The Alliance Cultural Foundation (ACF) believes that education should and can be different. Learn-Think-Express is an immersive and active teaching method; it triggers the process of digesting knowledge and returns the learning initiative back to the student. The traditional unilateral, force-feeding style of teaching limits the student’s joy, speed, and ability to learn. When all that is taught is meant for testing purposes only, students lose their motivation for learning quickly. Students can read three times faster than teachers can speak. By changing the classroom focus to learning, thinking, and expressing good grades come naturally. Learn-Think-Express was first initiated in 2013 by Taipei Municipal Zhongshan Girls High School (ZGHS) teacher Hui-Cheng Zhang; Zhang was the first in Taiwan to introduce the ‘always open classrooms’. Learn-Think-Express is a path to ever-learning for both the teachers and the students, and has been adopted in classrooms across Asia. In December 2016, with the administrative support of ACF, Zhang will lead the first annual 2016 Learn-Think-Express Asia Conference in Taipei, inviting educators and speakers worldwide.
Within two and a half years since its founding, Zhang attracted over 5000 teachers from all over the world to sit in on his class. He founded the Learn-Think-Express sharing platform with Cheng Zhi Educational Foundation’s (誠致教育基金會) funding; breaking inter-school barriers and sharing his handouts along the way. He created the Learn-Think-Express Facebook group, engaged over thirty-thousand teachers, parents, students, and scholars in professional discussions; so far, across Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Singapore, and Malaysia, over 59 teachers have ‘opened’ their classrooms. In September 2015, he founded the Learn-Think-Express teaching class at ZGHS, gathering Mandarin, math, physics, biology, and English teachers, focusing their energy with help from like-minded students and parents to maximize teaching results.
In March, together with Baosang Junior High School teacher Hui-Ru Yang, two Learn-Think-Express workshops were organized in Taitung, each event attracting over 120 teachers who are looking for methods to improve their classrooms. After the workshops, three Learn-Think-Express school delivery events followed. With these events, Learn-Think-Express teachers enter schools of Hualien and Taitung, and brings closer the training and exchange of experiences between schools of the two counties of Taiwan’s east coast.
For the teachers entering Learn-Think-Express, they’ll be devoting the bulk of their effort in creating handouts, research; as well as designing questionnaire, providing proper guidance for the class. The method returns the lectern to the students, exert educational professionalism. Teachers are able to observe the diversity among students, employ differentiated teaching methods, generate high-efficiency learning, let all kinds of children a chance to show-off and feel encouraged. After entering Learn-Think-Express, children will be full of independent thought. In a warm, accepting, encouraging, and supportive atmosphere, entire classrooms will flow towards the rational speculation and dialogue of the new age. When teachers see generations of students impacted by thought, a fresh sense of accomplishment would emerge, and the passion for teaching boosts along with it.
Learn-Think-Express is a realistic teaching method, when the teacher utilizes the teaching time efficiently, the student’s self-learning mechanisms will be activated and the need for afterschool tutorials decreases. Although every teacher wants their students to learn more effectively, the key difference to whether they take action is whether the teacher is willing to accept the possibility of a better way from their own.
In the past, Learn-Think-Express lecturers are mostly invited by schools and organizations. Now, the team takes the lead in communicating with principals, councilor groups and school boards in every county of the country hosting workshops, actively trying to upturn education, so that the task of leading all teachers in education reform can be done most effectively.
Learn-Think-Express workshops have spanned across Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. Within a decade, 625 classrooms, 16,000 teachers have used the Learn-Think-Express method (1/10 of all teachers in Taiwan). This summer, Zhang will be hosting training sessions in Singapore and Hong Kong, hoping that, through Learn-Think-Express, Taiwan will become the leader in Asian educational reform. At the year’s end, teachers who’ve only started with Learn-Think-Express in the past two years will be granted a stage to share their experience at the first annual 2016 Learn-Think-Express Asia Conference, dated December 10-11. Under the guidance of the Learn-Think-Express team members, discuss the common obstacles they’ve met teaching, under the expectation of creating a more efficient teaching mechanism, and pen a brand new page of education reform for Asia.
Learn-Think-Express workshops have spanned across Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. Within a decade, 625 classrooms, 16,000 teachers have used the Learn-Think-Express method (1/10 of all teachers in Taiwan). This summer, Zhang will be hosting training sessions in Singapore and Hong Kong, hoping that, through Learn-Think-Express, Taiwan will become the leader in Asian educational reform. At the year’s end, teachers who’ve only started with Learn-Think-Express in the past two years will be granted a stage to share their experience at the first annual 2016 Learn-Think-Express Asia Conference, dated December 10-11. Under the guidance of the Learn-Think-Express team members, discuss the common obstacles they’ve met teaching, under the expectation of creating a more efficient teaching mechanism, and pen a brand new page of education reform for Asia.
Testimonies
Hui-Yun Lu, a teacher at the National Taitung Senior Commercial Vocational School, uses the Learn-Think-Express method. In three short months, positive results were observed. One of her student’s essays not only scored the highest in the Grade 12 mock exam, it was also bought by the publisher to become a future essay sample.
After seeing Teacher Hui-Cheng Zhang’s video online, Guan-Ming Yan, a teacher of Taitung’s KangLe Elementary School, improvised his own Learn-Think-Express handouts. Paired with Junyi Academy’s online lectures, he sparked the complex thinking and expressive abilities amongst his students. Afterwards, this secret garden bloomed with the irrigation of Mandarin, math, and specified subject classes.
Sheng-Ji Luo, a chemistry teacher at the National Taitung Senior High School, expressed in his published article – The Complete Innovation after My Fourteen Years of Teaching, that once he started teaching with Learn-Think-Express, he realized teaching can be relaxing, that students gladly participated in learning, practical skills training, and peers were able to compete whilst cooperate with one another. Through the method, he witnessed helpless glances turn into confident sparks.
