Confucius Classroom(CC)

Confucius Classrooms are local hubs based in local schools in greater San Diego which stimulate and support the innovative teaching and learning of Chinese language and culture. These classrooms are supported by the Confucius Institute at SDSU and Hanban to promote all of the following:

• teaching Chinese in elementary, middle, and high school

• facilitating the education of teachers to teach Chinese

• implementing Chinese language and culture courses for the local community

• supporting Chinese cultural activities, events and competitions

Hanban has provided a package of resources and teaching materials to each Confucius Classroom for children and young people across a wide age range to help with teaching Chinese language and culture.

When Confucius Institute at SDSU first established in 2009, there were a total of 7 Confucius Classrooms in the Greater San Diego area. In 2011, there are a total 23 CC in 16 schools in the entire Unified School District. Confucius Institute at SDSU continues to work together with Hanban to create more Confucius Classrooms in the greater San Diego area.

San Diego State University Imperial Valley Campus

Wo De Yi Tian - Aruna's Homework assignment

Back to Top

CI at SDSU Hosted Imperial Valley Campus

In the evening of February 7, 2013, more than 50 Chinese and American guests were invited to a celebration of the Chinese new year, year of the snake at the art gallery of Imperial Valley Campus of San Diego State University. The lobby was adorned with Chinese New Year decorations; a festive mood was evident in the air. President David Pearson of SDSU/IVC and Assistant Director for Partnership Programs, Mrs. Miriam Castanon, were the special guests of the evening’s show.

Hanban Chinese teacher, Professor Jing Lin, led the crowd singing, “Happy New Year” in Chinese. Professor Xi Min Deng showed people the auspicious greetings for the New Year in Chinese. A trivia game soon followed; the competition was really intense as many people fought to answer the questions. They each received a traditional Chinese New Year gift - a red envelope as prizes. The audience reveled in Prof. Lin’s solo performance, “Waves of Gu Lang Yu”. Games such as “passing around” and “fast moving chopsticks”, attracted more participants, resounding in laughter and joy in the lobby. Faculty and students from Calexico Martial Arts School performed Kung Fu at the courtyard outside of the art gallery. Prof. Deng and martial art master, Dali Li, teamed up for a 24 step Taiji demonstration. The superb performance, along with the rhythm from the gongs and drums, provided a new perspective of Chinese arts to all American friends.

The highlight of the party was ‘Potluck’. The assortments included Italian Pizza, Japanese Sushi, Chinese dumplings, American cakes and sweets, salads and fruits. Every dish was a representation of a different cuisine culture; all the guests enjoyed each dish in high spirits. President David Pearson and Mrs. Miriam Castañón delivered New Year greetings to all.

Before the end of the party, people exchanged Greeting cards with each other. Despite their reluctance, everyone went home with blessings from new and old friends. The American guests expressed their gratitude for the hospitality from their Chinese hosts, and their appreciation of the new knowledge they learned from this experience of Chinese culture. It was truly an unforgettable event that strengthened the friendship among Chinese and American people.

Back to Top

CI at SDSU-IVC Chinese Summer Camp

On June 11, 2012, Confucius Institute at SDSU opened its’ Summer Camp at SDSU Imperial Valley Campus. A total of 14 Middle School students participated in this year’s 2-week Chinese Summer Camp. Participating students had no prior Chinese language knowledge and were taught by a native Chinese teacher, Jing Lin. During the two week program, students not only learned the Chinese language, but also studied Chinese culture. They learned how to greet each other, introduce themselves and their family, asked the time, date and talked about numbers. They also did oral practices based on what they learned in class. Cultural activities included learning Chinese songs and dances, calligraphy and making lanterns and shuttlecocks. The students enjoyed these activities especially playing with the shuttlecock. IVC International Programs Coordinator, Miriam Castanon and her assistant attended the Chinese Summer Camp closing ceremony on June 21, 2012. Student’s parents were also invited to watch their children’s final Chinese presentations.

Back to Top

2011 IVC Chinese Summer Camp Closing Ceremony

CI faculty member and the conductor of the Summer Camp program, Professor Wendy Huang, showcased how each student had progressed in less than two week’s learning time. As the students took the stage, Wendy Huang outlined the morning program performed by the students which included calligraphy, paper cutting, jianzi, and of course demonstration of their language skill. The students would write their Chinese names and performed their own monologue; Professor Huang proceeded to ask each student questions in Chinese. To the crowd’s astonishment that after only 16 hours of language lesson in 10 days, each student was comprehensive of her questions to answer back in Chinese. The students also sang Chinese songs in harmony with the erhu, a Chinese instrument played by Huang. For their accomplishments, each student was individually recognized by a certificate of achievement for completing the CI Chinese Summer Camp program. At the end of the ceremony, parents were so elated by their children’s accomplishment that they expressed great interest in learning Chinese themselves. The students were eager to participate in this program again next year and new parents were enthused to sign up their children as well.

Click here to see more photos of the ‘Chinese Summer Camp Closing Ceremony’

Back to Top

SDSU IVC "Journey to China" Scholarship Gala

On March 18, 2011, SDSU IVC hosted the "Journey to China" Scholarship Gala to promote Chinese culture, and raise funds for students who wish to attend the Study Abroad Program in Shanghai, China this summer. More than 350 local socialites and distinguished guests from San Diego attended this event, including SDSU Provost, Nancy Marlin, and Dean of SDSU/IVC, David Pearson.

Organized by CI/SDSU, the evening's entertainment programs had a plethora of cultural themes. One of the highlights for the evening was a fashion show featuring staff members, volunteers from the CI office, and students from IVC. These models showcased the many outfits with beautiful styles that were embellished in genuine ethnic accents and fully embroidered in traditional Chinese pattern. Managing Director of CI/SDSU, Dr. Lilly Cheng, was the emcee for the entire program. Her detailed description of every piece of garment provided an informative insight into the Chinese culture for the audience. Dr. Cheng invited well-known artists from San Diego to participate in the evening entertainments. Lily Ma, a famous Chinese Peking Opera singer, sang a short excerpt from the "Romance from the Western Chamber." Professor Minghuan Ren performed an erhu solo. And Ken Xiao impressed the crowd with his Chinese calligraphy demonstration. Ken Xiao also sang a duet with Fei Lu, one of the Chinese media representatives from San Diego. A few members from the nearby, touring Sichuan Theater of Opera from Chengdu brought a few fantastic programs to support the gala. The guests could not contain their excitement as they were bombarded with wave after wave of amazement from the evening’s program.

In addition to their normal daily activities, CI staff spent up to 2 months in preparation for organizing this gala. Their hard work surely was recognized and reaffirmed by the standing ovation from the audience. Dean of IVC, Dr. David Pearson praised the great effort and dedication the CI team has invested in promoting Chinese culture and the inter-exchange between the mainstream and Sino communities. At the end of the grand finale, Dr. Pearson presented Dr. Lilly Cheng with a certificate of appreciation.

FLICKR SLIDESHOW http://www.flickr.com/photos/cisdsu/sets/72157626201942377/show/

To watch a video please click the link to IV Press’ Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyGGylyJPn0

Back to Top

China Exploratorium Draws Attention in Calexico

Traveling to China is one of the best ways to learn Mandarin and experience the culture first hand. However, it is not the common choice for most people. The Confucius Institute at SDSU-IVC is able to provide a taste of the rich culture of China to students, faculty and community members.

A system consists of 48" touch screen monitor, a webcam, and a printer with "China Experience Center" software developed by Hanban is now available for the SDSU-Imperial Valley Campus. Both CI and IVC leadership introduced this cutting edge technology to its community. A press conference was held to present the Chinese Exploratorium to the public and local media on December 1st like Channel 11 and IV Press attended the conference.

Mike Sabath, Associate Campus Dean at IVC, John Renison, Development Director, and Miriam Castanon, International Programs Coordinator together announced the launch of the "Chinese Exploratorium Center" on IVC. With the IVC faculty representatives, Dr. Lilly Cheng, CI Director, addressed to the media the importance of multilingualism in the community and introduced the mandarin program at IVC sponsored by CI and its faculty Professor Wendy Huang.

After the press conference, Michael Sedurifa, the CI coordinator, gave an interactive demo of how this Exploratorium can enhance the learning experience. The system provides an interactive experience of many areas of Chinese culture, such as kungfu, paper cutting, the Chinese zodiac, geography, food, etc. Program such as Beijing Opera allows users to match their faces with different Beijing Opera customs and get a picture printout. People show their strong interest and all agree that this Exploratorium will enhance the learning experience for students in Mandarin classes.

Back to Top

Opening of the office of the Confucius Institute at SDSU-Imperial Valley Campus

On March 5, 2010, the Confucius Institute debuted at the San Diego State University-Imperial Valley campus with Chinese dragon dances and the visit of Chinese dignitaries. The permanent Confucius Institute at SDSU-IV features Chinese artwork, videos, historical photos, Mandarin language materials and books. It is located in the SDSU-IV library and is open to the public. The inauguration ceremony took place on the steps of the SDSU-IV library. Consul Chen from the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles, Dr. Roeder, SDSU-IV Campus Dean, Dr. Paul Wong, Dean of Arts and Letters, Dr. Lilly Cheng, CI Director and other dignitaries cut the inaugural ribbon and unveiled a Confucius Institute plaque. Members of the Calexico Martial Arts Academy played Chinese drums and performed dragon dance. Afterward, guests toured the Confucius Institute's dedicated section in the library and enjoyed Chinese refreshment. SDSU-IV Dean Stephen Roeder said the new office of Confucius Institute will promote Chinese culture, which is present in the Imperial Valley and Mexicali. Learning about Chinese language and culture is vital to promoting local business cooperation with China.

Back to Top

Barnard Mandarin Chinese Magnet Elementary School

CI at SDSU Supported Barnard's Wine and Watch Event

On March 22, 2013, Barnard Mandarin Chinese Magnet Elementary School held its very first ‘Wine and Watch’ Event, hosted by Pacific Arts Movement founder, Lee Ann Kim, to promote the “Every Family Gives” Campaign. Led by Dr. Lilly Cheng, Managing Director of Confucius Institute at San Diego State University, many members of the CI staff attended this function. Over 50 parents and supporters of Barnard Elementary School students were present, including Scott Barnett, Vice President of the Board at San Diego Unified School District. The film shown was a 60-minute documentary called “Speaking in Tongues.”

“Speaking in Tongues” followed four racially diverse children on their bilingual journey. The time period occurred during which 31 states had passed “English Only” laws. Four pioneering families went against tradition by registering their children in the foreign language immersion programs in public schools. From Day 1 in Kindergarten, their teachers spoke mostly in a foreign language. The audience watched as each child’s world gradually transformed as they learned to be proficient both bi-culturally and bilingually.

After the film, Dr. Lilly Cheng hosted a discussion session regarding the needs for schools to further develop multi-lingual education plans, as is depicted in the film. “Speaking in Tongues” demonstrated the importance of bilingual education, and was well received by the attendees.

