In Dagu Township, Puge County, Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, students practice songs outdoors. Xinhua News Agency
At Wushan Primary School in Fuzhou, Fujian Province, students participate in an after-school seal engraving interest class. Xinhua News Agency
At Zhonghua Road No. 3 Primary School in Shanghai's Huangpu District, teachers prepare for the start of school. Xinhua News Agency
【Investigative Journalism and Focus on Student Double Burden Reduction 5】
A message popped up in Liu Xicong's mobile phone.
"A lot of extracurricular training in the city has been cancelled, and I want to send my children back to school." But in this way, will he lose badly? ”
In the face of parents' doubts, Liu Xicong replied with four words: "Although rest assured." ”
Liu Xicong is a rural school teacher. The Pingkou Town Primary School in Anhua County, Yiyang City, Hunan Province, where he works, is one of the largest rural primary schools in the reservoir area of Hunan Province, with more than 2,000 children attending here.
Although in recent years, parents have occasionally proposed this idea to Liu Xicong, but recently similar consultations have obviously increased. With the announcement of the "double reduction" opinions, the extracurricular training classes of disciplines have stepped on the "brakes", and schools, as the main position of learning, have become more and more important support for parents and children.
In the face of the concerns of all parties, how should schools cope with the challenges brought about by the "double reduction"? Where does the "despite the confidence" come from?
After 3:30 p.m., the village campus can also be wonderful
On the day the "double reduction" opinion was introduced, it was screened in Liu Xicong's circle of friends. He breathed a sigh of relief, "Reducing the burden on students has indeed reached the point where it has to be reduced."
One of his relatives, the couple worked as cleaners and taxi drivers in the city, and the cost of tuition for their two children exceeded 3,000 yuan a month, and the couple was miserable.
This is not an isolated case. As a special teacher, Liu Xicong has taught in Yiyang, Hunan and Weining, Guizhou. He observed that over the years, many parents who work outside the home have chosen to take their children out of the countryside and go to school in the city. And the dazzling extracurricular training classes there make these parents who are not highly educated suffer from the dual pressure of spirit and economy: on the top, the cost is high and they do not know what to choose; not on, they are afraid that the gap with other people's babies is getting wider and wider.
"It's just that it works, and a lot of times, the results of tuition are often counterproductive." Liu Xicong said.
This sentence speaks to the voice of many education practitioners. Liu Xiya, principal of Xiejiawan Primary School in Jiulongpo District, Chongqing, has always believed that "children are too aggrieved."
"School teachers have their own rhythm of teaching in the classroom, while extracurricular training is a completely different set. Training institutions often only cater to the needs of further education, engaging in knowledge indoctrination, sea tactics, and advanced learning, which is a quick success. When children need to face two rhythms and two sets of standards at the same time, and learn the original rules and rhythms, how can they not be disrupted? How can the ecology of education not be infringed upon? She said.
In Liu Xiya's view, the focus of education returns to the school, "from another point of view, it is the return to the law of education, but also let the school and teachers breathe a sigh of relief."
After-school services have been carried out at Xiejiawan Primary School for several years. Children choose their own school time based on their parents' time. Liu Xiya said: "Each child's acceptance of new knowledge is different, and the time period after the afternoon class is just according to their own situation, and the teacher strengthens and consolidates it in a targeted manner. Of course, more children will fully enjoy their childhood in various interest groups on campus. ”
After 3:30, the campus life is just as exciting in the countryside.
"With the continuous increase of state support and the continuous progress and development of rural schools, over the years, I have become more and more confident to tell parents that without extracurricular tuition, schools will be able to teach children well, and even more effectively." Liu Xicong said.
The complete primary school in Pingkou Town has formed a relatively complete after-school service. There are two types of services, one is in-class tutoring, and the other is interest courses. Among them, the interest course class is more popular with children. In addition to common courses such as calligraphy and football, the more "niche" gourd silk classes and guzheng classes also appear in optional courses.
With the strengthening of after-school services, Liu Xicong will face different faces every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday to tutor students in mathematics and composition. "The working hours are getting longer, but you ask if the pressure will get bigger, and I think it's really not much." He said, "The time spent with children is the happiest and most relaxed." ”
In order to reduce the burden on the children, the teachers have to work harder
Zhang Yixiang, a physics teacher at the Affiliated Experimental Middle School of Beijing Normal University, almost always trotted to the canteen to buy lunch every day. Before they could finish pulling, the students came to the office with a variety of strange questions.
But he enjoyed the process. Because in this process, he can feel the students' love for physics, and inspiration and creativity are constantly bursting out in the exchanges between teachers and students.
The "double reduction" opinion points out that it is necessary to strengthen the role of school education as the main front, vigorously improve the quality of education and teaching, and ensure that students learn well in school. This means that time in school, especially the golden forty-five minutes in class, is crucial.
In order to reduce the burden on the children, the teachers really have to work hard. How to grasp the time in the school, improve the quality of classroom teaching, and let students easily and completely grasp the various knowledge points, this is the most common thing that Zhang Yixiang thinks about.
