A Taste Of China – Seattle Schools New Guest Teacher Shares Language And Culture Of Her Native Home

The Seattle schools have a new “guest” teacher. Zhu Dan arrived in the Seattle schools in Jan and will stay for an 18-month guest clergyman program. Dan, who teaches college-level English in her native Kunming, China, has the option to magnify her stay for an one some-more year.

Dan is one of 34 guest teachers in nineteen states which are participating in a new partnership in between China’s hospital Hanban and the College Board, a nonprofit classification which administers the Advanced Placement exams and SAT testing). Plans are for an one some-more 100 guest teachers opposite the United States by this summer and 250 by 2009. The partnership is partial of China’s large-scale bid to foster the Mandarin denunciation and removing people in other countries to learn it.

This is the undiluted program for most Pacific Coast states which do a lot of business with China. Chief Sealth High School principal John Boyd trafficked to China as partial of a Hanban program and was desirous to suggest a course in Mandarin to his Seattle schools students. He and Noah Zeichner, who heads up the high school universe denunciation program, longed for to enhance the general concentration in his Seattle school. They already have a tyro sell program from Chongqing, China.

Zhu Dan teaches the Mandarin denunciation in 3 Seattle schools – Denny Middle, Madison Middle, and Chief Sealth High Schools. While the hospital Hanban pays her a stipend, the Seattle schools yield housing, airfare and cover other fees. Dan is residing with Sealth clergyman Frank Cantwell and his family.

Dan practical for the guest clergyman program for 3 reasons – to urge her own English skills, to assistance Americans assimilate some-more about China and the culture, and to assistance get the program proposed inside of the Seattle schools. She wants to leave her students with sufficient believe of the Mandarin denunciation to tarry a outing to her country.

Before roving to the United States and the Seattle schools, Dan had to take a two-week pile-up course in Beijing. It lonesome our enlightenment and preparation system, our money system, and how to write a check (something occasionally finished in China).

Many of her Seattle schools students took her course, since it sounded interesting. Others have friends or family members who speak Mandarin. Within her initial dual weeks of instruction, Dan’s Seattle schools students could equate to ten in Mandarin, clarify the Chinese names she gave them, work by the diction drills and wording exercises since them, and sing a strain about the Chinese New Year to the strain “My Darlin’ Clementine”. Additionally, Dan shares her Chinese enlightenment with the students, creation her classes even some-more interesting.

Besides the guest clergyman program, most Seattle schools now are charity direction in Mandarin, as well as Advanced Placement courses in Chinese and the AP contrast which earns college credit for the Seattle schools students who pass. For this year, Dan’s Mandarin category at Sealth High School meets after school. It will be partial of the normal, daytime curriculum in the fall. Principal Boyd is enlivening facile schools inside of his area of the Seattle schools to request together for a second guest clergyman for the Mandarin language.