Create Chinese Teacher Support Within Your Community
Dear Educators,
Hope all is well and hope you can take a breather from the end of the school year logistics. June officially kicks off our summer schedule. There are many exciting new products planned for the upcoming year, and we will be sharing with you as they become available. As you start thinking about your program in September, I want to share with you about a new find.
A key factor in implementing a successful and long-lived Mandarin program is to make sure there is continuous community support. There are various ways to do that that, such as 1) keeping the community informed of your program's progress through newsletters and meetings, 2) engaging the parents as part of the students' learning through online lessons and interactive homework. Another way is to engage and involve the non-Chinese teachers at your school. This will not only develop better linkages between the Chinese class and other regular curricular courses, such as English and Math, it will also extend the students' motivation beyond their Chinese classroom.
At the National Chinese Language Conference, I met with a non-profit organization called "The National Consortium For Teaching About Asia." They said they provide funding for ANY teachers who want to learn more about Asia. I thought what a great idea! It would be a great to build enthusiasm about your Mandarin program by getting the non-Chinese teachers excited through more culture exposure.
Check out their website: http://nctasia.org
Some non-Chinese teachers at some schools are elected to learn Chinese on their own, which is another great way for them to learn and interact with the Mandarin students.
I will be posting more resources as we come across them. Hope this post finds you well, and I look forward to hearing from you.
-James
0 comments