Teaching × Research: Together We'll Make a Better World!

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Grit Lab – Taiwan (GLT) is a nonprofit whose mission is to develop and offer for free to teachers EFL/ESL curricula that foreground character so that students are empowered with virtuous character and with grit to do good for a better world.

The founder, Huei-Wen Charlotte Tsai (More about Charlotte), is currently an EFL/ESL teacher at Lan-Yang Girls' Senior High School, Yilan, Taiwan as well as a doctoral student in the department of Educational Psychology and Counseling, National Taiwan Normal University. She is passionate about curriculum studies, character education, and ESL/EFL language education, and educational technology. Regarding education as her calling, she started GLT and strives to make this world a better place through education.

GLT adopts the Teaching x Research model of cooperation with teachers and researchers. GLT offers in-service teachers free curricula and teaching materials that have been developed based on scientific evidence and teaching experiences. Then teachers give their feedback on their implementation in return.

This model successfully combines teaching and research and more importantly therefore creates a virtuous circle between teaching, research and certainly learning. In this mutually beneficial model, by only choosing and teaching a course that has been well developed, teachers may put more effort in their teaching profession; by receiving feedback from teachers, GLT may continually refine our courses and conduct further research. 

Simply put, the Teaching x Research model is similar to the concept of cohort and yet what's better, in this model, the precious teaching experiences from different teachers can be collected and put into best use, both for practice and science. In other words, teachers are relieved from the burden of starting from scratch their own curricula amidst all sorts of demanding requirements from schools, and researchers are relieved from collecting data that overloaded practitioners are reluctant to give. Yes, it is a win-win situation. And what's best is that it is a sure-win situation for our students!

If you are inspired in any way after reading this, you are more than welcome to join us. Mother Teresa said, "I can do things you cannot and you can do things I cannot; together we can do great things." Let's work together to make a flourishing society!

Follow us on Facebook: Grit Lab - Taiwan or www.gritlabtaiwan.com

To read more:

What Our Curricula Work Toward

[Back to GLT: Read in English]