When a worldwide audience of hundreds of millions of people tunes in tomorrow night to watch the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, half a world away there will be a lot of very interested observers at the Montclair Board of Education.
School officials hope the two-week international sports extravaganza, staged for the first time in the world’s most populous country, will pique public interest in China’s culture and language and at the same time serve as a great opening act for a special event of their own.
After a year of discussion, planning and budgetary number-crunching, Montclair public schools are poised to launch their long-awaited China Initiative.
Under a new pilot program first proposed by Schools Superintendent Frank Alvarez last autumn, Montclair middle school students will begin studying Mandarin when the 2008-2009 school year gets underway after the Labor Day holiday.
"It’s a very exciting time for us," Felice Harrison, the District’s new director of school/community relations said of the initiative. Harrison urged parents of students at Nishuane and Glenfield middle schools to keep an eye out for details on the new Mandarin language program that will be included in information packages their children will bring home during the first few days of school.
Montclair will join a growing number of elementary, middle or high school across the nation which have begun offering Mandarin language studies. Only a few years ago, there were just a handful of public schools teaching Mandarin.
As business ties between Chinese and American companies continue to grow exponentially, so has interest in this nation of all things Chinese. Today more than 500 school districts offer Mandarin and the number is expected to double within a few years. In fact, many experts predict that it won’t be long before Mandarin will outpace Spanish, German and French as the foreign language study choices in US schools.
For Alvarez, the Montclair public schools’ China Initiative is the culmination of a commitment he made publicly last autumn in his annual State of the Schools address.
The annual update of Montclair’s magnet school system came just a few weeks after Alvarez returned home from a summer trip to China. Alvarez was among dozens of American educators who were invited to visit China, meet with Chinese educators and witness China’s schools in action.
What Alvarez saw was eye-opening for him and many of his American colleagues. Chinese educators were placing greater emphasis on teaching their students English and preparing them with other skills they will need in business.
Soon after he returned home, Alvarez announced plans to have the district do more to prepare students for the global marketplace of the future. With China emerging as America’s second-largest trading partner after Canada, the China Initiative will impel Montclair schools to teach students more about the culture and language of a nation that is expected to play an even larger part in America’s future.
Felice Harrison said the district has already hired a Mandarin language teacher who will conduct the classes at Nishuane and Glenfield schools.
"We anticipate that we will be able to offer Mandarin to as many as 100 students in five classes at Nishuane and another 20 or more students at Glenfield," said Harrison.
Just last month, Harrison returned from her own trip to China. She was part of a 400-member delegation of U.S. educators who spent time visiting important historic and cultural sites in Beijing before journeying to other provinces where they met fellow teachers and toured local schools.
Harrison learned very quickly that nearly everyone in China is trying to learn English or one of the languages of China’s other major trading partners. She even encountered traditional Chinese families that were speaking "Chinglish," a kind of Chinese/English hybrid dialect.
"More than 200 million Chinese students are studying English," Harrison said. "Everywhere you go, you’d see students being prepared for the global marketplace."
"I remember Dr. Alvarez telling us how he ‘got it’ after he come from China," she recalled. "After visiting a few schools in Shandong Province I understood exactly what he meant. In fact, I picked up the Blackberry I had with me and sent him a message saying ‘I got it.’"
Parents interested in having their middle school students participating in the Montclair’s Mandarin language classes will have an opportunity to make their selection after classes begin in September.
Harrison urged Nishuane parents to carefully review the school catalogue. Mandarin will be listed along with Spanish and French as the three electives in the language category.
For Glenfield students, the Mandarin-language information will be included in the school handbook.
The district’s China Initiative isn’t focused only on students. Harrison said school officials are also exploring ways in which they can make parents more familiar with China, its culture and language. Officials intend to hold a series of workshops or other events staged at schools and in conjunction with the library or other community organizations.
Harrison described her trip to China as "exciting and enlightening." She hopes the district’s China Initiative will prompt the same response from Montclair’s students and parents.