Back to Top

Salute to Education - SD4

"Language is a building block to all education. But, at Barnard Elementary School in Point Loma, that block is coming from half a world away. From Kindergarten, students are taught in both Mandarin and English. Students are not just learning another language; they’re also learning a new culture and gaining a competitive advantage for their future. March 6, 2013." - SD4

Back to Top

CI at SDSU Attended Chinese New Year Celebrations at Barnard Elementary

On Wednesday, February 20, and Saturday, February 23, 2013, respectively, Barnard Mandarin Chinese Magnet Elementary School hosted its annual Chinese New Year celebration. Hundreds of parents and community supporters were present to join in on the festive celebrations.

Managing Director of Confucius Institute at San Diego State University, Dr. Lilly Cheng, presented boxes of Chinese culture supplies, bequeathed from Hanban for each Confucius Classroom schools, to Principal Edward Park at the opening ceremony. She expressed her Chinese New Year wishes to each one for a prosperous 2013, Year of the Snake.

The programs on Wednesday, February 20, were provided by all the students at Barnard Elementary with a special Lion Dance performance by Three Treasures Cultural Arts Society. Led by their teacher, students from each grade level came on stage for a variety of Chinese culture shows which included; Chinese musical skit, Chinese folklore stories of “Nian”, the 12 Chinese zodiac animals, and an assortment of physical activities with Chinese culture flair.

On Saturday, February 23, the celebration focused on community outreach. Not only was the show and the campus open for the community to enjoy, but many community groups locally from other Asian heritages came to join in on the celebration. There were Filipino Folkdance Group, Korean Drum group from Korean School, PiPa Quartet, and a “Silk Road of China Culture Show’ produced by CI at SDSU. Amateur models from CI staff and volunteers presented numerous gorgeous, exquisite Chinese outfits showcasing the evolution of fabrics through Chinese history. The audience was in awe by the elaborate collection of Chinese garments. Dr. Cheng’s explicit narration offered insightful knowledge and information, allowing the audience a deeper understanding of various aspects of Chinese culture.

In addition, CI staff and volunteer also set up a booth, among other vendors, demonstrating Chinese calligraphy for another introduction of Chinese culture to all.

Back to Top

CI at SDSU Attended San Diego Chinese New Year Food Fair

On February 16 – 17, 2013, the San Diego Chinese Center (SDCC) hosted its 31st annual San Diego Chinese New Year Food and Cultural Fair on the corner of 3rd Street and J Street in the Gaslamp District near downtown San Diego. More than 30,000 tourists, visitors and locals flocked to enjoy the festivities. Taking full advantage of the Fair for publicity, the Confucius Institute at San Diego State University as well as the Confucius Classroom at Barnard Mandarin Chinese Magnet Elementary School, and Riverview Elementary and International Academy respectively, posted display booths and provided Chinese themed singing and dancing programs.

Dr. Lilly Cheng, Managing Director of the Confucius Institute at SDSU, was actively involved in the planning of the Fair; she acted as the emcee, hosting the shows on stage on both days. Co-Director, Professor Wei Lu, and numerous Confucius Institute staff members and volunteers set up display stations for the event. In addition to addressing inquiries of Chinese teachings and local Chinese teacher training programs, the staff tirelessly introduced the mission, goal and progress of the Confucius Institute and associated the Confucius Classroom schools; showcasing and giving away the text materials of the Chinese language and culture. In addition, the staff also demonstrated Chinese calligraphy by writing down a thoughtfully drafted Chinese name for each visitor; did face paintings for children with Chinese zodiac characters and other popular patterns; and share knowledge of Chinese folklores with these children.

Students from Barnard Mandarin Chinese Magnet Elementary School and Riverview Elementary International Academy performed Chinese songs and dances on stage. The Tibetan dance performed by Riverview students won outstanding praises from the crowd for its unique ethnic emphasis.

More than thousands of visitors stopped by the Confucius Institute booth during the 2 day event. Many, who were fully aware of the Confucius Institute’s recent achievements, praised the worker’s dedication and expressed their interest in learning more of the updated information about the Confucius Institute.

Back to Top

CI at SDSU Participated in the Ribbon-Cutting Opening Ceremony at the Art of East Asia Exhibition

On February 8th, 2013, the San Diego Museum of Art held a welcoming, ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate the opening of the permanent exhibition, Art of East Asia. The newly renovated and remodeled exhibition galleries were ceremoniously opened to the public on February 9th, 2013, coinciding with the Chinese New Year of 2013. Around 500 museum members and guests gathered and celebrated the event. Managing Director of CI at SDSU and Chairman of the Board of the San Diego Chinese Historical Museum, Dr. Lilly Cheng; Project Manager of CI at SDSU, Anne Chu; and Principal Edward Park of Barnard Mandarin Chinese Magnet Elementary School, along with other distinguished guests from the local Chinese community invited by the Confucius Institute at San Diego State University took part in the festivities.

The collection of East Asian art at the San Diego Museum of Art has more than 800 pieces, with 280 pieces on permanent display. Several experts in East Asian art from the Cleveland Museum of Art acted as consultants in the renovation planning. These specialists gave a detailed presentation of the history of the renovation project, which lasted six years. The goal of the revamped project was to display the exotic artwork in the best possible way, with interpretations and descriptions for gallery viewers. The new layout also contained animated videos featuring East Asian arts and crafts, as well as the art’s cross-regional influence from ancient times to modern days. Furthermore, the educational interactive software program that assists in introducing calligraphy exercises, sculpting and other activities, received great praise from the public.

The new art galleries for Arts of East Asia is divided into five sections, in addition to various pieces from China, there are sections containing pieces from Japan and Korea. The exhibition is truly a feast for the eyes, in which the essence of Asian art is elegantly presented.

Back to Top

CI at SDSU Attended Mission Bay Cluster All Schools Fair

On January 26, 2013, in support of the Mandarin Magnet program, CI at SDSU attended the Mission Bay Cluster All Schools Fair jointly with the Confucius Classroom at Barnard Mandarin Chinese Magnet Elementary School. The Mission Bay Cluster All Schools Fair provided the perfect opportunity for interested parents and students to meet the principals of each school and learn about the incredibly wide range of programs available.

CI at SDSU set up a booth to present Chinese culture. Project coordinator Yueying Zhan, with the help of CI volunteers, gave a demonstration of Chinese calligraphy. They first asked for students’ names in English, then giving them a Chinese name written in beautiful artistic fashion using a Chinese calligraphy brush.

The fair’s special programs included: the International Baccalaureate Program, which was the highlight at the fair; attendees from Pacific Beach Middle School and Kate Sessions Elementary School; the music program at Crown Point; the GATE (Gifted And Talented Education) seminar program at Pacific Beach Elementary; and the Mandarin Chinese Magnet program at Barnard Mandarin Chinese Magnet Elementary School. Barnard is scheduled to relocate to the site of Bayview Terrace Elementary School in fall of 2013.

Back to Top

Distinguished Specialist of the Ministry of Education of China Visited CI at SDSU

On November 05, 2012, by a special invitation from Confucius Institute at San Diego State University, Distinguished Specialist of the Ministry of Education of China, Vice chairman of the national Committee of education teaching reform and innovation for secondary occupational education, Deputy Director of the National Engineering Research Center of Digital Learning, Professor at Central China Normal University, and Advisor for PHD. Programs, Prof. Yan Shen Liu gave a lecture on Confucius and the 6 classical arts. About 20 people, including Executive Director of CI/SDSU and Dean of Arts & Letters, Prof. Paul Wong, Managing Director of CI/SDSU, Dr. Lilly Cheng, Co-Director of CI/SDSU, Prof. Wei Lu, and other specialists and professors from SDSU, local scholars, and representatives from Chinese communities and media attended this presentation.

Prof. Liu’s speech focused on the 6 classical arts in Confucianism. He outlined the history of Confucianism, he elaborated on the variants between the 6 classical arts in Confucianism and the 6 of the contemporary version; he also emphasized on the imperative factor of promoting Confucianism in the Sino-American cultural exchange and the importance of providing text materials that incorporated instructions related to the 6 classical arts in the pedagogical plan of Confucius Institutes. He pointed out that not only Chinese language should be offered at every CI; any future text mapping should be revised to include the 6 new classical arts to further introduce the true essence of Chinese culture. Prof. Liu recommended that a new text book be, drafted in accordance with the spirits of the new 6 classical arts, taught at a series of courses at CIs. He gave the audience his professional recommendations on this project.

The scholars in the audience concurred with Prof. Liu’s points, especially on the courses using materials advocating the 6 classical arts offered in CIs. This proposal may offer a better understanding to Chinese culture for Americans; and enhance the friendly exchange between people from both countries. Local media, such as the Daily World Journal and 5Zhou4Hai, gave remarkable news coverage for Prof. Liu’s lecture.

Dean Wong and Prof. Liu exchanged small gifts at the end of the lecture to further strengthen their friendship. Prof. Liu received an Honorary Director and Honorary Professor titles at an honorary ceremony hosted by Dean Wong in appreciation of his visit to San Diego for his scholastic lecture. Later in the evening Dean Wong hosted a banquet for Prof. Liu and other guests.

Prior to his lecture, Prof. Liu visited SDSU President Elliott Hirshman and Provost Nancy Marlin’s offices. President Hirshman bestowed Prof. Liu with an Honorary Professor of SDSU title. San Diego County Supervisor, Ron Roberts received Prof. Liu in his office to welcome his visit to San Diego. Supervisor Roberts thanked Prof. Liu for his devotion in promoting Sino-American cultural exchanges. On November 06, 2012 in the morning, Prof. Liu visited Confucius Classroom at Barnard Mandarin Chinese Magnet Elementary School to learn of its Mandarin programs and projects in promoting Chinese culture.

Back to Top

9th Annual Asian Heritage Award held at San Diego

On September 15, 2012, at 5:30PM, Asian Heritage Society of San Diego held its 9th annual Asian Heritage Award ceremony at the Marriott Hall, San Diego Marriott Marquis and Marina. More than 400 guests and honorees attended this function.

While the guests arrived for the pre-banquet cocktail social, local high school students were invited to showcase their science projects; Professor Bin Zhou of Hua Dong Normal University, a special guest invited by Managing Director of CI/SDSU and Board Member of Asian Heritage Society, Dr. Lilly Cheng, wowed the crowd with his Chinese calligraphy demonstration. Prof. Zhou broke his own record by writing the Chinese character of ‘dragon’ on a piece of paper 20’F wide and 25’F long. He later dedicated this great piece of art work to San Diego State University.

The evening’s program began punctually at 6:30PM with the Co-Founders’ welcome statement of Rosalynn Carmen and Leonard Novarro. They invited the Gala’s Co-Chairs, Sally Wong-Avery and Larry Bock to come on stage for a special recognition. The remaining programs of the evening were emceed by Marcella Lee and Manna Ko.

A total of 14 different categories of awards were presented to the honorees. Principal Edward Park of Barnard Mandarin Chinese Magnet Elementary School received the award in the ‘education’ category. Keynote Speaker Rear Admiral Peter Gumataotao, a commander of the U.S. Navy Carrier Strike Group 11 and the USS Nimitz Strike Group, inspired the audience with his speech to focus the effort on education for the future generation.

The Asian Heritage Society also gave special recognition to California State Controller, John Chiang for his leadership in the State in the past decade and for his long record of inspiring young people to enter the public arena.

A special auction to benefit the scholarship program of Asian Heritage Society was staged toward the end of the award ceremony. Prof. Zhou wrote 3 distinctive Chinese characters, ‘spirits’, ‘energy’, and ‘essence’. The audience eagerly participated to raise $1,000.00 in total for the scholarship project.

