Walking by her own rules: Doris Chen (Chun-Shih Chen)

Li-Ying Chiu (Iris)
The love we give away is the only love we keep.
-- Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
1. Our Principal
(1) Mr. Yao-Huo Chen
In 1964, the preparation office of Nan-Jung Junior High School was officially set up. The registration was approved in the following year. The authorized name of the school was “Private Nan-Jung Junior High School, Ping-Tung County” and Mr. Chen Yao-Huo was the first principal. Compulsory education was extended from six to nine years according to Minister of Education (Ministry of Education, 1968); more importantly, our school has become a surrogate high school since then. Under the teachers’ and Yao-Huo Chen’s unlimited efforts, our school was changed into “Ping-Tung County Private Nan-Jung High School” in 1983.

(2) Chun-Shih Chen (Doris Chen)
1. Current principal
Ms. Chen Chun-shih was elected to be a principal and was in charge of school’s business since 1991. With her insistence and powerful guidance, the school has been well-developed in different aspects as a humanity-based style education. This way, it has won approval and trust of parents and community members. We have 1553 students, thirty-three classes, in our school nowadays.

2. Doris’s (Chun-Shih) Profile
(1) PhD. in Chinese Literature, Fu Ren University

(2) M.A. in Chinese Literature, Tung Hai University

(3) B.A. in Chinese Literature, Fu Ren University


3. Pushing the boundary beyond Kanding Township
Over past thirty years, the school has gone through many developments, changes and has made much progress. Ms. Chen spent over a decade working on this school planning and reorganising school projects. Though faced with different obstacles such as a surrogate high school, she felt discouraged about hearing criticisms on it.
However, she received support from co-workers and other associates that encouraged her greatly and was confident that it would stand any tests around the surrounding counties.
Moreover, having attracted a great deal of attention, Ms. Chen holds on to the foundation and adds her unique ideology about education. She now leads a dedicated team of hard working teachers offering assistance to many students in need around the Kanding Township.
Aside from the help of providing study helps to those students in need, both teachers and her gave emotional and musical support with brilliant performances in dance classes, brass band, stringed orchestra, choir and physical education classes. We had established a number of phenomenal successes over the past few years.

4. Yet, it has another trait
As a performing duty manager, Ms. Chen is hardworking, optimistic, and above all conscientious. Not only has she boost the students’ great achievement, but also works diligently to raise and upgrade teaching values and teachers’ standards and equipment.
In her views, development means change and growth. She highlights three important areas in professional development.
First, teachers must continually upgrade their knowledge and understanding of language and language learning. Teachers develop their skills by adapting this newly acquired knowledge into their teaching.

Second, teachers’ professional interests and needs change over time. Teachers seek out different professional development activities while progressing in their careers.

Third, professional development requires personal and ongoing commitment.

In addition, she believes that a good relationship among staff, teachers and students is built on harmony. Only by being the observer and observed participating in unselfish discussions at school can they and their students and institutions benefit.

5. Our prospects
(1) Short-term goals
Two main goals at school encourage students to ponder a progressive character and hope to accomplish his or her goals for the future. One is learning skills in study; the other is achieving abilities to be a good citizen.
In other words, a student’s behaviour is always genteel, glamorous and temperate. Additionally, our school proudly offers leading clear-sighted and sharp-eyed students of the future, where teamwork, competitive spirit and unity will be the pure perfection. The following aspects reflect our main concerns:

A. Students will help make it easy to study independently.
B. Students are educated to be aggressive enough to succeed in their studies.
C. Students are responsible for their behaviours.
D. Students have a competent knowledge to compete with others.

(2) Long-term goal
By gradual development, we hope to push through a new law and then transfer our school’s system into a high-level senior high school in Kanding Township under the permission of the Ministers of Education.

(Reflection on My Participation in ICT Project ) ENTERS 2008 in NAN-JUNG

Walking on the thin ice? is the right phrase to describe my pace and feeling right now. It is the sixth year since I came to Nan-jung. During these years, I have been through several position transfers. At the present moment, if I still want to tell others that I am just as green as ever and my ability is quite limited, then I am really going against my enthusiasm when I first devoted myself into education. Looking back on the day when I came to Nan-jung, I only had one simple thought. If I only teach the students well, I would gain respect from the society. However, as I spend time with the students everyday, my self-respect being a teach has been going down gradually. It is because some kids constantly challenge and push the limit of discipline the last resort of education. On top of that, occasionally, I could feel the general publics view for teachers as labors who provide knowledge. Such cynical mentality has pushed me to reflect. Facing rapidly changing trends of the society, I have to change my ways of teaching and my mentality if I want to become a teacher who truly fits in the trend of time. I have to empower myself with abilities other than my own profession, such as information, networking, technology and so on. Building up other expertise other than my own subject and raising up my own personal and professional image; reinforcing my international view within and teaching in a more international point of view. Helping kids adjust to the pulsation of the future world. Through all these, respect can be earned once again from the general public and the students. I could jump out of the traditional mode of depending on the whip to temperately frighten the kids from overstepping their boundaries.

I am not someone with the background of information expertise and my perception of computer and internet may be the same as those of non-information-professional teachers, yet I was willing to be given the mission of joining the ICT project and saw it as the chance of a life. Indeed, it makes my teaching career colorful, so I am glad to share with the readers my thoughts at this stage. The future holds lots of difficulties and challenges, perhaps, but I am still happy to conquer them along side with my work partners at school.