News

The Newsletter for Summer 2020 describes the recent accomplishments and plans of the teachers that the Rural China Education Foundation supports in Yongji County, Shanxi province. We are also raising funds for the Spring semester, so please consider making a donation.

On November 13, 2016, the New York documentary festival DOC NY screened the premiere of Diedie Weng's documentary "The beekeeper and his son", a moving story about a family in one of the villages in Shanxi province where RCEF has worked for many years. Diedie Weng has over the years shot and produced many videos for RCEF, such as "Snail investigation". RCEF congratulates Diedie on the milestone of having her first full-length documentary screened in a movie theater. Watch the trailer here.

At the inauguration of New York University's new president, Andrew Hamilton, he recognized four individuals and groups with NYU's first-ever Making a Difference Awards. Diane Geng, RCEF's Executive Director and also Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs at NYU Shanghai, and Wei Ji Ma, RCEF's Chairman of the Board and also Associate Professor of Neural Science and Psychology at NYU New York, accepted a Making a Difference Award for their work for RCEF. Read more here. Photo credit: Xiao-Jing Wang.

RCEF's Executive Director Diane Geng and teachers attended the Rural Place-Based Education Conference in Mao County, Sichuan Province. Place-based education refers to education that incorporates in an integral way students' local communities and environments. RCEF's textbook "I love Lashi Hai" (2005), co-authored by RCEF co-founder Sara Lam and Tian Xia Xi NGO for an environmental education curriculum in Yunnan Province, was featured.

On April 23, Wei Ji Ma introduced RCEF in the "Innovative Classroom" panel of the Harvard China Education Symposium, organized by the Masters students in the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The symposium also had a separate panel on education in rural China. 

RCEF staff and teachers attended the 2015 China Biennial Conference for Educational NGOs in Chengdu. Program Director Cao Yang was invited to share RCEF's experiences on a panel about rural teacher professional development.

RCEF organized a 5-day conference for rural educators to share experiences, participate in teaching demonstrations of innovative curriculum and teaching methods, and hear from experts in child development and family education.

In July, RCEF organized a summer camp in Cha Ba Township, Sichuan Province. The camp served primary school students whom RCEF Rural Education Innovators work with on reading curriculum throughout the school year. For the summer camp, RCEF invited facilitators from Hua Dan to lead theater and drama class, and share their experiences with RCEF Rural Education Innovators.

Diane Geng shared RCEF's work in a talk at the Make a Difference (MAD) Forum in Hong Kong in 2014. The forum called for "attention to the elements of learners and their environments. Visionary educators from the US, Denmark, Mainland China and Hong Kong shared how they cultivate individual potentials and tap into context-specific knowledge." Watch her lecture.

RCEF was invited to present our work to the fellows of Teach for China, an organization that recruits college graduates to teach for two years in under-resourced Chinese schools. Teach for China wanted RCEF to share how we work with local village teachers and the kind of innovative teaching that comes out of these partnerships. We showed videos of some of the creative projects RCEF teachers have facillitated with elementary school children.

​RCEF has received a two-year grant from the Kwok Charitable Trust for a program focused on capacity-building for rural educators in China. Grant funds will be used to deliver capacity-building services to rural educators and rural education organizations that are carefully selected for their potential to advance the field of quality education service delivery for disadvantaged rural children and youth in China.

RCEF staff and teachers attended the 2013 China Biennial Conference for Educational NGOs in Xi'an.

RCEF Program Director Cao Yang and Xiaochao Primary School teachers Shang Haokan and Ren Xiaolei attended the August 2013 meeting of "Embrace the Mother Tongue" in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. The meeting focused on children's literature, themed reading, novel reading and other curriculum developed by this organization which seeks to promote reading education for children throughout China's cities and villages. RCEF Rural Education Innovators will use the curriculum from this meeting to teach Reading Classes in Shanxi and Sichuan elementary schools this semester.

RCEF's Executive Director Diane Geng presented on "Service Learning in Rural China" at the 4th Asia Pacific Regional Conference on Service Learning held in Guangzhou, China on June 7, 2013. 

RCEF's story is featured in a new book called "A Guide to Giving" written by volunteers of the global organization Givology.  RCEF's co-founders were interviewd about their experiences and practical advice about the process of starting an organization to work on improving educational quality. More information about the book is available here and below. 

The Rural China Education Foundation (RCEF) recently received a grant in the amount of $33,000 from the Tang Family. The grant will help in continuing the mission and development of RCEF by supporting Rural Education Fellows developing innovative curriculum and teaching methods in Shanxi Province.

Over the past several months, RCEF has been promoting service learning teaching methodology amongst teachers and NGOs that work with rural children. Part of these efforts was presenting on service learning in rural China at the National Chinese Rural Education Conference.