Back to Top

Professor Zhou Bin Visited Barnard Elementary School

On September 14, 2012 at 8AM, Zhou Bin – world-renowned Chinese calligrapher, scholar, and personal teacher to U.N. General Secretary Ban Ki Moon - visited Barnard Mandarin Chinese Magnet Elementary School to teach Chinese Calligraphy to Barnard students. This event was sponsored by CI/SDSU.

Barnard students were treated to the ancient art form of Chinese Calligraphy taught by Professor Zhou Bing. In honor of the Year of the Dragon, Professor Zhou taught students how to write the Chinese character of ‘dragon’ (lóng). The students followed his direction, using Chinese painting brushes to write the character on a shirt they were allowed to keep.

Students learned of the siginificance of Chinese calligraphy while they enjoyed the interacting time with Professor Zhou.

Back to Top

CI at SDSU Held a Reception for Renowned Calligrapher Professor Zhou Bin

On the evening of September 13, 2012, the Dean of the College of Arts and Letters at SDSU, Dr. Paul Wong, and Managing Director of Confucius Institute Dr. Lilly Cheng hosted a dinner reception for the renowned calligrapher Dr. Zhou Bin of East China Normal University. Other honored guests who attended the dinner reception were Chairman of the San Diego County Board of Supervisor, Ron Roberts, past San Diego Deputy Mayor, Tom Hom and Mrs. Dorothy Hom, San Diego County Superintendant of San Diego County Office of Education, Dr. Randy Ward, Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership at San Diego State University, Dr. Cheryl Ward, and many more.

The reception began at the Finch Conference room at the Arts and Letters Building at SDSU. The meeting opened with a brief introduction of Professor Zhou Bin by Dean Wong, followed by the Chairman of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, Ron Roberts, presenting Professor Zhou Bin with a letter of congratulations. A video highlighting Professor Zhou Bin’s calligraphy demonstration was presented to the guests of the opening reception. Professor Zhou received a framed portrait of SDSU from Dean Wong in appreciation of his dedication in the promotion of Chinese arts and culture. All guests were presented with a beautiful gift of a framed hand-cut paper cutting of a dragon for their supports to Chinese arts.

At the banquet, Dr. Lilly Cheng continued the introduction of Prof. Zhou, who has been teaching Chinese calligraphy for the past few years at New York University. He is also the private mentor to U.N. General Secretary, Ban Ki Moon. Professor Zhou shared his philosophy of arts, culture and principles of life with the crowd. Everyone was inspired by his wisdom.

At the end of the banquet, Prof. Zhou demonstrated his fine arts of Chinese calligraphy to all. Under Prof. Zhou’s guidance, many guests eagerly tried out their own skills. Everyone had a wonderful time. At this gathering, Dean Wong and Dr. Lilly Cheng presented a gift to CI’s interns and volunteers as their token of appreciation for the staff’s diligence.

Back to Top

Proclamation to CI at SDSU By SDUSD

On September 11, 2012, San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) Board of Education held a meeting in the Board of Education Office. During the meeting, SDUSD awarded a proclamation to the Confucius Institute at San Diego State University for its dedication and devotion to the Mandarin programs throughout San Diego County and City. CI at SDSU has been supporting the Point Loma Cluster Schools, such as Correia Middle School and Point Loma High School to establish a Mandarin Program for the last four years, and has provided over 50 language and cultural activities to Barnard Mandarin Elementary School, which included teachers training, Chinese summer camps, and Chinese Bridge Program, just to name a few. On behalf of CI/SDSU, Managing Director Dr. Lilly Cheng received the honored proclamation from President of Board of Education, Dr. John Lee Evans, and Vice President, Mr. Scott Barnett. Members of the Board of Education, Mr. Richard Barrera, Mr. Kevin Beiser, Mrs. Shelia Jackson, and Superintendent of SDUSD Mr. Bill Kowba were all in attendance to offer their congratulatory wishes to CI. Co-Director of CI at SDSU from Xiamen University, Professor Lu Wei, Project Manager of CI at SDSU, Anne Chu and other CI staffs, including some of the CC schools teachers and visiting scholars were present to celebrate this memorable occasion.

Back to Top

Hanban Supervisory Group Visited Barnard Elementary School

On July 25th, 2012, the Supervisory Group of four officers led by division 2 director Diefeng Cao from Hanban visited Barnard Mandarin Chinese Magnet Elementary School to view progress of the school as a Mandarin Magnet program. Barnard is recognized as the first Confucius classroom school in San Diego and being the first magnet immersion school of its kind. Barnard Elementary Principal Edward Park and SDUSD board chairman Mr. Scott Barnett gave them a warm welcome in visiting San Diego as well as the school. Also at the site to greet the delegates from Hanban were several members of the community and board committee members.

Principal Edward Park briefly introduced the Chinese teaching situation and achievements of the school upon their arrival. In order to better showcase Barnard’s strive for mandarin education, the supervision group were shown Lily Ma’s Classroom where students were having their Chinese summer camp. The students sang songs and introduced themselves to the Director which highly impressed the delegates. After their performances, the delegates from Hanban provided small gifts for all the students present. Following the classroom demonstration, Principal Edward Park held a short conference in the library and discussed the future cooperation between Barnard and Hanban. Through the support of Hanban, Barnard Elementary is able to continue striving for educational excellence. Director Cao said Hanban would do their best to support the Chinese program in Barnard and invited the group of Barnard to visit Beijing in the future.

Back to Top

Chinese Ladder Bilingual School Students Visit CI

On July 13, 2012, CI at SDSU hosted a group of young students from China. This group is composed of 15 students (ages 6 to 16) from the Ladder Bilingual Schools. They came to San Diego State University to visit our language laboratory, the SDSU campus, and the CI office. These students were learning English at Barnard Mandarin Magnet School during a week long summer camp. At the camp, the students were able to practice their English by mingling with the local students taking summer courses of their own. This was the first time these young Chinese students came to experience San Diego and SDSU.

Back to Top

2012 Chinese Summer Camp Program

The 4th annual Chinese Summer Camp Program, organized by Confucius Institute at SDSU, took place from July 9th-20th, 2012. The purpose of this program was to provide intensive Chinese language education to children 5-12 years of age with varying levels of Mandarin knowledge. Held at Barnard Mandarin Chinese magnetic Elementary School, Point Loma, California, a total of 18 students from Barnard Mandarin Chinese magnetic Elementary School, Riverview Elementary and International Academy , and many other schools participated in this year’s 2-week summer camp.

During each one-week session, the students were taught and tutored by native Chinese teachers and were immersed in many aspects of Chinese language and culture. Students learned proper pronunciation, reading and writing Chinese. The students also learned to introduce themselves and their family members; asked the day, date, date of birth; addition and subtraction of numbers; expressing their favorite food, color, animal and sport in Chinese. Cultural activities included learning Chinese games, songs, calligraphy and what numbers are considered lucky by Chinese. To further enhance their learning experience, the students were paired up with Chinese students from the Shanghai Private Bilingual School of Oriental Ladder, Xinjiang Ladder English school summer study tours, and the Experimental Primary School #1 in Henan Province, China. CI summer Camp students and Chinese students interacted with one another through art projects, game playing, Tai chi, singing songs and group performances.

On the final day of the camp, parents were invited to the closing ceremony and were entertained with songs and short speeches performed in Chinese by the students. “I really had fun at the summer camp.” commented Nicholas, one of the students. “All of the activities were so interesting, unlike any other camp that I went before. And I learned a lot about Mandarin and Chinese culture. I want to sign up for the Summer Camp program for next year now.”

Back to Top

Barnard Mandarin Chinese Magnet Elementary School Celebrates Asian Pacific Heritage Field Day

On the morning of June 6, 2012, Barnard Mandarin Chinese Magnet Elementary School hosted its Asian Pacific Heritage Field Day for 2012 with many different types of outdoor Asian activities. Confucius Institute at SDSU volunteers Jonathan Lee and Crystal Qian hosted the Chinese activities, such as diabolos, badminton, jian zi, za ji, and Chinese jump rope.

Students from each grade level were given 15 minutes to enjoy the activities at each station before moving on to the next. The students were very eager to try the activities at CI’s station, they all left wanting for more.

Back to Top

CI at SDSU received an honored plaque from Three Treasures Cultural Arts Society at the 1st Annual Golden Treasures Banquet

The 1st Annual Golden Treasures Banquet was hosted by Three Treasures Cultural Arts Society in San Diego at Jasmine Seafood Restaurant on May 27, 2012. The master of ceremonies was Cathlyn Choi- Michelson from the television show, Cathlyn’s Korean Kitchen. The Three Treasures Cultural Art Society lead by their Executive Director, Frank Du, demonstrated outstanding martial arts and lion dance performances. Students from one of the Confucius Classroom Schools of Confucius Institute at San Diego University (CI at SDSU), Barnard Mandarin Chinese Magnet Elementary School, also impressed the audiences with their lovely and wonderful Mandarin singing and dance performances. Three Treasures Cultural Arts Society and CI at SDSU have shown great dedication in displaying Chinese culture and art throughout southern California. They started cooperating together in many local cultural events and school education affairs since March, 2012. At the banquet, Three Treasures Cultural Arts Society honored the CI at SDSU with a plaque for its friendship, outstanding vision, and leadership in promoting Chinese culture and language. CI at SDSU Office Manager, Jessie Lin, and Project Coordinator, Ni Huang, attended the banquet and received the honored plaque.

Back to Top

LARC received two visitors from China Hunan Province

On May 22, 2012, two visitors from China arrived in San Diego for a visit to CI/SDSU and its affiliated CC schools. They were Mr. Ouyang Jei Fu, the corporate representative of Beijing Chuwei Culture Communication Co. Ltd. and Mr. Yuan Wei Kun, Vice president of Hunan Mass Media Vocational Technical College. The purpose of their visit in San Diego was to learn about the Language Acquisition Resource Center (LARC) of San Diego State University.

Norman Leonard, Director of Outreach of LARC, Evan Rubin, Director of Instructional Technology, and Chris Brown, Director of Programs/Projects, jointly gave a briefing of the functions of LARC, and demonstrated many programs that LARC has been developing.

On May 23, the visitors visited Barnard Mandarin Chinese Magnet School; they met with Principal Edward Park and many Chinese language teachers to learn about the needs directly from these teachers. They also visited Riverview International Academy on May 24 to learn about tri-lingual education. They were able to gather essential knowledge from their visits to CC schools on how to develop the text materials adapting to the local needs.They were eager to form a close relationship with CI SDSU in developing culturally relevant materials for learners of Chinese language and culture.

Back to Top

2012 Civic Engagement and Public Policy Forum

On May, 19, 2012, Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs Association (APAPA) held its 2012 Civic Engagement and Public Policy Forum at Barnard Mandarin Chinese Magnet Elementary School, San Diego. The keynote speakers included leaders who had greatly contributed to Asian American public affairs, including CA Board of Equalization Vice Chair, Michelle Park Steel; Assembly member, Marty Block, Mike Eng, and Warren Furntani; San Diego City Council President, Tony Young, and former member from Board of Education of Hacienda La Puente School District, Norman Hsu and other important leaders.

