Taixing Elementary School is located in a small remote village in Meishan, Chiayi. The village was thought to be too small to have a school. Therefore, the children there had to walk to school in the nearest village. However, the villagers there loved their home town and tried their best to build up their valley as a village of culture by founding their own school. Finally, their dream came true.
At the beginning of the school’s founding, the villagers in Taixing felt that education was important, and the number of elementary school children was going to increaseyear by year. It was really necessary to found a school to avoid the pain of their children travelling long distances to neighboring elementary school in Taiping Village. Therefore, the villagers overcame three main difficulties to fulfill their dream.
First, for the the building materials, they tried to gather and move them to the mountainous areas. Second, for the land for the campus, the committee members of the local Taixing Rock Temple agreed to allocate part of its own land to build the school. Third, for the fundraising, 10 preparatory committee members, including Lin Youmu, Chen Weigui among others, raised the funds.
After all the hardships, a wooden school building was completed in August 1949. It was called Taixing Branch of Taiping Elementary School, Meishan Township, Chiayi County. Two years later in August of 1949, it became a branch school of Taixing National School of Meishan Township, Chiayi County. It has been renamed "Taixing Elementary School of Meishan Township, Chiayi County" since 1989.
The school, in the mountainous area of Meishan Township, Chiayi County, is classified as a special remote elementary school in Greater Alishan.
There is the Alishan train line to the east, the Independence Mountain Sightseeing Trail to the west, the Caoling Ancient Road in the front, and the Yuntan Waterfall in the back; its geographical environment is excellent with embracing the valley and the sea of clouds, and is insulated from the turmoil of the hustle and bustle.
This area belongs to the forest scenic area of the Greater Ali Mountains, which includes Taiping Scenic Area, Taixing Scenic Area, Ruifeng Scenic Area, Ruili Scenic Area, Laiji Scenic Area, Taihe Scenic Area, Fengshan Scenic Area, Fenqi Lake Scenic area...etc. There are also countless sightseeing spots nearby. The closest one is the "Taixing Forest Recreation Area". Every holiday, many tourists come here to enjoy the heavenly scenery of the forest and sunshine.
As a special remote mountainous elementary school, Taixing Elementary School has only a small number of students, however, its existence deserves special attention. It carrys unique historical educational and community-service meaning under the constraints of its transportation, geographic environment and unfavorable educational and cultural pre-conditions. The school is not only a place for students to learn, but also a spiritual fortress for the culture and consciousness of the Taixing community.
However, under the impact of the wave of declining birthrates, Taiwan’s birth rate has been steadily declining, reaching the lowest in the world. Schools bear the brunt of the marked decrease in the number of new students enrolled every year. This is an indisputable fact that must also be faced.Taixing Elementary School specially has faced such a harsh challenge.
Based on effective cost considerations and to avoid closing the school system, and in order to avoid depriving students of opportunities for interaction and group learning due to the reduction in class size, the school actively provides students with better quality of learning through the "innovative mixed-age education" model Environment, build parent confidence, transform teachers’ mental models to create school characteristics and confirm the value of small schools.
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The school has been transformed into an “innovative mixed-age experimental education school” since the 104th school year. In the natural social heterogeneous organization of “mixed-age education and teaching”, teachers and students have developed into long-term “learning families” with rich secrets, Mature and stable social interaction, but also a proactive learning style. However, in order to strengthen the quality of the school’s local characteristic curriculum and respond to the development trend of the national education policy, the third phase of experimental education plan from 110 to 112 academic year is to practice "experience learning" as the specific educational concept of the school-type experimental education.
Experiential Learning, also known as "discovery learning", "experience-based learning", "activity learning" or "interactive learning", its main educational philosophy and theoretical framework is integrated from the educator John Dewey "Learning by Doing", Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle, and Cognitive Psychologist Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development. In the process of curriculum planning and teaching implementation, teachers are no longer the center of teaching, and students are the main body of learning. The teacher plays the role of facilitator, initiator, and coach, and must also be an innovator and independent learning that can inspire students. Experiential learning emphasizes the use of "intuition" to establish students' concepts of the things experienced in the daily life, and cultivates students' awareness and independent thinking through experience, exploration, thinking, feeling, action, or the process of group cooperative learning, group dialogue, and value clarification , cooperative participation, induction and daily application.
In summary, Taixing Elementary School will focus on students through the four core competence courses, experimental characteristic courses, potential courses, and adaptive education programs. Since learning processes value students as the main focus, they emphasize the spirit of autonomous learning, and use the four stages including "Experiencing, Reflecting, Generalizing, and Applying." Under the four-stage "experience learning circle" structure including Generalizing and Applying, students are guided to explore knowledge, face local life, and cultivate the ability of solving real situational problems through cross-fields, theme integration, and high-quality output curriculum design. At the same time, in the existing mixed-age teaching style, teachers guide students to overcome setbacks and challenges in the process, develop student images of "self-discipline, responsible, innovative exploration, and caring action", and create a school culture of “experience, community cooperation, and cyclical sustainability” aims to implement the experimental school vision of “grateful self-confidence, innovative arts and culture, healthy character, and international world outlook,” through organizational changes and innovations in curriculum teaching, once again flipped the stereotype of "mixed-age teaching" and became a ladder for the sustainable development of the school.
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