The Seattle faculties have a new’guest’ teacher. Zhu Dan arrived in the Seattle faculties in Jan and will stay for an 18-month guest teacher program. Dan, who teaches college-level English in her local Kunming, China, has the choice to extend her stay for another year.
Dan is one of 34 guest teachers in 19 states that are collaborating in a new association between China’s institute Hanban and the varsity Board, a nonprofit organization that administers the advanced Placement exams and SAT testing ). Plans are for an extra 100 guest teachers across the US by this summer and 250 by 2009. The partnership is part of China’s large-scale effort to push the Mandarin language and getting people in other nations to learn it.
This is the ideal program for many Pacific Coast states that do a lot of business with China. Chief Sealth high school principal John Boyd went to China as a part of a Hanban program and was moved to provide a course in Mandarin to his Seattle colleges students. He and Noah Zeichner, who heads up the highschool world language program, needed to expand the world focus in his Seattle faculty. They have already got a student exchange program from Chongqing, China.
Zhu Dan teaches the Mandarin language in 3 Seattle schools – Denny Middle, Madison Middle, and Chief Sealth high schools. While the institute Hanban pays her a stipend, the Seattle schools provide housing, airfare and cover other fees. Dan is residing with Sealth teacher Frank Cantwell and his family.
Dan requested the guest teacher program for three reasons – to improve her own English abilities, to help US people understand more about China and its culture, and to help get the program started inside the Seattle faculties. She wants to leave her scholars with enough understanding of the Mandarin language to survive a trip to her country.
Before traveling to the U. S. and the Seattle colleges, Dan had to take a 14 day crash course in Beijing. It covered our culture and education system, our money system, and the way to write a check ( something barely done in China ).
many of her Seattle faculties scholars took her course, as it sounded engaging. Others have pals or relations who speak Mandarin. Inside her first two weeks of instruction, Dan’s Seattle faculties scholars could count to 10 in Mandarin, pronounce the Chinese names she gave them, work through the pronunciation drills and vocabulary exercises given them, and sing a song about the Chinese New Year to the tune’My Darlin’ Clementine’. In addition, Dan shares her Chinese culture with the students, making her classes even more engaging.
Besides the guest teacher program, many Seattle schools now are supplying instruction in Mandarin, as well as complicated Placement courses in Chinese and the AP testing that earns university credit for the Seattle faculties students who pass. For this year, Dan’s Mandarin class at Sealth high school meets after college. It is going to be part of the ordinary, daytime curriculum in the autumn. Principal Boyd is encouraging elementary colleges within his area of the Seattle colleges to apply together for a second guest teacher for the Mandarin language.
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Tags: china, Mandarin, Seattle Schools, Zhu Dan