In an experimental class, after repeated comparisons, a classmate excitedly said: "Teacher Zhang, it turns out that friction and speed really have nothing to do with it!" This made Zhang Yixiang realize that in the past, teachers were often in the "God perspective" of omniscience and omnipotence when designing and asking questions. Only by understanding the problem from the perspective of children's age and cognitive stage, through bold assumptions, verification, practice, analysis, and summary, can students keep the knowledge points in the textbook in mind.
Now, in his classroom, students can't see the "full classroom" PPT, nor can they hear too absolute judgments. Everything is in accordance with the requirements of the syllabus and flexible "platooning" according to the actual situation of students. "My curriculum focuses on the process of inquiry, guiding children to discover problems on their own through phenomena, and then independently choosing experimental equipment and designing schemes, and infiltrating research methods into practice." Zhang Yixiang said, "Let students have a complete process of independent thinking, which is more effective than others telling him about knowledge points." ”
This process is not only the learning process of students, but also the reflection process of teachers.
Liu Xiya also believes that reducing the burden on students means that teachers need to spend more time preparing lessons and continuously improving the quality of classrooms and homework. This requires the teacher to maintain long-term observation of students, carefully select each question, each case, each text, only take the time to grind, in order to harvest accuracy and effectiveness. Now, the teachers of Xiejiawan Primary School are seizing the time to prepare lessons, discuss and communicate in the office every day, study the lecture notes of the lesson plan, and prepare for the new semester.
"A lesson only talks about one knowledge point, but it must be explained thoroughly." This is the "creed" of Huang Hong, Chinese teacher and class teacher of Xi'an High-tech No. 3 Primary School in Shaanxi Province. "For example, in this class, I'm going to talk about 'action description.'" Nearly 20 years of front-line teaching experience, coupled with the dual identity of mother and teacher, makes her pay more attention to the importance of companionship and common progress in addition to student achievements.
According to Huang Hong, after the burden reduction, the child's homework has been reduced a lot, and even the composition can basically be completed in school, "which is actually very high for the quality of after-school homework." To this end, she has developed a reading plan for the children, carefully selected and reads a book with the students every week, writing together, and exchanging reading feelings. Bit by bit, all of them were recorded by her in her public account.
"I'm helping them grow, and they're helping me grow." In an article on the public account, Huang Hong wrote.
The burden reduction continues to deepen, and higher requirements are put forward for schools
"After the 'double subtraction', how to further enrich the campus faculty is the concern of many principals." This is the conclusion reached by Professor Qi Zhanyong of the School of Education of Shaanxi Normal University. From April to June 2021, as a member of the "Hundred Schools Tour" western basic education service docking activity of Shaanxi Normal University, he conducted research on the basic education situation in western provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities in China.
Liu Xiya introduced that even in a local famous school such as Xiejiawan Primary School, the teacher-student ratio reaches 1:14, and the school will cooperate with some social forces such as football clubs and bands outside the school to enrich the campus life of students.
This is especially true in remote areas. Wang Guoguang, principal of ShuichangXiang Central School in Shidian County, Baoshan County, Yunnan Province, said that his education group has both a primary school of more than 680 people and a primary school with only more than 30 people. The latter, according to the standard 1:19 teacher-student ratio, the number of teachers is only single digits, and it is often necessary to integrate the teaching staff of neighboring kindergartens to force the children's school life to no longer be monotonous.
The principals represented by Wang Guoguang hope that through policy guidance and treatment improvement, more "fresh blood" will flow to the countryside, and teachers there will have a greater sense of gain and belonging.
"In some places, the structural shortage of teachers is more serious. To enrich campus life, more teachers depend on becoming 'all-round teachers'. Qi Zhanyong said frankly, "In addition, with the deepening of the burden reduction, higher requirements have actually been put forward for the educational direction, curriculum setting, teacher ratio, and safeguard measures of the entire school." ”
When education returns to growth itself, when the pace of education that was once impacted by extracurricular training returns to the normal rhythm, how should primary and secondary schools better assume responsibility? Principals and teachers began a new round of thinking -
"Continue to move towards small class sizes." Liu Xiya believes that class teaching from "big and complete" to "small and fine", in order to better achieve close interaction and exchange between teachers and students, truly to achieve each student-oriented, so that the classroom is full of vitality.
"Enhance children's awareness of vocational education." Wang Guoguang said that in the past, this was almost a blind spot. However, in the future, facing the "blue ocean" of building a skilled society, it is necessary to let children know and understand vocational technology in the compulsory education stage, and encourage them to develop a different and wonderful life.
"Reduce the non-teaching burden on frontline teachers." Liu Xicong said that teachers should not be tied up by various irrelevant matters such as filling out forms and evaluating, but should spend more energy on enriching and improving their skills and qualities, and improving the ability and level of teaching and educating people.
In the face of piles of big things and small things, the school needs to make unremitting efforts, teachers pay more, but also call for deeper reform, more comprehensive support. "'Double Minus' is a good start. Only when the entire supporting measures are kept up, including the more scientific and perfect system of further education, can we really be sure to let children enjoy a complete and happy childhood. I believe that this is also the direction of national policy guidance and the joint efforts of all sectors of society. Qi Zhanyong said.
Source: Guangming Daily