Dan Feng High School taking part in the online signing ceremony with Teylingen college

New Taipei Municipal Dan Feng High School in Taiwan signed a sister school agreement with Teylingen College Leeuwenhorst in the Netherlands during an online ceremony on June 10. The two senior high schools were introduced to each other with the assistance of the Education Division of the Taipei Representative Office in the EU and Belgium, and Chen Yuwen, the Director of the Education Division and her colleagues, took part in the online signing of the agreement.

The world is still in the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the two schools have been able to break through the constraints of both space and time-zones to develop an international relationship through online collaboration and exchanges. Both sides hope to have the opportunity to visit each other’s country in the future for more substantial in-person exchanges, but for the time being they’ll work to create strong bonds online, through online reading, discussions on international issues, projects related to each school’s sustainability development goals curriculum, and other topics and modes of communication.

For the signing ceremony, mathematics and science lab students at Dan Feng High School made an English video vlog in a lively, vibrant Taiwanese style, introducing themselves, their school, the local scenery, and local foods to their counterparts in the Netherlands. The video demonstrated their creativity and enthusiasm about international exchanges.

Teylingen College has a beautiful campus situated near The Hague and the university city of Leiden. The school offers students who are good at languages a variety of language options, including Chinese. It emphasizes the cultivation of students’ international communication skills and vision, and the mathematics and science exploration program at Teylingen College is of world-class quality. For the signing ceremony with their new sister school in Taiwan, students there also prepared a video introduction, to give the Taiwanese students a first peek at the Netherlands and some of the different ways of teaching employed in their school.

The ceremony ended with an exchange of gifts as a start to a promising sister-schools relationship. The real power of international education and developing students’ vision of “global citizenship” will prove to be very important in the future, so both schools look forward to being able to exchange details of  their respective cultural heritage, customs, traditions, daily life, and school life in a practical way that will help their students become part of international society with positive attitudes.