Trip made the grade, say US educators

A delegation of 40 educators, policy-makers and politicians from Ohio and Maryland visited China on a 10-day trip organized by the Confucian Language Institute and sponsored in part by Chinese Language Council International.

The trip was designed to give the delegates a "feel for Chinese culture".

For most delegates, it was their first time in China.

"I've been bombarded with concepts of what communist China is all about, but now that I'm here most of them aren't necessarily true," says Jay Teston, principal of Paint Branch Elementary School in College Park, Maryland.

Teston used the trip to explore the possibility of finding a sister school in China, with hopes of doing classroom-to-classroom video conferencing for 6th graders.

Teston says he has been pushing his teachers to incorporate information about different cultures into their lessons. Chinese culture was a popular topic this past year.

"It is not just an economic resource, but a human resource as well," Teston says of the country and its people. "They are becoming a majority of the shapers and thinkers."

He says he prefers to dwell not on the differences between US and Chinese cultures, but on what they have in common.

The first leg of the group's journey began in Tianjin, where they met teachers and visited classrooms at Nankai University's elementary school.

"I was surprised to find their 6th grade classes had a very similar curriculum," says Melissa Moore, a 6th grade math teacher at Paint Branch.

Stops on their journey also included Xi'an, where the group viewed the terracotta warriors.

"I am just fascinated, by the development and growth, as well as their preservation of history," says Cheryl L.H. Atkinson, superintendent of Lorain City Schools in Lorain, Ohio.

Todd Balazovic

(China Daily 07/20/2009 page8)