This week's teacher training special, guided by Associate Professor Huang Rui-song of National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, featured Jiali Junior High School's "Exploring the Hometown" program. The program cleverly intertwined topics such as temple paper-cutting, bilingual guided tours, AI music, and SEL (Self-Learning and Emotional Intelligence) learning, creating a learning curriculum deeply rooted in local culture. This is not only an innovative curriculum demonstration but also a response to the core focus of teacher training: guiding students to learn to express themselves and understand themselves through interdisciplinary integration, and transforming aesthetic literacy into a key ability to connect with their own lives, allowing beauty to flourish on campus.

When the art of temple paper-cutting and painting meets bilingual guided tours, and when the lines and colors of flowers collide with AI music, the Jiali Junior High School's 2015 interdisciplinary aesthetic project, "Flowers Bloom in a Beautiful Place, Cross-Arts Resonate with Flowers," makes local culture the most vivid creative textbook for children.

Walking on one's homeland is the true starting point for aesthetic education. Teachers from Jiali Junior High School led their students to the Jiali Jintang Temple, where the exquisite paper-cutting and bas-relief carvings on the roof ridges, and the majestic golden lions and costumes in the art gallery, became invaluable aesthetic teaching materials. The children transformed into bilingual tour guides, fluently introducing the traditional craftsmanship of "paper-cutting and pasting" in English. They not only practiced expressing floral structures and emotional adjectives in English, but also built a deep sense of cultural confidence while explaining their hometown's culture. More than rigorous grammar checks, these children needed our focused gaze and warm encouragement.

This aesthetic journey is also a cross-disciplinary creative adventure! We connect four major curriculum tracks: English, Visual Arts/Technology, Integrated Activities, and Music/Technology, guiding children from "seeing" to "feeling" and then to "creating":
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Visual Arts: Drawing inspiration from temple paper-cutting, sketches of flowers are drawn, and through the transformation of "figurative → simplified → abstract", unique floral art is created using the colorful leather paper-cutting technique. There are round and rich peony designs, slender and elegant lotus designs, and free designs that are free and unrestrained. Each flower contains the child's ingenuity.
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Music technology: Using "birthday" as a coordinate of life time, keywords created by flowers are linked to emotions, and AI is used to generate music that belongs to "me at this moment". From lyrics to melody arrangement, music becomes a sound writing of life experience.
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SEL Social Emotional Learning: Through "birthday flowers" and their meanings, we learn about our own characteristics and use "hot abstraction for release and cold abstraction for organization" to regulate our emotions. In the creative process, we face anxiety, build a positive self-concept, and make each piece a tangible expression of our emotions.
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Technology Application: Combining biotechnology party lights to create aesthetically pleasing flower boxes, using AI tools for cross-sensory creation, and perfectly blending traditional craftsmanship with modern technology.

Seeing the children name their works "Dance of Spring," "The Red Sun in My Heart," and "Whispers of the Stars," using flowers to express feelings of "hope," "courage," and "gentleness," and even wanting to give their works to important people, wishing them to pursue their dreams and become more and more confident, is truly inspiring. From understanding temple culture to learning the art of paper-cutting and pasting, and then to creating with technology and expressing themselves through music, the children have not only learned interdisciplinary knowledge and skills, but have also become little artists who can transform local characteristics into cross-disciplinary aesthetic creations.

Culture is felt, emotions are tangible, and beauty knows no bounds. Many thanks to the teachers and students of Jiali Junior High School for their full support, which made this interdisciplinary journey of local aesthetics a resounding success. Let's applaud the children's creativity and growth, and look forward to seeing more young lives blossom with their own unique beauty in the cultural soil of their hometown.