Making Smart Use of the Villa Cluster and Creating a New Battleground for the Younger Generation

As early as 2017, Lo-Tung Commercial Vocational High School (羅東高級商業職業學校; LTCVS) became a pilot school for the new curriculum. At the time, the school already had three years of experience promoting “food and farming education” (食農教育), and it was beginning to develop courses in “from farm to table education” (產地餐桌課程). The faculty members thought to themselves, “Besides agriculture, fishing, and animal husbandry, what else is there for us to do?”

In the end, they decided to use the unique characteristics of Yilan’s local industries as their launch pad. They designed a series of special courses centered around Yilan’s numerous villas and hostels, based on the guiding principle that the lessons should be useful and practical.

“There are many themed villas in Yilan. We hope the courses will benefit from our school’s proficiency in business management and design education, and produce bright young minds that are versed in the villa and tourism industry for Yilan,” says Chen Chuan (陳銓), Principal of LTCVS and the helmsman behind this program. He says some students dream of operating villas, but lack the capital to become an entrepreneur. If they can start with a diversified learning program, which teaches them about small local farmers and how to develop local tourism, they will have a better chance to finding a job or starting their own business.

The Advantages of a Comprehensive High School Turn the Ideal of Cross-disciplinary and Cross-category Education Into a Reality

In its effort to produce diversified talent for the tourism industry, LTCVS added thirteen diversified and optional courses in its sophomore year. The courses include multimedia app design, advertising and marketing planning, visual design, graphic design of online stickers, cross-border ecommerce, and introduction to the culinary arts. It also has diversified classes such as micro-entrepreneurship and learning about finance by watching films. It paves the way for students to start their own business in the future. 

In a school with only ten classes, to add thirteen optional courses available to the entire student body is undoubtedly a chance for pupils at LTCVS to experience the elective courses of a university way ahead of schedule.

Because of this, the Office of Academic Affairs.and the faculty have had their hands full arranging all the courses. Countless meetings were held on how to disperse the original general classes and vocational classes. All the students should become one big class; every student should be going to the elective classes that he or she selected, in order to benefit from a more diversified learning experience.  

All this hard work was for nothing else but to attain the goals of having students from the same discipline cross into different classes; students from the same group cross into different disciplines; students from the same school cross into different groups; and students selecting courses from different schools. “At the moment, we’ve not yet developed the option for students to select courses from different schools. But we hope the advantage of being a comprehensive high school with both general and vocational courses will allow students from the same school to cross into different groups, and give them more diversified opportunities to help them prepare skills for the future,” says Luo Rui-fen (羅瑞芬).

Diversified Elective Courses and Flexible Learning Fulfill the Goals of Both Higher Education and Career Advancement

In order to give the children a broader range of choices to select from in the future, the thirteen courses were designed to reflect the demands of practical hospitality work inside a villa or hostel. This fosters the diversified skills that are needed in the tourism industry. The goal of each course is to develop “all the abilities needed in a specific industry”. These optional classes that take place during the fifth and sixth period of every Thursday let the children fully explore the practical work in different fields of study.

"For students in the vocational group, higher education or career advancement are both viable options. Therefore, the spirit of the diversified optional classes during the sophomore year is to give students interested in higher education the chance to fully explore their interests, and to let students about to start their careers prepare for the battles to come,” says Luo. The key to satisfying both groups is in the flexible learning sessions during the senior year.

The flexible learning sessions during the senior year at LTCVS also offer thirteen different courses. Among which, Chinese, composition strategy, everyday English, everyday English reading, arithmetic games and codes, and arithmetic organization and deduction are courses that are tailored to students who want to advance to higher education. On the flip side, courses like the stories of economists, everyday accounting, digital technology trends, famous catering and hospitality experts, catering and hospitality careers, graphic design, and visual design appreciation are provided for students who are looking to begin their own careers.

“In our effort to close the gap with the professional world, we also offer courses such as ‘famous catering and hospitality experts’ and ‘catering and hospitality careers’ to invite professionals in the tourism industry to visit our school and share their experience. Plenty of enthusiastic alumni came to contribute their valuable insight,” says Luo. This arrangement helps students to better understand the realities of the industry; it also bridges the gap between new talent and the industry that needs them.

The diversified optional classes offer students plenty of chances to explore. The flexible learning sessions also offer advanced courses that connect theory with practice. LTCVS has the advantage of being a comprehensive high school that combines general courses with vocational courses. Not only do the diversified elective courses realize the ideal of a learning experience that allows students from the same school to cross into different groups, it also offers the children an early cross-disciplinary platform that prepares their competitive prowess for future challenges. 

Translated by Jack C.
Edited by Sharon Tseng
Content sponsored by Ministry of Education