This forum focused on how to positively improve Asian Pacific Americans’ lives, welfares, and public affair involvement. Many speakers shared their experiences on how they were oppressed and discriminated as Asian Pacific Americans in the past; and how they started to be involved in public affairs, and to advocate for Asian Pacific Americans. They not only provided a blueprint for the future of Asian Pacific Americans, but they also urged the attendees to be proud of being Asian Pacific Americans, and to unite together working to achieve a better future for Asian Pacific Americans. The addresses and the audiences had an active interaction, many posted questions to the speakers; such as how to start getting involved in public affairs, or whether there was any internship opportunity to learn how to support the Asian Pacific community. This forum successfully brought awareness to people’s attention on the public affairs of Asian Pacific American and provided more involvement opportunities for those desiring to serve.

Many local leaders who cared about Asian Pacific American affairs attended this forum. The Managing Director of CI/SDSU, Dr. Lilly Cheng, was recognized by APAPA for her dedication and contribution to San Diego Asian Pacific American community.

Back to Top

Media Appreciation and Three Treasures Signing Ceremony

In the morning of May 14, 2012, several members of the media were honored at Barnard Mandarin Magnet Elementary School for their exemplary dedication and support to the teaching of Chinese language and culture in San Diego. Among those that were honored were David Seid from House of China, Len Novarro and Roz Carmen from Asia Media America, Dominic Lee from World Journal, Sam Ho from 5zhou4hai, Fei Lu from San Diego Chinese Press, Ma Ping from We Chinese, and Jung Won Seo from Korea Daily. They were each honored by Principal Edward Park of Barnard Mandarin Magnet Elementary School and Dr. Lilly Cheng of San Diego State University’s Confucius Institute with a beautifully framed display appreciating their continued contribution.

After celebrating the media’s contribution, the signing ceremony for the collaboration between CI at SDSU and Three Treasures Cultural Arts Society commenced. Dr. Lilly Cheng presented a beautiful hand-cut silhouette of a dragon with the character of Fu to Three Treasure’s Sifu Frank Du in honor of this memorable occasion. Both parties signed the agreement marking the official date of the successful union between the two to continue support of Asian language and culture throughout San Diego.

Back to Top

Barnard Mandarin Chinese Magnet School has been invited to be part of the Utah Flagship K-12 Consortium for the Immersion Program

Back to Top

CI at SDSU attended the Signing Ceremony at Barnard Elementary School

CI/SDSU participated in a signing ceremony on March 21, 2012 at Barnard Mandarin Chinese Magnet Elementary School. This ceremony was to celebrate the collaboration between the Korean Central Daily News and Barnard Mandarin Chinese Magnet Elementary School in promoting Asian heritage, and in reporting the teaching of Chinese language and culture at Barnard. CI/SDSU provided a musical program of zither performed by Jane Chi Jin.

This celebration marked a significant step toward collaborations among Pacific Rim languages and cultures.

Back to Top

CI at SDSU Participated at the Chinese New Year Family Fair

On February 4th, 2012, volunteers of the Confucius Institute at SDSU participated the Chinese New Year Family Fair at Barnard Elementary School. Numerous of live entertainment programs were provided by the local groups from various Asian ethnic backgrounds. But first, students and their families were entertained by the performers from Zhejiang Normal University, who visited San Diego during their touring in the U.S. to support Confucius Classroom schools in town. Other shows included the dancers from the Filipino Association, Lion Dancers from the three Treasures Party and martial arts demonstrations from White Dragon Martial Arts School.

CI set up various stations of Chinese calligraphy and arts and crafts. Children visiting CI's booth would engage in activities such as lantern making, face painting, and having their Chinese names and zodiac written in calligraphy. Other activities provided by Barnard Elementary included cake walks, silent auctions, and various arts and crafts. The event was a rousing success, and closed out with a booming performance by Naruwan Taiko drummers.

Back to Top

Chinese at Barnard Isn’t Just for New Year

U~T San Diego | By David Ogul | Published Feb.2, 2012

It isn’t everyday that an official from a major Chinese metropolis pulls up with a busload of children to see a performance at what just a few years ago was a struggling San Diego school. Nor is it common to find Superintendent Bill Kowba taking time out from dealing with yet another daunting budget deficit to watch a dance routine by a group of kindergartners in a crowded multipurpose room.

But Barnard Elementary, also known as Barnard Mandarin Chinese Magnet School, isn’t just any campus. And when it celebrated the Chinese New Year, it drew a crowd that not only included Kowba and the city councilman from Chongqing, but also several leaders from San Diego County’s Chinese community.

To the students and parents at the language immersion school that has kindergartners speaking conversational Mandarin by the time summer rolls around, Wednesday’s event celebrated the Chinese New Year, the Year of the Dragon. It came complete with lion dances and martial arts demonstrations.

To Principal Eddie Park, it was much more.

“This is a testimony of a successful public school,” the exhausted principal said at the end of a day that began with live, 5 a.m. performances televised by three local news stations. “There is a lot of news about failing public schools these days. A lot of people are talking about how our education system is broken. We turned a failing public around. This is a school parents are now seeking out. It is a California Distinguished School. This shows you what you can do when you work hard, get the resources you need and have the support of the parents, the community, the staff and the children.”

So popular is the Point Loma Heights school that parents are putting their children on waiting lists to get in. Scores drive their kids every morning from as far away as North County and El Cajon. Dignitaries visit regularly. The group from Chongqing made a special stop to their sister school while on a winter-break tour of the United States.

Kevin Ledgard of Sorrento Valley said he and his wife enrolled their kindergartner at Barnard to expose him to Mandarin at a young age. They wanted their son to learn a second language, but opted against a Spanish immersion program because, Ledgard said, Spanish is easier to learn later in life.

"The teachers have taught these children songs, culture, holidays, everything, not just Mandarin,” said Ledgard, who does not speak Chinese. “He’s learning more than a second language. It’s really amazing.”

Virtually everything, Ledgard said, is done in Mandarin. “Thankfully, the homework is in English.”

For those wondering how focusing on Mandarin affects other academic subjects, the school’s most recent Academic Performance Index score (from 2011) stood at 838 (on a scale of 200 to 1,000), well above the state goal of 800. That the school was able to reach such a level even though more than two-thirds of its students are poor enough to be on the free- or reduced-lunch program is especially impressive.

“This school is diverse,” noted Robert Dorsey, an El Cajon parent who drives his first- and third-grade daughters to Barnard and back every day. “The only regret I have is that more people aren’t here.”

Said Kowba in his opening remarks to the several hundred parents and Chinese visitors at the Chinese New Year’s celebration:

“I cannot overemphasize the importance of being fluent in more than one language and one culture. These children have embarked on a wonderful academic journey.”

With that, students chased away “bad energy and bad luck” as they lit a set of non-explosive firecrackers. Kindergartners, dressed in chi pao – a traditional Mandarin robe, began dancing, the first of many morning performances. A Year of the Dragon celebration for the benefit of the entire community is set for Saturday.

Eddie Kapelczak, a seventh-grader and former Barnard student, was the Wednesday event’s emcee. He spoke solely in Mandarin. In fact, his Mandarin is better than his English, though he did spend a year studying in Shanghai.

He is sold on the immersion program.

“We need to become more international,” he said. “To me, this event represents five years of dedication of the staff, the teachers and the principal to our program.”

Back to Top

Barnard brings in the Year of the Dragon

On February 01, 2012, more than 500 students, faculty staff, parents and local supporters crowded into the auditorium at Barnard Mandarin Chinese Magnet Elementary School for its Chinese New Year celebration. Among the VIP guests were Dr. Bill Kowba, Superintendent of San Diego Unified School District; Dr. Lilly Cheng, Managing Director of CI at SDSU; David Seid, President of House of China; and many other local leaders of Chinese communities. A group from Barnard’s sister school in China, Chongqing Ren-Min Primary School , was also present for this wonderful occasion. There were about 35 students and 5 teachers in this group.

The program of the day included a performance from each class. The children from the kindergarten kicked off the day’s show by providing their version of the Lion Dance. By grade sequence, each class came up to the stage to present their best song or dance number. Parents and guests were awed by the quality of their show and showered them again and again with vigorous applauds. At the end of the program, students from Chongqing Ren-Min Primary School presented a poetry recital to show their appreciation of the warm hospitality they received from everyone at Barnard. The Grand Finale was a fantastic Lion Dance performed by the group of Three Treasures.

Back to Top

CI at SDSU attended the 30th San Diego Chinese New Year Food and Cultural Fair

On January 28-29, 2012, the 30th San Diego Chinese New Year Food and Cultural Fair organized by San Diego Chinese Center was held at San Diego’s Asian Pacific Thematic Historic District. Over 50,000 residents and tourists alike flocked to the festival. Managing director of CI/SDSU, Dr. Lilly Cheng, served as the master of ceremony of this 2-day event. Co–Director, Prof. Wei Lu, participated at the event as well and expressed his best wishes to everyone.

Live entertainment programs were scheduled throughout these two days. CI/SDSU intern, Jeff Kaemmerling, demonstrated his Kung-Fu act for the audience, which won intermittent cheering. Principal Edward Park of Barnard Mandarin Chinese Magnet Elementary School led the students as they sang a Chinese song and wished everyone ‘Happy New Year’ in Chinese. Both CI/SDSU and Barnard Elementary School had set up their booth promoting Chinese language and culture. Brochures and pamphlets were displayed to introduce CI/SDSU’s mission and activities, giving the passers-by a deeper understanding of Chinese culture. Everyone was attracted to the display of 12 Chinese Zodiac Animals and calligraphy demonstration. They eagerly asked CI staff and volunteers to help them write their names in Chinese and draw their own zodiac animals on their faces and arms.

Law Professor John Cleary of San Diego State University, who used to study Chinese at Xiamen University Oversea Education College, was particularly fond of Chinese culture. During his visit at CI’s booth, he observed attentively the calligraphy presentation first, then excitedly wrote his own name in Chinese. At 76 years old, he might not have the style of any professional Chinese calligraphy artist, but his handwriting won many praises from the onlookers around.

Using phonetic translation and interpretation, CI staff helped hundreds of American friends to acquire their Chinese names. CI staff would explain the meaning of these names to each visitor. In addition, the staff would write the character of their zodiac symbols down in Chinese; stamped their paper with a Chinese chop at the end. Some of the guests were so excited that they would ask CI staff to do the same for their family members. It was a perfect example of the charms of Chinese calligraphy and culture.

The animated graphics of the zodiac symbols, alongside the vivid introduction, attracted many visitors to stop by at CI’s booth. Eighty-year-old grandpa Graham brought his five-year old grandson to the Fair to enjoy the Chinese New Year Celebration. They both were fascinated at the symbols and the presentation from the CI staff. The CI staff first drew a little mouse on the kid’s arm; he excitedly said, “I love the Chinese Mickey Mouse” in both Chinese and English. People were surprised by his Chinese. He explained that he was studying Chinese at his school, which was one of 23 Confucius Class schools under CI/SDSU. He and his classmates came to this event accompanied by their teacher and his grandfather. He learned from his Chinese teacher that Mickey Mouse was “米老鼠”, he pointed to the little mouse on his arm and said “I like Chinese Mickey Mouse” Mr. Graham felt really proud of his grandson’s command in Chinese. He hoped that there would be more Confucius Institutes, Confucius Classroom Schools, and Chinese classes available to meet the demand from the many American students and children with Chinese heritage to learn Chinese.

