Selected Courses

“Aesthetics should spread naturally like particles spread in the air.” The art classroom at National Hsinchu Senior High School was the best place on campus for teachers and students to indulge in art and design. Setting up the space, Mrs. Wu expected it could be a hub to stimulate the transport of art and design. Inspired by the idea, a group of students started their exploration on campus to search for any possible changes. They opened their eyes and located the problems, such as the unsuitable fabrics and cuts of their uniforms as well as the confusing signs in the store. Bringing their finding back to the art classroom, the students kept on thinking of solutions. They attempted to make some changes and spread the aesthetic particles to other parts of the school more than just in the classroom.

The art and design course of Jinhua Junior High School, Kang-Ching-Lung Streets Project, were developed by all the art teachers in the school. To take a closer look at where they live, the teachers and the students walked out of the classroom, planned the routes for exploration, and conducted field studies in the neighborhood around campus. By wandering on the streets, observing and recording various architectures built in different ages, they were impressed with the findings: there were so many different styles, forms and textures of buildings on the streets. Back in school, they moved forward to discuss the suitability of materials and tried to find a better replacement for the buildings. Slowing down the pace and paying more attention to the details on the way to school, the students were amazed at what had been overlooked by them before.

This art and design course of Yu-Shan Public Junior High School was developed from the school-based curriculum, climbing Mt. Jade, the students climbing the highest mountain in Taiwan on different levels of routes in different grades. Mr. Chang hoped to help the children cultivate aesthetic sensibility from their life experiences. Therefore, he encouraged the students to design a board game with the inspiration of their journeys in the mountains. With intense participation and great teamwork, the students took good advantage of the design principles and completed their creative and original works.

In Chu-Jen Junior High School, every class has set up its own reading corners in the classroom for years. However, not every class could design a satisfied reading corner that met all expectations of the students. Because they only had a little budget, and most of the three-tiered shelves on the market were standardized, their options were limited. Mrs. Hsu, therefore, came up with an idea. Introducing the concepts of proportion and positive/negative space to the class, she asked the students to use them to design shelves both for functional and decorative purposes. The outcome of the kids was out of Mrs. Hsu’s expectations. Their design drafts showed their creativity and diversity. At last, the students and the teacher even brought one of the drafts into reality and finally made their own bookshelves.

There wasn’t any barred window in the house where Mrs. Tsai used to live. When she moved to Hualien, Mrs. Tsai still couldn’t find an ideal window for her own house. She wondered why most of the windows on the market are with similar materials and styles. Why did the traditional wood lattice windows, which are with beautiful patterns and fascinating structures, disappear? Therefore, she embarked on a journey of finding the ideal window with the students. At first, Mrs. Tsai worried it would be too complicated for them to apply the design principles to their design of the structure. To her surprise, after a semester of art and design courses, the students had developed the competence to observe and practice. They already could use cardboard to create a well-structured prototype with the principles. It made her believe that cultivating aesthetic sensibility through practices in life was profound. The children were endowed with infinite potential, and life is the best field to trigger their creative power.

After the art and design course last semester, Mrs. Chen expected to take the students to sense more beauty in life. She thus came up with a new lesson, The Picnic Lesson in Everyday Life, which brought food and life to the class. The students prepared food by themselves, and during the process, they applied the concepts of art and design to their work. Mrs. Chen invited a Home Economics teacher to interdisciplinary cooperated with her. They translated the compositional design rules: dots, lines and planes into knife skills: dicing, julienning and slicing. With different thinking of making food, the students created amazing dishes which they even couldn’t believe were made by their own hands. The most important part of the lesson was encouraging the students to walk out of the classroom to physically experience things in life with all senses.

An elder from the tribe was invited to give a lecture in Mr. Liu’s class. When he talked about the young and old generations in the tribe, he was sad to tell that there had been a cultural gap between the two. Mr. Liu thus decided to revive the tribal tradition of making tree bark clothes, helping the students to understand their own culture. The lesson led the kids to learn the knowledge of trees and understand why people needed to make tree bark clothes in the old times. They practically experienced how to soften tree bark, and used the local materials and techniques to make items that can fit contemporary needs. To pass on the aboriginal culture, the lesson revealed the lifestyle of the tribes and presented the wisdom of ancestors taking good advantage of natural materials from daily life. And it also encouraged the kids to keep discovering new possibilities within traditional craftsmanship.

From her experience of purchasing flowers, Mrs. Wang found that most of the shops didn’t provide packages that would match the colors of the bouquets. And the packages used to be too colorful to dignify the grace of flowers. After discussing the suitability of colors with the class in the art and design course for one semester, Mrs. Wang assigned a task to the class: using the materials at hand to make a package that can properly hold and fit the flowers. What would be the priority for the students: the colors which can fit flowers better or their own color preferences?

In the Plantae, there are colors that cannot be seen by the human naked eye. To dig more into the essence of colors, Mrs. Chang led the students to walk out of the classroom to take a closer look at plants. They brought the beautiful specimens they collected back to the lab for interdisciplinary experiments and color analysis. After the interesting exploration, they were surprised that the plants they see on campus every day consist of more colors than they had imagined. By extracting colors from the plants and observing the stratification phenomenon, the students learned the variety and complexity of how nature generates colors. To Mrs. Chan, one of the purposes of the art and design course is to break conventions, and the class indeed helped the students to realize that leaves and flowers are not merely in red and green. Through these scientific experiments, the kids’ competence in rational observation was built up. Moreover, the course also triggered them to hold a bolder attitude toward exploring more possibilities.

Mrs. Lin had lectured at Hsiyu Junior High School for over a year. At first, the student showed less confidence in the art class because there hadn’t been a regular art teacher in the school, and they hadn’t received much art training before. But to her surprise, Mrs. Lin discovered the children, living on the Penghu island and endowed with great knowledge of oceans, were keen to distinguish the colors in their everyday scenery. By identifying the colors, mixing colors of paints, and relating the color to their personal memories, the students depicted the flexible sceneries and the poetic moments of this island. In the color charts they drew, the intimate bond between them and their hometown was also vividly shown. For the children who were about to leave the island, the lesson was a precious gift from Mrs. Lin, who was born in Penghu as well. She wished when they are apart, by reminiscing about the colors, they can remember their beautiful hometown.

Due to the scarcity of educational resources in the remote and rural regions of Taiwan, Mrs. Lu simultaneously lectures in three schools in Yuli, Hualien. She found most of the children were from tribes, and their families living from farming lived in symbiosis with the land. Therefore, their lifestyle was strongly connected to solar terms and seasonal food. When teaching colors to the students, Mrs. Lu managed to bring food into the class to provide a different perspective on colors. By rearrange the colors on the dinning table, the lesson attempted to help the students to discover new significances of local food. During the process of exploring colors in season, the kids gradually realized how food colored their life and even showed their true colors.