New Taipei City administration observes SHS for model school

Taiwan’s top education officials, led by Under Secretary for Education in New Taipei City Gong YaWen, visited the school and observed American education at work on Sept. 11. 

Saratoga High was one of the two schools the New Taipei City delegates visited. The entire delegation toured one school on the West Coast and one school on the East Coast to learn about Americans’ teacher training and curriculums. The delegates will take what they learned from America and try to incorporate it into their current and future school curriculums. 

They hope that they could send Taiwanese students to American high schools to actually experience school here and welcomed American high school students to the New Taipei City high school class exchanges.

“American [high schools] are student-centered, and students can decide what they want to learn,” Gong YaWen said in an interview by World Journal. “[Taiwan] is also moving in this direction, but because of the examination system, there are some restrictions; however, we’ve been going towards diverse education development in recent years.”

At 8 a.m. in the library, the delegates were greeted and the orchestras played a Taiwanese folk song called “Spring Breezes,” which was specially prepared for the occasion.

After that, the school administration and school board members Katherine Tseng and Cynthia Chang led the delegates on a campus tour. Key sites in the tour were the ceramics class, the MAP program and the band facilities, classes and rehearsals. The tour ended with a performance from the marching band.

The delegates also met with the ASB and two members of the leadership team during break and fifth period to talk about the school and Saratoga as a general community. The meeting was later featured on KTVU Channel 8 news.

“[The delegates] mainly asked the ASB about how we communicated with the student body and how we plan on using skills we gained from extracurriculars in the future,” said ASB vice president Anup Kar. “Personally, they asked me about band and how I utilized the skills I learned from it, and how I would use them in the future.” 

Gong YaWen and Los Gatos-Saratoga Joint Union School District superintendent Bob Mistele also signed a Memorandum of Understanding to further promote relations. 

School board member Chang said that she thought that both sides benefited from the overall exchange.

“We really learned a lot from each other,” Chang said. “A special thanks should go out to the music department for [playing a special Taiwanese song] at the welcome gathering and [performing on the field]. I hope this could really fuel our relations with schools in Taiwan.”