Through Chinese calligraphy and vivid pictographs of Chinese characters, this promotion of Chinese culture stirred up children’s interest in Chinese language, their basic understanding of Chinese characters and the culture it represented. Located in a city regarded as one of the most popular tourists’ destinations; CI/SDSU captured the great timing of the Chinese New Year festival to achieve the purpose of bridging the gap between American and Chinese citizens. Language and culture is the best tool for all people around the world to reach out to one another. The objective of promoting Confucius Institute and Confucius Classroom schools is to introduce Chinese culture and tradition around the globe. Reaching mutual understanding among all of mankind to build a harmonious universe is the ultimate idealism of world peace, as depicted in “The World of Datong” By Confucius.

Back to Top

Chinese, it’s the New Spanish

San Diego Reader By Elizabeth Salaam | Published Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2012

Robert Dorsey is not Chinese, but he drives 25 miles from El Cajon to Point Loma every morning so his two daughters could learn to speak, read, and write in Mandarin.

“In my culture, it’s English, Ebonics, and maybe a little bit of Spanish,” says Dorsey, who is African American. “About ten years ago, my wife was in college, and her professor told her Chinese was the language to learn. I want to give my kids a little bit of an edge in life.”

His daughters, in first and third grade, attend Barnard Elementary, a Mandarin Chinese full-immersion magnet school. In kindergarten, students spend 80 percent of their day (about four hours) reading, writing, and listening to Mandarin. The other 20 percent, they spend on English Language Arts. In first grade, it’s 70 and 30 percent, and second grade, 50-50. Third through sixth graders attend a 45-minute pull-out Mandarin class each day。 But as the program, now in its fourth year, grows, those grades will conduct half of their lessons in Mandarin.

The Dorsey’s are among a growing population of non-Chinese families interested in the language. According to Barnard’s principal, Edward Park, the school’s Chinese population is under 2 percent. He estimates the African-American, Hispanic, and Caucasian population is at 20, 33, and 38 percent, respectively. And like the Dorsey’s, 60 percent of the student body is from outside of Point Loma area.

On a Thursday afternoon in early November, I peeked in on a kindergarten class at Barnard. The room’s walls were covered in brightly colored pictures and simple words, but many of the words are Chinese characters. Even the behavior chart was written in Chinese.

The many-hued children were busy in small groups at computers, bookshelves, and tables, where they colored with markers and crayons. Near the door, the teacher called students over two at a time to assess their math and literacy skills on an iPad. They used their fingers to draw the Chinese character for the number two. The iPad reads it back to them in Chinese.

According to Dr. Lilly Cheng, Managing Director of the Confucius Institute at San Diego State University, Barnard is one of 16 San Diego–area schools that house Confucius Classrooms. The institute was established by the Office of Chinese Language Council International, known as Hanban, a nonprofit institute based in Beijing and affiliated with the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China. The purpose of Hanban, its website says, is to provide “Chinese language and cultural teaching resources and services worldwide.” Confucius Institutes support Confucius Classrooms by providing teachers, training them, and helping schools to develop programs.

Cheng said she was not authorized to comment on the amount of money Hanban contributed to set up the Confucius Institute, but when asked how much Hanban contributed to set up local Confucius Classrooms, she said, “If you’re talking U.S. dollars, the maximum amount is $10,000 per school.”

And though she emphasized that Hanban does not make additional financial contributions, she listed teaching materials and equipment, software, teacher-training workshops, and sponsorship of sister-school exchanges and other travel opportunities for students and teachers as among the other types of contributions Hanban makes.

While not all 16 local schools provide full-immersion Chinese classes, their numbers suggest a growing interest in Chinese education. In 2009, only 7 Confucius Classrooms existed in the area. Cheng informs me that today there are “27 classrooms and counting.” So, even the number of Confucius Classrooms doesn’t give a complete picture of the rise of Chinese education in San Diego.

To be designated as a Confucius Classroom, a program “has to be in a public school that’s open from 7:00 to 3:00, Monday through Friday,” she says.

There are a handful of weekend schools. The oldest, the Chinese School of San Diego, in Kearny Mesa, offers 21 Saturday classes, 8:30 to noon, for students aged 4 and up. Currently, “and up” includes students who are “60-something years old,” says Sally Wong-Avery, who has been the school’s principal since 1984. Back then, the student population was approximately 60, of which 100 percent were of Chinese ethnicity. Today, only 30 percent of the school’s 200 students are Chinese. According to Wong-Avery, the non-Chinese population has grown most quickly in the past three or four years.

“We have Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Spanish, blacks, Czech, Russians, Colombians,” she says. “Altogether, we have 20 different nationalities.”

Back in his office at Barnard, Park says that Chinese is one of the “top-five critical languages” in the world.

“In addition to 1.3 billion people [in China], we’ve got another 800 million people around the globe learning Mandarin right now,” he says. “There are close to 300 million people learning the English language in China, which is almost the population of the United States. And we have approximately 60,000 students learning Mandarin language. They’re trying to be competitive with us, but yet where are we in terms of the global community?”

Jim Boydston, president of Barnard’s PTA, believes that U.S. students should study Chinese to be competitive in the global marketplace, but that’s not the reason he sends his daughter to Barnard.

“We wanted our daughter to learn a non-Romance language primarily for brain development, and Chinese is about as diametrically opposed to English as any language can be,” he says. “It’s like a different concept, and from what we’ve read, we felt that more synapses would be formed.”

The decision, Boydston says, is not one that everybody understands.

“Do people feel like we’re raising little Communists? Yes,” he says. “The stock answer to that is, the Chinese culture has been around for about 5000 years, and Chinese Communism’s been around for what, 65 years? The model here is what they refer to as the Confucius model, and Confucius has been around a lot longer and doesn’t have very much to do with Communism.”

In 2007, before the Confucius Classrooms began at Barnard, 36 percent of its students tested proficient or advanced in English Language Arts and 57.6 percent tested proficient or advanced in math. By 2010, those numbers had risen to 65.3 and 70 percent, respectively. In March 2011, Barnard was one of 209 schools in the state to receive the Title 1 Academic Achievement Award from the California Department of Education.

Back to Top

Happy New Year from Barnard Elementary!

Untitled from Ana Estrella on Vimeo.

Back to Top

Isabelle Santana's New Year Letter to Barnard from Shanghai

Barnard student Isabelle Santana who is studying in Shanghai has written a letter to Barnard students to wish everyone a Happy New Year!

Isabelle Santana, a 4th grader from Barnard moved with her mom Mira to Shanghai this past August to immerse herself in the Chinese Language and Culture wrote a letter to Barnard students to welcome in the New Year.

Isabelle is studying at an International School in Shanghai for the 2011-2012 school year and plans to come back to Barnard for 5th grade. We are very excited for Isabelle and hope she will enjoy her time in Shanghai. We look forward to having Isabelle back at our school and share all that she has learned with her fellow students at Barnard.

January 3, 2012

Dear my friends and teachers at Barnard,

Hi, this is Isabelle Santana. How’s everything in San Diego? I wish I could say happy New Year to you all, but I’m writing this letter instead. I live in Shanghai, China to attend Shanghai High School International Division. It has a big college like campus with a beautiful central park just like a forest in Washington State. There are about 100 school busses and I take No. 88 bus everyday. Each class has two homeroom teachers, one native Chinese speaker and one native English speaker. My Chinese teacher, Ms. Yao, is responsible and caring. I know that I can count on her. My English teacher, Mr. Crawford, is British and he is also new to Shanghai High School. I guess he was as nervous as I was in last September.

First one month at school was very hard. I had to get used to the new school and the amount of study. Soon I discovered that many of my classmates were feeling the same way, so I knew I wasn’t alone. My day at school starts with a homeroom meeting, then our classmates spread to take classes in different classrooms or different buildings. Can you imagine we all carry heavy text books and push each other to go different direction? It’s like a crazy soccer game, but you will get used to it! I’m in honor level English class and I enjoy reading many books. My math class is standard level and it wasn’t too difficult for the first two month, but it became harder. The math class requires much writing for explanation, so it takes long time for me to finish my workbook. My most favorite subject is geography, because it’s exciting to know about the world.

I love my classmates. We are nice to each other and often make jokes even though we are busy. There is always someone to make us laugh. So you think it’s similar to American schools? I think so too. They are just like American kids and want to make more friends. All of 21 students in my class were new to this school. Many of them have Chinese speaking parents, but they lived in different places. My best friends, Melody and Jasmine, were from Taiwan and San Francisco. Hannah and Ethan came from Germany last summer, so they can speak English, Chinese and German.

Shanghai is very different from San Diego. What I learned was once you get used to it, things are not too difficult. I still don’t speak Chinese very well, but I think I know what to do in Shanghai now, just like I enjoy my school more than 3 month ago. We will finish our final exam this week, and then our winter vacation starts from the middle of January because of Chinese New Year. I will continue to attend SHSID next semester which starts from February. I hope everyone will have a great year of 2012. I miss you all!

Isabelle Santana

Back to Top

The Moon Festival Activity at Barnard

The 15th day of the eighth lunar month is China’s traditional Mid-autumn Festival. This year, it fell on Sept. 12, 2011. At Barnard elementary school, the students and teachers enjoyed a happy Moon Festival.

Ms. Weili Wang, who is a volunteer teacher assigned through the Confucius Institute at SDSU gave an introduction on the customs, the history and the folk stories on Moon Festival to all the students in the class. She shared with them traditions such as how Chinese eating moon cakes and fruits while admiring the full moon. Chinese people consider the full moon as the symbol of reunification and fulfillment, hence the Moon Festival is also called the Festival for Reunion, and the moon cake is also called the reunion cake.

The intern teacher Lily Zheng played some Chinese traditional songs using a Chinese traditional music instrument, hulusi, for the students. “HuLuSi” is made of gourd and bamboo. The name of music is “Phoenix-Tail Bamboo under the moonlight”. The audience composed of parents and students enjoyed the performance so much that they gave her a standing ovation at the end.

Back to Top

Barnard Elementary Orientation

Managing Director Lilly Cheng was invited to participate in the orientation session for parents at the Barnard Mandarin Magnet Elementary School. Principal Edward Park chaired the meeting and the agenda included introducing Mandarin immersion program, lead teacher Sally Mao Lowe, new teacher from Xiamen University, Lily Wang and the members of the Parent Teacher Association.

Discussion was focused on teaching methodology, the teaching of Chinese characters, parent class and community activities. Dr. Cheng provided a short presentation on the mission of the Confucius Institute and Confucius Classroom and a short introduction of the current teaching methods regarding the reading and recognition of Chinese traditional and simplified characters. The meeting was well attended and the discussions were very engaged.

Back to Top

Barnard Elementary Asian Pacific Field Day

On June 8, 2011, Barnard Mandarin Chinese students took part in a field day that celebrated and recognized the accomplishments of Asian and Pacific Islanders. The day began with an assembly where Coach MJ addressed the students and shared a little about Asian Pacific heritage. This was followed up by several performances by a Polynesian dancer and a martial arts demonstration. Confucius Institute project coordinator, Michael Sedurifa made a brief plug to the students about CI’s 2011 Chinese Summer Camp program.

