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The Seattle schools have a new’guest’ teacher.  Zhu Dan arrived in the Seattle colleges in January and will stay for an 18-month guest teacher program.  Dan, who teaches college-level English in her native Kunming, China, has the option to extend her stay for another year. 

Dan is one of 34 guest teachers in nineteen states that are taking part in a new collaboration between China’s institute Hanban and the college Board, a non-profit organization that administers the sophisticated Placement examinations and SAT testing ).  Plans are for a further one hundred guest teachers across the united states by this summer and 250 by 2009.  The partnership is part of China’s big effort to plug the Mandarin language and getting people in other states to learn it. 

This is the perfect program for many Pacific Coast states that do a lot of business with China.  Chief Sealth school principal John Boyd journeyed to China as an element of a Hanban program and was moved to supply a course in Mandarin to his Seattle colleges scholars.  He and Noah Zeichner, who heads up the high school world language program, wanted 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 three Seattle faculties - Denny Middle, Madison Middle, and Chief Sealth high schools.  While the institute Hanban pays her a stipend, the Seattle faculties provide housing, airfare and cover other charges.  Dan is residing with Sealth teacher Frank Cantwell and his family. 

Dan applied for the guest teacher program for three reasons - to improve her very own English skills, to help Americans understand more about China and its culture, and to help get the program started within the Seattle colleges.  She wants to leave her scholars with enough knowledge of the Mandarin language to survive a visit to her country. 

Before traveling to the united states and the Seattle colleges, Dan had to take a fourteen day crash course in Beijing.  It covered our culture and education system, our cash system, and how to write a check ( something rarely done in China ). 

plenty of her Seattle faculties students took her course, because it sounded interesting.  Others have friends or relations who speak Mandarin.  Within her first 2 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 track’My Darlin’ Clementine’.  In addition, Dan shares her Chinese culture with the scholars, making her classes even more interesting. 

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 college credit for the Seattle faculties scholars who pass.  For this year, Dan’s Mandarin class at Sealth high school meets after college.  It will be part of the standard, daytime curriculum in the fall.  Principal Boyd is encouraging elementary faculties inside his area of the Seattle colleges to apply together for a second guest teacher for the Mandarin language.

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Technorati Tags: China, Mandarin, Seattle Schools, Zhu Dan