More School Districts Look to Hire Teachers of Chinese

source: The New York Times

By KATE STONE LOMBARDI
Published: June 1, 2008

In the Region
Long Island, Westchester, Connecticut and New Jersey

THE second graders were playing patty-cake while chanting in a singsong: “I love reading. You love writing. I am going to help you. You are going to help me. You are my friend. We are very happy!”

If that sounds pretty simplistic for a group of 8-year-olds, bear this in mind — the class was speaking in Chinese. Every one of the 549 students who attend the Grimes Elementary School here began learning Mandarin this year, after the school received a three-year grant to begin the program.

The district’s Mandarin curriculum is one of the newest in Westchester public schools, but it won’t be for long. Horace Greeley High School, in Chappaqua, plans to introduce the language next school year. And the Scarsdale School District will embark on an ambitious Mandarin language program in the 2009-10 academic year, beginning in the sixth grade and continuing through high school.

Several districts already teach Mandarin, including Croton-Harmon and Briarcliff. Mamaroneck has the oldest Mandarin program in the county; the district has offered it since 1988. Other districts, including Hastings, Rye and Blind Brook, are exploring adding Chinese to the curriculum.

What is happening in Westchester reflects a national trend. The number of Chinese programs in prekindergarten through 12th grade in the United States has grown by almost 200 percent since 2004, according to the Asia Society, a nonprofit group that promotes education about the continent.

“This has just exploded all over the country,” said Rosemary G. Feal, executive director of the Modern Language Association.

The burgeoning interest in Mandarin reflects the recognition of China’s emergence as an economic and political power, administrators say. About 1.3 billion people worldwide speak all dialects of Chinese. The proliferation of programs has also been stimulated by the availability of federal grant money to encourage Chinese language instruction.

But starting a Chinese language program is not as easy as simply winning school board approval. First, there is a gap between interest in Mandarin instruction and the availability of certified instructors.

“With more and more programs springing up, there is a dearth of certified teachers right now, especially compared to the demand,” said Robin Harvey, coordinator of the Developing Chinese Language Teachers project at New York University.

To become accredited, it is not enough for teachers to be fluent in the language. They also need a total of 30 college credits in the language they will teach, Ms. Harvey said. Many natives of Taiwan and mainland China lack such credits.

At N.Y.U.’s education school, about 20 people will be certified this spring to teach Chinese. Pace University, in White Plains, also has a Chinese language certification program. Only two people are being certified this year, but Pace is working on a new program, which it plans to introduce in January, to fast-track native Chinese speakers for certification. Administrators are exploring ways to document language competency in ways that would count toward college credits.

Ms. Harvey, who worked as a consultant to the Scarsdale School District, said that districts contemplating new Mandarin programs also express concern about how much children will be able to master.

“Because we are so culturally distant from China, it seems that Chinese will be insurmountable to learn,” she said. “In fact, the first three or four months, when you’re looking at characters, they do seem totally alien, but all of the sudden, a switch will flip. It doesn’t take longer to learn to speak or listen than other languages, but it does take longer to read and write.”

In a recent 11th-grade Chinese language class at Mamaroneck High School, teenagers play-acted a dialogue of a doctor’s examination under the direction of their teacher, Rong Rong Le. Looking down at the rows of Chinese characters, Alexandra Rudansky, 17, and Kate Rainey, 17, took turns as doctor and patient as they conversed in Mandarin about temperatures, blood tests and X-rays.

BOTH girls have studied the language since the seventh grade and can now converse and understand native Chinese speakers. On a recent class trip to Chinatown, they bargained over prices of store goods and ordered meals in Chinese. Both tutor eighth graders in Mandarin and plan to continue Chinese study in college.

The Mamaroneck program has grown in popularity. Jordan Gratch, 17, began studying Chinese in seventh grade and is one of 28 people in his grade to study the language. His younger sister is in the eighth grade, which has 100 children taking Mandarin.

Croton-on-Hudson and Briarcliff offer Mandarin instruction as part of a continuing exchange with Chinese high schools. Last summer, 45 foreign students lived with families in Croton, and last month a group of seniors from Croton and Briarcliff traveled to Shanghai, Beijing and Xian, visiting schools and staying in homes and dormitories.

In the Region
Long Island, Westchester, Connecticut and New Jersey

“The community has really embraced this,” said Joel Adelberg, the principal at Croton High School and one of the leaders of the trip. “For a small town, we are doing some exciting work.”

In Chappaqua, a history teacher and a Chinese teacher will jointly teach the new high school course. It will include not only Mandarin instruction, but will also examine the historical and cultural foundations of modern Chinese society.

“We thought it might be better to start with this course that contains both contemporary culture and a language, because that might generate an interest,” said Lyn McKay, deputy superintendent of curriculum in Chappaqua.

In Scarsdale, parents pushed for Mandarin to be included in the curriculum, and the district formed a committee to study the issue last fall. After considering several languages, including Arabic, the group recommended Mandarin, citing China’s strategic importance, community interest and the sustainability as a program.

Michael V. McGill, the superintendent of Scarsdale schools, said: “To me, the broader goal really has to do with sensitizing students to cultures that are different than their own. Learning the language is important, but understanding how language and culture and politics and personal behavior all interact is also very important.”

Frances Lightsy, the principal at Grimes Elementary School, agrees. She said most of the children in her school, which is 98 percent African-American and African-Caribbean, had never seen a Chinese person, except perhaps in a restaurant. When Chun Li, a native of China, arrived to teach a special education class a few years ago, some of the children mocked her.

“We really needed to expand their horizons to accept someone different,” Ms. Lightsy said.

Ms. Li volunteered to teach an after-school program to expose the children to Chinese culture. Now, she teaches Mandarin full time at the school. As she entered Tanya Douglas’s second-grade classroom, the students called out “Good morning, teacher” in Mandarin. For 30 minutes, she kept the children engaged — writing Chinese characters on the board, having the children speak, gesture and dance.

“This is an exciting thing for me to do,” Ms. Li said. “We started from scratch. And now they are beginning to communicate.”

Posted by Kimberly at 6/13/2008 3:29 AM
Categories: uncategorized
 
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