When the children were released by class, each was assigned to different stations that engaged the group with an activity that had some theme about the Asian Pacific culture. The Confucius Institute at SDSU happily hosted a station where they gave the students an opportunity to both learn and play with jianzi, a tradition Chinese toy similar to a hacky sack. More than 7 different classes visited the CI station and enjoyed trying their skill at keeping the jianzi in the air with the most amounts of kicks. Other members of the CI who were present were Crystal Qian and Yuxi Liu.

Back to Top

Barnard Elementary Mandarin Teachers Engage in Professional Development Program

On May 18, 2011, Dr. Lilly Cheng provided a two hour professional development program to 5 Mandarin teachers at Barnard Mandarin Magnet Elementary School. The training consisted of the following topics: the world of Chinese, teaching Chinese to non-heritage students, curriculum development, language and culture. This interactive session will be one of many informal and open developmental programs for Mandarin teachers. The teachers openly discussed the challenges they faced in teaching Mandarin at the elementary level focusing specifically on parent involvement and reactions.

Back to Top

Barnard Elementary Celebrates Chinese New Year

On February 02, 2011, more than 500 students, faculty and parents of Barnard Mandarin Chinese Magnet Elementary School gathered together for a festive celebration to welcome in "The Year of the Rabbit".

Principal Edward Park greeted all by introducing the first program, a solo act of a 10 yr. old Pacific Academy student, Margaret Zao, playing gu-zheng, the 10-string Chinese music instrument. Her magnificent performance inspired students to learn more of Chinese music and culture. Mr. Ting from The Academy of Chinese Music Arts performed erhu. Ms. Lily Ma, a volunteer teacher from Confucius Institute at SDSU, presented her singing talent with a short introduction of Peking Opera. These performances offered an unique opportunity for the audience to learn more of Chinese music.

Students from all grade levels then came on stage by each grade level with their own program. It was such a wonderful team effort of all teachers and faculty members to showcase the students' Chinese language ability. Parents and guests responded by a roaring applause after each show.

At the end of the performance, Principal expressed his gratitude to sponsors that have continuously supporting the Mandarin Program at Barnard with a Certificate of Appreciation and a partnership banner. These sponsors are David Seid from House of China, James Lin from Better Chinese, and Dr. Lilly Cheng, Managing Director of CI at SDSU.

Back to Top

Central Elementary School

CI Visited Central Elementary School Confucius Classroom

On November 27, 2012, Co-Director of Confucius Institute at San Diego State University, Prof. Wei Lu, and Project Manager, Anne Chu, visited Confucius Classroom at Central Elementary School in Banning City, Riverside County, California. Central Elementary School became a Confucius Classroom school in 2011.

They were greeted by Principal Ed Young and the resident Chinese teacher from China, Ms. Xiu Qing Wang. The purpose of this visit was to allow both sides an opportunity to exchange ideas and information in person. Ms. Anne Chu first gave a brief introduction of the various sources of supports provided by Hanban/Confucius Institute Headquarters and CI at SDSU for each Confucius Classroom school. With the restructuring of the Banning Union School District, Principal Young updated the guests of the current movements in the school district and the progress of the Chinese program in its 2nd year of establishment at Central Elementary. Ms. Anne Chu reassured Principal Young that CI would always support Central Elementary School fully in their continuing efforts of building its Mandarin project, which, Principal Young envisioned to be expanded to the filler middle school and high school in the future. Both sides expressed their mutual interest and commitment to strengthen their partnership.

Prof. Lu and Ms. Anne Chu visited Ms. Wang’s classroom to observe her teaching before returning to San Diego.

Back to Top

Chinese New Year Celebration at Central Elementary School

On February 3, 2012, a performance group from Zhejiang Normal University gave a special performance at Central Elementary School in Banning City, California. Central Elementary officially became a Confucius Classroom last May. In attendance were CI Managing Director Dr. Lilly Cheng, Central Elementary Principal Ed Young, Banning City Mayor Don Robinson, and Banning School District Superintendent Lynne B. Kennedy. Also in attendance was Zhejiang Normal University Professor Jiang Guojun, who brought an embroiled scroll as a gift to Central Elementary. The troupe performed for more than 600 students, parents, and teachers who sat around the temporary playground stage.

Opening the show was the “Spring Festival Lion Dance” which saw two bright, red dragons draw applause as they danced among the audience. The audience was then captivated by the folk music and dance of “Hanging the Red Lanterns”, solo female folk song “The Dragon Boat Song”, and a Chinese martial arts demonstration. The situational drama “Celebrating Chinese New Year” not only demonstrated the customs of Chinese New Year but also saw showed the crowd with small gifts. In between performances, the students from the Chinese class taught by Hou Du came on stage to demonstrate what they had learned by greeting the audience in Chinese. The hour long show ended with the tenor solo “A Glass of Mellow Wine”. Many happy parents and students stayed and tried to get a picture with the performance troupe.

Back to Top

Correia Middle School

CI Attended the We Chinese Moon Festival Celebration

On Saturday September 29, 2012, one of the Confucius Classroom students, Eddie Kapelzak, (a graduate from Barnard Elementary and currently a Correia middle school student) performed at the Moon Festival Celebration organized by ‘We Chinese’. Eddie was popularly recognized after his performance on CCTV’s 2011 Spring Festival Program in China as the Little Red Dot (xiao hong dian).

His show on 09/29 was a recitation of the famous moon festival poem. The audience gave a standing ovation. All excitedly await for his appearance on CCTV again in 2013.

Back to Top

CI Meets with New Principal at Correia Middle School

On January 31, 2012, CI Project Manager, Anne Chu, met with Principal Beverly Fitzpatrick of Correia Middle School. Also attending this meeting was Ms. Suzanne Olsen, the leading World Language teacher of Correia.

Principal Fitzpatrick took over the principal position at Correia only recently. The purpose of this meeting was to get acquainted with CI personnel and to have a better understanding of Hanban and CI’s operation. Ms. Chu gave a brief introduction of the support structures that the Headquarters of Confucius Institute, Hanban, could provide. Principal Fitzpatrick was very impressed by the information she received.

Other main agenda of the meeting was a request for continual support to the current Mandarin programs at Correia from Principal Fitzpatrick; which included a volunteer teacher sponsored by Hanban.

Back to Top

Chinese Night at Correia Middle School

On May 17, 2011 at 6PM, hundreds of parents and local supporters swamped into the auditorium at Correia Middle School to attend “Chinese Night”, a program organized and designed by Chinese teacher, Ms Xiao Ning Yao and her students to provide an opportunity for all to experience a taste of Chinese culture. CI staff, along with other volunteers, participated to support this wonderful event.

Ms. Xiao Ning Yao came to Correia a year ago under TCLP program for a one year term. To celebrate the ending of her term, and to showcase her students’ accomplishment in this past year, she programmed this evening’s performance and invited parents and community members for a peek into the Chinese culture.

Assistant Principal, Annette Rieger first welcomed all in the audience. She expressed her gratitude of CI’s extraordinary dedication to promote Chinese language and culture. The students from Ms. Yao’s Chinese class first performed 2 songs in Chinese. CI Managing Director, Dr. Lilly Cheng, was present to support the show. CI Project Manager invited 3 guests to perform their special talents: Ms. Peng Peng demonstrated the traditional tea ceremony, Prof. Minghuan Ren, Director of San Diego Chinese Music Ensemble, gave the audience a brief introduction of Chinese traditional musical instrument, erhu, and performed solo, which brought a huge ovation from the audience. Jeff Kaemmerling gave a fantastic kung fu and tai chi demonstration.

CI staff set up a booth and provided face painting with Chinese zodiac characters, writing people’s name in Chinese calligraphy.

Back to Top

El Cajon Valley High School

San Diego State University Confucius Institute at the 4th Confucius Classroom Forum

On the morning of April 21, 2012 the Confucius Institute at San Diego State University held its 4th Confucius Classroom Forum at El Cajon Valley High School in San Diego. More than 40 people attend the forum; including Chinese teachers, superintendents and other faculty members from Confucius Classroom schools, local teachers, and staff members and volunteers from the CI office.

The Forum began at 8:30 in the morning. "Three Treasures Cultural Arts Society" of San Diego demonstrated its strong support for Chinese culture with an exciting show of lion dances. Professor Deng Ximin, one of Hanban’s teachers, also performed the 24 sets of simplified Tai Chi Quan. Project Manager of CI at SDSU, Anne Chu, opened the forum with a briefing of the Forum activities. Vice Principal, Tracy Wilson, of El Cajon Valley High School, gave the attendees an introduction of the various programs offered at the school; Chinese teacher of ECVH, Ms. Chi Ping Chang, shared her experience on teaching through classroom games.

During the group discussion period, the topics most concerned by the local teachers and administrative representatives were: each school’s characteristic and a sustainable development of the Confucius Classroom. They exchanged their views and experience. Other topics also included the assignment and distribution of the Chinese teachers, standardization of curriculum of the Confucius Classrooms, and the collaboration between Confucius Classroom Schools and CI/SDSU.

Three keynote speakers were featured at the Forum. A well-known Chinese painter in San Diego, Quan Yuan, shared her edition of Chinese Teaching Materials; she presented a collaborated work between herself and Professor Kelin Xi, “Magic Panda Adventures”, which received great interest from the participants. Professor Ximin Deng presented his own invention of a new radical index; he stated the special features and advantageous points at vocabulary searching in this system. Co-Director of CI at SDSU, Professor Wei Lu addressed the urgency of standardization in Chinese teaching at Confucius Classrooms with a short demonstration to point its importance; he also stated the details of the main scope and the specific criteria of the standardized Chinese language teaching. The participants also were able to interact with the three keynote speakers at the end of their speech.

This Forum provided an excellent venue for the local Chinese teachers, Hanban’s teachers and volunteer teachers to share their teaching experiences together, and to discuss their challenging issues. They all felt that through this interaction, they were able to further improve the quality of their Chinese teaching. In addition, the officials from these CC schools were able to have a face-to-face communication with directors from CI on the difficulties and challenges they encountered. CI at SDSU was able to learn the logistic needs and take targeted measures to support Chinese teaching in CC Schools.

The forum was planned and sponsored by the Confucius Institute at San Diego State University and hosted by El Cajon Valley High School (ECVH), one of the Confucius Classroom Schools. The Education Department of the Chinese General Consulate Office in Los Angeles, which provided financial support for the forum, had high regards of this event.

Back to Top

Quanzhou No.5 Middle School visits San Diego

On February 6, 2012, a performance troupe of 83 students and teachers from Quanzhou No.5 Middle School in Quanzhou, Fujian province, China, arrived in San Diego. It was led by Ji-ping Li, Chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Committee (CPPCC) of Quanzhou city. Other group leaders included Wen-wei Zheng, Director of the Education Bureau of Quanzhou city; and Shu-fang Liu, Principal of Quanzhou No.5 Middle School. Before they came to San Diego, the troupe had just delivered a successful performance on February 1st at the Headquarters of the United Nations in New York, which was part of the “Culture of China ‧ Chinese Intangible Cultural Heritage Show”. Their show, “Southern Music at the Lantern Festival”, was a mix of several unique traditional musical and dancing styles, such as castanet, lantern swaying and chest beating, which were popular in the coastal rural regions in Fujian province.

