Sociopolitical

Principal leads rebirth of Taiwu Elementary School

Saidai, principal of Taiwu Elementary School in Pingtung County, recalls how her school had to relocate three different times due to Typhoon Morakot. (Staff photos/Chen Mei-ling)

• Publication Date：04/01/2012
• Source： Taiwan Today
• By  Grace Kuo

Aug. 1, 2009 was Saidai’s first day at work as principal of Taiwu Elementary School, where the majority of students are indigenous Paiwan from Pingtung County’s Jiaxing and Taiwu villages. Walking leisurely along a path to school, she bid hello to the villagers she met as in her mind she pictured children learning and playing amid the clouds and mist of Taiwu Village, over 750 meters up on Dawu Mountain.

It never occurred to her that just one week later, the school would be destroyed by Typhoon Morakot, the worst storm to strike Taiwan in half a century.

Finding new grounds for the school in Taiwu Township was not easy. Before it found a permanent home, it relocated three times in the next two years—to a deserted branch of Wutang Elementary School in Jiaping Village, then to an abandoned division of Taiwu Elementary School in Jiaxing Village, and again to Taiwu Junior High School back in Jiaping Village.

Faculty members pitched in to help tackle the challenges of refurbishing each campus—cleaning, sterilizing, painting, making sure there was running water and electricity, as well as taking care of boarding and transportation problems.

“At one point the school’s seven classes, with more than 80 students, had to squeeze into four classrooms,” Saidai said. “With no space for the teachers to work, a tent became the teachers’ lounge.”

Although Taiwu Junior High School extended a warm welcome, “our days there were even tougher as sixth graders had their lessons in the cafeteria, fifth graders in the library and fourth graders in the music classroom,” she said.

“Students were distracted all the time by the smell of food, wondering what was for lunch, or by the crowded bookshelves they were crammed in among.”

Parents also protested about the moves, not wanting their children to have to travel to another village for school, Saidai said. At one point there were three consecutive days when only 20 students showed up for class, she added.

After three moves and five failed searches for a site on which to rebuild the school, teachers felt the children should no longer have to endure such conditions and suggested that parents transfer them to other schools.

Right at that juncture, however—June 2010—with the help of the Morakot Post-Disaster Reconstruction Council, Saidai finally found vacant land in the community of Ulaljuc, newly built for residents of typhoon-damaged Taiwu Village.

With the assistance of Taoyuan-based BenQ Foundation, a new campus, incorporating elements of Paiwan culture, broke ground in December 2010 and was inaugurated in September 2011. Currently, there are 94 students from kindergarten through the sixth grade.

This mosaic on a school building recounts the origin of the Paiwan.

Visitors to the school grounds are met by a mosaic mural depicting a yellow sun at the top, a black-and-white striped snake in the middle, and a brown clay pot at the bottom with two curled up snakes like eggs inside it.

“The mosaic tells the story of how the Paiwan originated,” Saidai said. “The sun laid two eggs in a clay pot, which symbolizes a woman’s uterus, and asked a hundred-pacer snake to look after it. Then a day came when sun rays struck the pot, and a man and a woman, the ancestors of the Paiwan, were born.”

The design of the entire campus is based on this tale. Red and green triangle patterns representing the hundred-pacer adorn the outside walls, while a round central plaza, half encircled by the buildings, stands for the clay pot. “These images show that this is a place for education, rebirth and ethnic hope,” Saidai stressed.

Under Saidai’s leadership, Taiwu Elementary School has recovered rapidly, to the point where the county has designated it a featured school. Ethnic and international education, aiming to strengthen students’ understanding of the Paiwan culture while broadening their horizons and enhancing their competitiveness in the wider world, are two of the principal’s most notable programs.

According to Saidai, in addition to the regular woodcarving, embroidery, weaving and ballad-singing classes, ethnic courses are offered once a week during the school year and for two weeks during summer vacation, when they are optional because some parents work far from Taiwu, and long vacations are the only time their children can be with them.

“In these classes, tribal elders and certified Paiwan language teachers show children how to grow vegetables, for instance, or make aboriginal food and tell traditional stories,” she said. As of January, 88 teaching plans had been accumulated, from which the school’s teachers are compiling a textbook on Paiwan culture.

Taiwu students enjoy reading during recess.

The international program involves environmental issues, etiquette, and customs and lifestyles around the world, Saidai noted. Additionally, to create a foreign environment for the students and encourage them to speak English, foreign volunteers interested in experiencing the local culture and being around children are invited to stay at the school.

“They are not here specifically to teach English, but rather to live with us and familiarize the children with the language and culture through everyday conversation and activities,” she said. Although they are not paid, they receive free lodging.

“At the moment, we have three volunteers, from Austria, the Czech Republic and the U.K. These foreigners have brought us more opportunities for international exchange by introducing artists and musicians, and acting as go-betweens for groups like the Vienna Boys’ Choir, which our students met in 2010 and 2011 in Kaohsiung when the choir performed in Taiwan.”

A one-semester student exchange program will also be implemented next year, the principal pointed out, involving schools in other parts of Taiwan, as well as in other countries. “As our students seldom have a chance to study abroad or elsewhere, this program is very important because incoming students can bring in their experience. This allows our children to learn from them, while outgoing students can learn how to become independent,” Saidai stressed.

“Interacting with children from other cultures will help our students better understand different people, things and events in life, and is a key experience for the development of future leaders.” With this and other programs, Saidai carries on the work of helping Taiwu’s students become competitive in the wider world, as their school is reborn on its new culturally grounded site. (THN)

Write to Grace Kuo at morningk@mail.gio.gov.tw