern Jiangsu Province.
• In July, VFC (Volunteers for China) from the U.S.A. sent a team of nine students to Yangzhou, Jiangsu to teach English for two weeks. They went to various middle schools in Yangzhou in groups.
• In August, two German students came to do service learning in Chuzhou, Anhui Province. They did English teaching to middle school students and also got out to see some local neighborhoods and industry.
Legal Aid Project
All people should enjoy the same basic rights.
In cooperation with Nanjing Municipal Judicial Bureau, Amity helped build a Legal Aid Center at Andemen Labor Market in March 2006.
Since the Legal Aid Center’s establishment, it has offered free consultation to more than 1,500 migrant workers, and has been involved in 15 cases in which it helped migrant workers get their salaries of over 50,000 yuan. The Center's legal services are greatly raising people’s awareness about protecting their rights, and at the same time contributing to building harmonious relationships between employers and employees.
Young Volunteer Program
In the autumn of 2006, two young volunteers, Lea Kristensen from Denmark and Jenni Keel from Switzerland, joined the Amity Young Volunteer Program. It is one of the culture-exchange programs that Amity has been developing since 2005 to promote mutual understanding between young people from overseas and in China.
The two volunteers were placed at a county-level middle school in Lishui county, Jiangsu Province, where they taught Oral English to Chinese middle school students. Meanwhile, they were learning Chinese and going for weekend trips to gain exposure to Chinese culture and the local society.
Five-Year School Development Program
To strengthen the leadership capacity and to improve the teaching environment at small teacher training schools in China, Amity started the “Five-Year School Development Project” in 2005.
In 2006, Amity continued its support at Youjiang Minorities Teachers College, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Xingyu Teachers College, Jiangxi Province. Amity's support covered the following areas:
1) Purchasing teaching materials for the Resource Rooms of English departments;
2) Providing one-year tuition grants for four Chinese faculty members to further their study at the key universities in eastern China; and
3) Underwriting the expenses for the school presidents to attend a one-week Amity Leadership Training Course in Hong Kong.
Domestic Faculty Development Program
In the 2005-06 academic year, Amity offered scholarships to 107 Chinese teachers from 33 teachers colleges and universities in the following underdeveloped areas: Guizhou, Gansu, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia and Henan. With Amity’s support, these 107 young teachers have been able to attend degree and non-degree graduate-level programs for one year at key universities in China. Sixty-eight were women teachers. About half were from Guizhou Province, one of the poorest provinces in southern China. Amity gave priority to women, minorities and teachers of subjects most in need of faculty development.
Overseas Faculty Development Program
In the 2005-06 academic year, Amity continued its sponsorship of seven teachers from teacher colleges in western China who were working to finish the second year of their MA in TESOL Degree at De La Salle University in the Philippines and Assumption University in Thailand. Sponsorship from this program also helped two associate professors from Guizhou Normal University go to the United States as six-month visiting scholars. During the spring term, similar sponsorship enabled two doctoral candidates from Guizhou Normal University to spend three months at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, preparing their dissertations.
Leadership Training Program
Amity sponsored a seven-day leadership training seminar held in Hong Kong in October, 2006. Twenty academic deans from teachers’ colleges in Guizhou, Gansu and Jiangxi Provinces attended the seminar, which included one day of training in Guiyang, the capital city of Guizhou Province, and then a four-day training seminar held by the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIE). The professors from HKIE provided a variety of lectures introducing Core Curriculum & General Education, Co-curriculum for Whole Person Development, Problem-based Learning, School-based Assessment, Student Evaluation of Teaching and Staff Appraisal. The trainees also visited HKIE classrooms and the Jockey Club Primary School.
Short-Term Lecture Tours
At Amity’s invitation, Prof. Shen Xiaoyun and Prof. Yang Zhizhong from Nanjing University made lecture visits to Guizhou Province and Gansu Province three times in 2006, giving lectures to their counterparts and the students at teachers’ colleges in these provinces. Professor Shen’s lectures included Research Model and Interpretation System of Chinese Modern History and the Development Pattern of Northwestern China in the 1930’s during the Nationalist Government period, while Professor Yang’s lecture focused on the current college English teaching reform and the new course requirements.
Service-Learning Seminar
In September 2006, Amity held a Service-Learning Seminar at Guizhou Normal University. Thirty-three faculty members from 11 teachers’ colleges of Guizhou Province attended the seminar. This was the first Service-Learning Seminar held in western China. Amity invited Dr. Jun Xing and Dr. Birgit Linder from the United Board, Dr. Stephen Ngai from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Dr. Carol Ma from Lingnan University, Associate Professor Du Jingzhen from Nanjing Normal University and Ms. Chen Jing from Nanjing University to give lectures at the seminar. In this way, Amity built awareness of the service-learning model and trained people how to use it as an approach for the teachers’ colleges of Guizhou Province.
AIDS Prevention Education among College Students
Amity held a training course on HIV/AIDS prevention for the backbone teachers in teachers’ colleges of Guizhou Province in July 2006. Thirty-eight trainees from 14 colleges and universities of Guizhou participated in the training. Those teachers are in charge of health education in their colleges and the majority of them are 20-30 years old.
The trainers Amity invited were specialists and scholars with rich experience in this field, and the training course brought effective results. As one of the trainees has expressed, “the training workshop was timely, and indispensable. We learned how to go about promoting HIV/AIDS-prevention among college students and providing them education. Such a topic should be added into colleges’ health courses.”