The troupe was warmly welcomed at a luncheon organized by Wen-xiong Chen, President of San Diego Fujianese Association, and other Chinese community leaders in San Diego. During the luncheon, San Diego County Supervisor, Mr. Ron Roberts, who had visited Quanzhou city three times in the past, commented that this was his first time to welcome a students’ performance troupe of such size in San Diego. He would keep a close watch on the students’ performance in the future. Peng Peng, a volunteer from the Confucius Institute at San Diego State University, served as the Master of the Ceremony.

After the luncheon, the troupe visited Montgomery Middle School in El Cajon, one of the Confucius Classroom schools under CI/SDSU. The troupe was accompanied by David Du, Honorary President of San Diego Fujianese Association; George Peng, President of San Diego Chongqingnese Association; and Peng Peng from CI/SDSU.

The troupe performed their famous program to show their appreciation of the hospitality from Montgomery Middle School; the beautiful traditional costumes and the ancient festive holiday melodies transported the audience to a distant realm in southern China. Principal Kelly Madden of Montgomery Middle School exchanged gifts with Principal Shu-fang Liu of Quanzhou No.5 Middle School. They expressed their mutual interest to strengthen the interactions between the two schools in the future. Superintendent of Cajon Valley School District, Dr. Janice Cook, also attended the luncheon and enjoyed the performance at Montgomery.

Back to Top

El Cajon Valley High School Confucius Classroom Inaugurated the Ceremony of Year of the Dragon Chinese New Year Theatrical Performances

Beginning the year of the dragon, Zhejiang Normal University teachers and students was led by the Vice- Principal Jiang Guojun, a group of 25 people visited San Diego as their first destination in the United States for their performance tour. Delegations arrived in San Diego on February 1st, and after a short break, the group members were escorted to the performance venue for the February 2nd performance for a rehearsal.

Their first performance was held at El Cajon Valley High School on February 1st, 2012. On the same day, El Cajon Valley High School also held an opening ceremony for officially becoming a Confucius Classroom. The San Diego State University Confucius Institute Managing Director Dr. Lilly Cheng and Project Manager Anne Chu arrived at the scene early to help with the preparation. The ceremony was presided by the Principal of El Cajon Valley High School Erin Richison. Superintendent Ralf Swenson of Grossmont Union High School District and Confucius Institute Managing Director Dr. Lilly Cheng congratulated the teachers and students of El Cajon Valley High School. Principal Jiang Guojun also gave a speech welcoming teachers and students the opportunity to visit China.

Following, the performance officially began. The students and teachers of Zhejiang Normal University provided an extremely unique Chinese song and dance performance. The opening dance “Lion Spring Festival” attracted the students’ attention and activated the atmosphere. Next, the euphemism rolling, ethereal and elegant Chinese folk music, and beautiful folk dance was warmly welcomed and applauded by the students. The martial arts performance was the most popular out of the entire show. The performers were uniformed, and show firmness and flexibility to play the essence of Chinese martial arts. They won the audiences cheering.

Through the network connection, live coverage of Montgomery Middle School, Malibu Middle School and Rialto Middle School were being broadcast. Teachers and students were watching the performance, and were deeply infected by the sense of culture, making this performance significant. Teachers and students felt that the performance itself was more meaningful compare to all the paintings, music, and dances.

The performance ended with the cheering and blessing of the entire school. In the following days, the delegations of Zhejiang Normal University will continue to perform at Central Elementary School, Barnard Mandarin Magnet Elementary School, and the University of San Diego with three performances.

Back to Top

El Capitan High School

CI at SDSU Supported Freshman Recruit Meet at Confucius Classroom El Capitan High School

On February 13, 2013, staff from Confucius Institute at San Diego State University participated at the Freshmen Recruit Meet at El Capitan High School to showcase and promote the Chinese course as well as the Chinese Bridge Summer Camp for American High School students Program.

Project Coordinator of CI at SDSU, Jonathan Lee, Office Assistant, Vicky Hsu, and Chinese Teacher, Ming Qu gave out Chinese bookmarks as gifts to the students and explained the meaning of the Chinese characters on the bookmarks. CI staff also answered questions regarding the Summer Camp program for summer of 2013; parents and students expressed great interest in the Summer Camp program. Students exclaimed to their parents as they walked away from CI booth that they would like to start learning Chinese and visit China in the summer.

Back to Top

San Diego State University Confucius Institute Held the First Local Mandarin Teachers and Teaching Material Workshop

On October 20 – 21, 2012, Confucius Institute at San Diego State University held its first local Mandarin teachers and teaching material workshop. There were a total of 65 educators, including school principals, teachers from public schools and local Chinese schools, as well as Hanban sponsored teachers.

The Education Department of the Chinese Consulate General Office in Los Angeles paid close attention to the activities of the workshop; Chinese education Consul, Madame Cuiying Xu, attended the opening ceremony. The representatives from China’s Higher Education Press Foreign Language and International Chinese Publishing Division and Beijing Chuwei Cultural Communications Company also attended the event. San Diego Chinese media agency “Wu Zhou Si Hai” videotaped and reported on the program.

At the opening ceremony, Consul Xu congratulated CI at SDSU for holding the training program. She stressed to the attendees that training for local Mandarin teachers and teaching material bore important practical significance; she wished the attendees in advanced congratulations for completing the workshop successfully. After the opening ceremony, Principal Edward Park of Barnard Chinese Magnet Elementary School shared his experiences and described the topic of “how to create a real language environment for students to learn Chinese and communicate in an intercultural environment through the building of sister schools.”

During the seminar, Mrs. Olympia Kyriakidas, principal of Riverview Elementary School, introduced the School’s comprehensive support for the Chinese program management, “Chinese Curriculum Provision and Textbook Selection”. Following her lecture, local Chinese instructor Mrs. Chi Ping Chang introduced ‘how to establish Chinese teaching courses to match the requirements of California State University as well as how to select and adapt to the corresponded Chinese textbooks’. Her lecture offered beneficial inspirations for localizing and standardizing Chinese curriculum and referential experiences for leading Chinese teaching into higher levels of mainstream curriculum.

Managing Director Dr. Lilly Cheng hosted two picturesque seminars by taking “To Learn Chinese Everyday” as an example, the textbook being writing by SDSU’s Confucius Institute. She introduced the Chinese textbook’s design, compilation, adaptation and evaluation in detail and invited attendees to join in the simulated class activities, offering beneficial suggestions and proposals to them. Moreover, Dr. Cheng demonstrated how to enable Chinese characters to be more fitted to the classroom such as activities where children are involved in Chinese character writing by inviting attendee to draw the ancient Chinese character of “Long”, which means dragon in English, on T-shirts through her instruction. In addition, Dr. Cheng invited Hanban teacher Mrs. Lijuan Wang to lead interactive stories where the attendees played the roles of characters in the story.

CI Co-director Professor Wei Lu held three lectures during the workshop. He first introduced and demonstrated how to obtain and utilize Chinese teaching resources. He provided a large amount of Chinese textbooks resources issued by National Chinese teaching program to the trainees. He then introduced how to apply language technology to the exploration and utilization of Chinese textbook. He demonstrated technology such as Pinyin automatic tagging, Chinese character recognition, voice recognition, and speech synthesis, just to name a few. In addition, he took an example of course teaching by introducing and demonstrating how to design and establish interactive Chinese teaching. To conclude his lecture, Professor Lu shared his explanation of language through an interactive Power Point of training, animation demo of Chinese character strokes, and choice questions with offering the access right of Chinese teaching material corpus resources.

Several other seminars were given by local Chinese instructors during the workshop. Mrs. Grace Cox introduced how to apply Web 2.0 to support Chinese teaching and to strengthen learning efficiency and offered internet links to the trainees. Mrs. Sally Lowe introduced and demonstrated how to make learning Chinese more fun through games and activities, stimulating and sustaining the motivations and interests of children. Through the use of these activities, students will be more attracted to actively participate in the class learning. The trainees were asked to join in the activities to understand the concept.

During the two days of training, Confucius Institute at SDSU introduced and exhibited Chinese teaching resources issued by National Chinese teaching program to the trainees, gave teaching textbooks and CDs, offered a Survey for Intention for Use of Textbooks, An order form for textbooks, and a survey for training workshop satisfaction. In addition, SDSU Confucius Institute arranged the lunch time lecture by Dr. Norman Leonard from SDSU Language Acquisition Resource Center to introduce the Chinese teaching resources of the center and El Capitan High School Principal, Laura Whitaker to introduce the Chinese teaching and textbook choosing status in her school at the round table conference.

At the closing ceremony, Dr. Cheng gave awards to all the presenters and certificates of completion to the trainees for attending and completing the teacher training workshop. The trainees gave their appreciated to the Confucius Institute for holding this workshop sponsored by Hanban. The attendees were satisfied with the designation, content, organization, arrangement, and service of the training. The attendees believed that this training was practical and with an abundance of information that not only offered textbooks and teaching resources from Hanban, but the local teaching resource from SDSU Confucius Institute. Along with methodology to using the teaching resource, language techniques through exhibition and manufacturing documents for discussion were greatly appreciated. Some teachers said they learned a lot from this training workshop. Through model lessons and discussion, they have so many new ideas about how to use the teaching materials and widen their horizon. From the interaction and specialist seminar, they know about new Chinese teaching directions, educational technology and teaching methods. They also speak highly of the teaching methods and teaching resource and hope we could have more training programs in the future.

This was the first time that CI at SDSU attempted to hold a local Chinese teacher training by implementing the “2012 Confucius Institute (Classroom) teaching resource training program” from Hanban teaching resource department. CI paid more attention on designation and implementation of the program, and set it to be one of the most important works of this year. CI considered the practice of local Chinese teaching to design and apply the project for training program by the requirement from Hanban. Through labourous hard work and dedication from CI staff and volunteers, and the team spirit from all resulted in the success of the training program. The joint efforts received much admiration from the trainees.

Back to Top

CISDSU Attends Open House for El Capitan High and Granite Hills High School

On September 19, 2012, CISDSU project coordinator Jonathan Lee attended both El Capitan High and Granite Hills High Schools’ Open House to welcome students into the new school year. Confucius Classroom teacher Ming Qu explained her teaching method as part of the 5 C’s of world language learning education; communication, cultures, connections, comparisons, and communities. Alongside Ming Qu’s description of her coursework, Jonathan Lee provided a short introduction to the Chinese Bridge high school summer program that will occur the following summer. Through an early introduction of the program, parents and students alike are able to plan ahead for this opportunity while they are currently taking Chinese courses.

Back to Top

CI Attends Multicultural Week at El Capitan High School

On April 17, 2012, several volunteers from CISDSU participated in El Capitan High School’s Multicultural week. Project coordinators Jonathan Lee, Crystal Qian, and project intern Mike Zhang attended this event. CI had set up a booth where they wrote the names of the students in beautifully drawn calligraphy. Students lined up with excitement as they got their names written in Chinese. After the bell rang and students had already returned to class, several students returned to get Chinese names written for their teachers, showing the great interest the staff also had in Chinese calligraphy.

