Beijing, 15 Mar (Xinhua) -- After working in schools for more than 30 years, his dream was to bring out a national football championship team, but he later found it more meaningful and valuable to provide high-quality mass physical education for everyone. Therefore, from 2015 to today, he has introduced 20 off-campus sports institutions into the No. 1 Primary School of Jinwan District, Zhuhai.
The tall, sonorous Li Xiangyun is a doer. Back in 2006, he completed a "country football trial". As the principal of Yulin Primary School in Jinwan District, Zhuhai at that time and the only physical education teacher in the school, he led a football team in this remote and backward school with only 6 classes of more than 200 students and won the national runner-up of the "Danone Cup" junior football competition.
However, Li Xiangyun soon realized that what was more difficult and challenging than leading a few people to achieve a "feat" with heroic implications, was to realize the educational value of sports by fully involving more children.
In March 2015, Li Xiangyun came to Zhuhai Jinwan District No. 1 Primary School as the principal, seeing that the school's beautiful badminton hall did not have many students playing ball, and the children who wanted to play did not have suitable teachers, he had a bold idea.
"There is a general shortage of sports resources in public schools, and I find that the biggest obstacle is teachers. I researched national policies and found that the State General Administration of Sports encourages schools to use their own venues and bring in qualified professional institutions to campus. At that time, many schools around us did not dare to open their venues to the public due to safety issues. I successfully persuaded my superiors to take badminton as a pilot and take the form of a replacement service to hand over our gymnasium to an off-campus club to operate. The club gives free classes to our students and leads the varsity team for free, and the school hands over the time after 6 pm to the club to operate and generate income. ”
This initiative solved the difficulty of the school not having a professional badminton coach and only a venue, and quickly led to the development of the project. Today, Jinwan District No. 1 Primary School has 12 resident badminton coaches, and more than 200 children receive badminton training for free for a long time.
Li Xiangyun soon implemented a similar method to other sports, and off-campus institutions in martial arts, Go, basketball, football, archery, swimming, roller skating and other sports also entered the campus. Li Xiangyun adopts the method of policy according to the project, and the replacement of resources as much as possible, the school can not spend money as much as possible, and the safety training and fee supervision are all completed by purchasing third-party services. The school subsidizes limited funds to projects like lion dances that have low market value but reflect Chinese sports traditions.
With the increase in the number of off-campus institutions on campus, students have more choices, physical education for all, comprehensive and high-quality, encouraging personality development has become possible, and structural reform of the physical education curriculum is imperative. Li Xiangyun connected the school's physical education curriculum system with the school's after-school services of off-campus institutions and schools, and solved the difficult problems of teachers, management, space, and cost of curriculum reform.
"When the numbers go up, it turns out to be much more difficult than when they were piloted." Li Xiangyun said, "We have integrated some of the courses of off-campus institutions into the inherent physical education curriculum, such as first-grade martial arts classes, second-grade soccer lessons, third-grade swimming lessons and badminton classes, all of which are professional off-campus institution coaches to teach classes, which is a public welfare course." There is also a 45-minute sunny morning exercise every morning, and students on the varsity team can train for free, while students on the non-varsity team do other exercises. Each student can also arrange a charity enrichment class in the afternoon. The after-school service at 4:30 p.m. is a semi-public class, which can be chosen by the child and attended at a price of no more than 80% of the outside market price to meet individual needs. ”
In order to allow children to have more choices, Li Xiangyun has also developed volunteer resources for parents and college students, and parents have set up parent course teams based on grade to contribute a public welfare class to campus every week. When the Lower School holds a soccer game, the coaching team of each class is made up of parents volunteering. University student volunteers supplement the PE teachers and work with the PE teachers to give PE lessons to the students.
According to Li Xiangyun, if an off-campus institution wants to enter the No. 1 Primary School in Jinwan District, it must first undertake a part of the public welfare class, which can be in the form of physical education class, or leading the school team, taking public welfare class, etc., and then can participate in the after-school purchase service course at 4:30 p.m.
After the number of off-campus institutions gradually increased, Li Xiangyun strengthened the monitoring and control of service quality.
"To the number of these off-campus institutions, at the beginning we did addition, now we start to do subtraction." He said, "For example, in martial arts, we have introduced four teams, football and basketball, and different teams compete healthily, and the effect is very good. Before the start of each semester, the school will work with the parent committee to evaluate the service of these external institutions, and we will ask them to quit if they do not do well. Before, a football coach let him go because of foul language on campus, and the institution directly let him go, after all, the school is a place for educating people. ”
Li Xiangyun said frankly that the school is open to external institutions, and management is a huge problem. In order to better coordinate and manage these off-campus institutions, he implemented a collaborative management system led by the school. The school has a total of 12 physical education teachers, in addition to more than 50 teachers from various external institutions, all of them are included in the overall management system of the school, the school hired physical education teachers will manage and guide the teachers of the external institutions according to the project group, and the personnel of the external institutions must undergo unified training by the school before teaching the children.
Driven by Li Xiangyun's development concept of stimulating interest in class and in-depth expansion outside the classroom, coupled with the implementation of the "double reduction" policy, the children's demand for sports in the No. 1 Primary School in Jinwan District has been fully released, which has further amplified the problem of insufficient school venues and facilities. In order to meet the needs of the children, the school extended the opening hours of the playground to 8:30 p.m., improving the utilization of the school's sports facilities, which in turn brought new problems such as safety risks and garbage disposal, which Li Xiangyun and his colleagues need to solve one by one by establishing a new system.
Although the process of practicing the concept of "sports people" is hard and the work is complicated, Li Xiangyun has also seen the results. The school's badminton program has developed from not even winning the district championship to often winning the Zhuhai City Championship; In the past two years, the football competition has basically won all the district championships, and more than 1,000 students participate in the training of the varsity teams in various projects every day. What makes him most gratifying is that the excellent rate of students' physical health monitoring has also increased from 35% to 76%, and the obesity rate and myopia rate have also decreased significantly. In order to make teachers pay more attention to physical education, Li Xiangyun also improved the evaluation system, linking the excellent rate of students' physical health with the evaluation of physical education teachers and class teachers. Li Xiangyun said that sports is education, and what he needs to do is to use his actions to make the surrounding children, parents, teachers and officials of the education management department truly recognize this.
Li Xiangyun was selected in the third "Tsai Chongxin Cultivation of Principals with Body" in January this year, and a total of 10 primary and secondary school principals were selected for this award, which was specially set up to encourage sportsmanship principals.
Recalling his efforts over the years, Li Xiangyun sighed: "I used to be a physical education teacher, and when I taught football, I was more tendonous, I didn't want to be the principal, I just wanted to lead the team. But in the process of leading the team, I found it too difficult, if there is no development platform, it is difficult to help more children on my own. After becoming the principal, I deeply realized that in order to truly achieve high-quality development of school sports, it is necessary to build a good platform environment through the school's own efforts, including teachers and socialization in operation. "I just thought about it and did it, and when I found something bad, I corrected it, facts speak louder than words, and over the years, it gradually took shape, and now parents and education authorities have seen the results and are more and more recognized." ”
Photo: Courtesy of Jinwan District No. 1 Primary School, Zhuhai