Back to Top

El Capitan High School Freshman BBQ & Showcase

On February 22, 2012, volunteers from the Confucius Institute at San Diego State University participated at the El Capitan High School Freshman BBQ and Showcase to promote the Chinese classroom and the High School Summer Camp in China Program. During the opening announcements of the Showcase party, CI Project Coordinator Jonathan Lee presented the Confucius Classroom Plaque to Principal Laura Whitaker.

At the event, CI volunteers Jonathan Lee, Crystal Qian, Catherine Zhong, and Jeremy Yan provided calligraphy demonstration, Chinese Club information, and answered questions about the Summer Camp program this coming summer. Students were very excited to have their names written in Chinese from the calligraphy stand; they displayed great interest in the Summer Camp in China program. They exclaimed to their parents as they walked away from CI booth the booth that they would like to start learning Chinese as soon as they could.

Back to Top

Confucius Institute at SDSU Attends Multicultural Week at El Capitan High School (April 11, 2011)

On April 11, 2011, the Confucius Institute at SDSU attended the multicultural week at El Capitan High School to promote Mandarin and Chinese culture. Co-Director of the CI/SDSU, Professor Chen, Project Coordinator, Jessie Lin, and Project Intern, Jonathan Lee, hosted a booth featuring face painting and calligraphy of the Chinese Zodiacs. As the quad was surrounded by national flags from around the world, CI was the only organization present at that date. More than 200 students visited CI booth during their one-hour lunch break. They were intrigued by the Chinese calligraphy of their names and of the their Chinese zodiac character painted on their face . You could hear students sharing with their peers: "Look, check out what they wrote for me! Chinese characters are so artistic. This is amazing!"

At the end of the event, the teachers, staff members, and students in charge of the festival at El Capitan High expressed their deep gratitude to CI. In 2010, the CI/SDSU submitted a Confucius Classroom application for El Capitan High School to Hanban in Beijing. They are planning to start a Chinese course in the near future, and hope that with events like the fair would increase student’s interest with Chinese culture. They hope that there will be more opportunities for their students to learn more of Chinese culture.

Back to Top

Fallbrook Union Elementary School District

Chinese Program Thrives at Fallbrook Union Elementary School District

On January 09, 2013, Co-Director of CI/SDSU, Prof. Wei Lu, and Project Manager, Anne Chu, visited Potter Jr. Middle School in Fallbrook to support the Chinese teacher, Ms. Ke Lin Xi. Xi Laoshi came to the U.S. under the sponsorship program of Hanban and has been teaching Chinese in San Diego County for the past 3 years. Prof. Lu and Ms. Chu also met with Principal Leonardo Rodriguez for a discussion on the projected progress of the Mandarin program for fall of 2013.

Potter Jr. Middle School offered regular scheduled Mandarin courses in fall of 2012 after it was first introduced in 2010 as an enrichment program. Currently, there were 3 classes of students attending Chinese class daily for a 3- month period. Principal Rodriguez envisioned the Mandarin course be expanded to a year long course in fall of 2013. He invited Xi Laoshi to introduce the Chinese program to the faculty at the staff meeting scheduled in the afternoon of 01/09/13. Her brief introduction was warmly received by all. Principal Rodriguez also invited Anne Chu to share the information of Chinese Bridge Summer Camp program for American high school students. The teachers were impressed by this wonderful opportunity; they planned to share the news with their students and parents.

Back to Top

Superintendent of Bellflower Unified School District visited CI at SDSU office

On May 18, 2012, Superintendent Brian Jacobs of Bellflower Unified School District visited CI/SDSU office. The purpose of his visit was to seek support from CI to establish a Mandarin program at the school District. Managing Director Dr. Lilly Cheng, Co-Director Prof. Lu and Project Manager Anne Chu were present to welcome Dr. Jacobs to CI office.

Project Coordinator Jonathan Lee first showed everyone a brief introductory video of CI’s mission and progress. Anne Chu also gave detailed information of the various support Hanban provided; especially the teachers and volunteer teachers program. Dr. Jacobs was very appreciative of the information he learned from the introduction.

With his experience and the knowledge he gathered as the Superintendent at Fallbrook Union Elementary School District for the past few years, Superintendent Jacobs was well aware of the importance of introducing Mandarin as a second foreign language to the students. At his new position at Bellflower Unified School District, it was his goal and vision to build a solid Mandarin program for all the schools within the District K–12.

After a brief exchange of updates, Dr. Lilly Cheng made precise outlines of a time table for Dr. Jacobs and his staff to move forward with the application of Confucius Classroom to Hanban. Dr. Jacobs envisioned the initiation of Mandarin program at September of 2013/14.

Back to Top

Meeting at FUESD to discuss 2012/13 Mandarin Program

On April 06, 2012, Project Manager of CI/SDSU visited Confucius Classroom at Fallbrook Union Elementary School District. She met with Director of State and Federal Programs, Lea Curcio. The purpose of this meeting was to discuss the Mandarin program for school year 2012/13.

Director Curcio gave Ms. Chu an update of the current foreign language programs at Fallbrook District. In addition to the Chinese teacher sponsored by Hanban, Fallbrook District would have one more year of sponsorship from TCLP (Teachers of Critical Language Program) under U.S. State Department. Director Curcio and Ms. Chu planned out the class plans for various schools in the district for the coming school year, including both elementary and middle school.

Back to Top

Fallbrook Union Elementary School District teachers visit CI office

On August 25, 2011, Dr. Lilly Cheng and Stacey Larson-Everson who is the Director of Special Projects from Fallbrook Union Elementary School District met at the Confucius Institute of Sand Diego State University. They show much enthusiasm for teaching Chinese in elementary school of American. In this meeting, they shared the experience of teaching, the situation of compiling teaching materials and holding all kinds of cultural activities. Four Chinese teachers will join the teaching job within the next few days. They are all volunteers. It was a short but very important and meaningful meeting.

Back to Top

Fallbrook Union Elementary School District and Confucius Institute Sign Confucius Classroom Agreement

On May 20, 2011 at 11AM, Fallbrook Union Elementary School District and Confucius Institute at San Diego State University signed an agreement to be a Confucius Classroom. This signing ceremony was held at La Paloma Elementary School, which was one of the 8 schools offering Mandarin program currently in the Fallbrook School District. Many dignitaries were present to witness this wonderful event, including Consul Director for Education from Los Angeles, Mr. Zhun Min Chen; Consul for Education, Ms. Cui Ying Xu; Superintendent of Fallbrook School District, Dr. Brian Jacobs; School Board Member, Mr. Patrick Rusnell. Director of State & Federal Program at Fallbrook, Ms. Stacey Larson-Everson was the emcee for the ceremony. Superintendent Dr. Brian Jacobs and Managing Director of CI, Dr. Lilly represented the both sides to sign this agreement in front of more than 100 supporters, including dignitaries, and parents. Students at La Paloma provided entertainments in Spanish, English and Chinese. A local Chinese calligraphy artist well-known in the community, Mr. Zhou-Fan Ng, wrote 福布克联合小学学区 (Fallbrook Union Elementary School District) in Chinese, as a special present to the Fallbrook District. Dr. Lilly Cheng also presented a Chinese Cultural Exploratorium Center from Hanban as a special surprise present to Fallbrook.

Watch the ‘Fallbrook Signing Ceremony’ on Youtube

Back to Top

Fallbrook Visits the CI

On May 4, 2011, Stacey Larson-Everson, Jeffrey Lui, and Sophia He from the Fallbrook Union Elementary School District came to the Confucius Institute to visit. The main purpose is to get teaching materials for the eight schools of the Fallbrook School District. Fallbrook recently became part of the Confucius Classroom family. Jefferey Lui and Sophia He serve all eight schools in the district. The agenda of the meeting also included the preparation of the signing ceremony planned on May 20, 2011 in Fallbrook. Dominic Lee from the Chinese Daily News also visited the Confucius Institute, an update about the Confucius Classrooms was provided.

Back to Top

Granite Hills High School

CISDSU Attends Open House for El Capitan High and Granite Hills High School

On September 19, 2012, CISDSU project coordinator Jonathan Lee attended both El Capitan High and Granite Hills High Schools’ Open House to welcome students into the new school year. Confucius Classroom teacher Ming Qu explained her teaching method as part of the 5 C’s of world language learning education; communication, cultures, connections, comparisons, and communities. Alongside Ming Qu’s description of her coursework, Jonathan Lee provided a short introduction to the Chinese Bridge high school summer program that will occur the following summer. Through an early introduction of the program, parents and students alike are able to plan ahead for this opportunity while they are currently taking Chinese courses.

Back to Top

Granite Hills High School hosted its annual Multicultural Fair

On Friday, April 20, 2012, Granite Hills High School hosted its annual Multicultural Fair. The Confucius Institute of San Diego State University supported this event with a Chinese culture presentation. Peng Peng, Crystal Qian, volunteer and intern from CI at SDSU demonstrated Chinese calligraphy to participants by writing their names in traditional style of Chinese calligraphy.

During their lunch break, hundreds of students stopped by CI’s booth. Many students were very curious of the Chinese characters; they lined up eagerly to get their favorite Chinese words written on their face or arm. CI hoped to bring awareness of Chinese culture and Chinese language among the students with this presentation.

Back to Top

Granite Hills High School Multicultural Fair

On June 3rd, 2011, Granite Hills High School in Grossmont School District hosted a multicultural fair. This event was aimed to promote cultural awareness and multiculturalism in the San Diego area. Students would set up stands focusing on various culture and customs around the world. For example, at the France booth, baguettes and croissants were offered, and face painting with a ‘French Moustache’ design added additional flair of the French culture. The Confucius Institute of San Diego State University set up a booth featured face painting with Chinese Zodiac Character and offered to write participants’ name in the Chinese calligraphy fashion. CI’s presence is to bring awareness of Chinese culture and to spark interest in Chinese language and culture among the students. Students also had brought in Chinese food for sampling. During their lunch break, hundreds of students stopped by each booth and fully immersed themselves with each culture on display.

Many students expressed a strong curiosity towards the Chinese characters; they all lined up to get their Chinese zodiac character painted on their face, arm or neck. Overall, students regard Chinese characters a ‘cool’ factor, they eagerly showed off their ‘temporary tattoo’ among their peers.

Back to Top

Granite Hills High School Taste of Chinese Culture

On June 3, 2011, Granite Hills High School hosted its annual Multicultural Fair. Peng Peng, a volunteer from Confucius Institute at San Diego State University, gave students a demonstration on how Chinese pictographs had undergone a tremendous change and now had been transformed into modern characters.

Before starting the game, in order to give the students a better understanding of Chinese characters, Peng Peng explained the ways how ancient Chinese created pictographs and the long history of its development. During the game, Peng Peng displayed pictures of natural objects on a board, such as ‘a mountain’, or the sun, etc. On the other side of the board, she purposely laid the cards with the objects’ names in pictographs and simplified Chinese characters out of sequence. Then, by matching the pictographs and simplified characters cards correctly with their corresponding pictures, two groups of students would compete against each other, the winners could win prizes including Chinese paper cut-outs and book marks supplied by Confucius Institute.

The students were very curious about Chinese characters as they expressed this was their very first experience seeing and learning about Chinese pictographs and modern version of Chinese characters. When Peng Peng first started the game, the students were very enthusiastic to participate. Peng Peng also allowed the students to call on for help from the audience. At the end of this activity, every participant received a prize. The outcome of learning Chinese characters through games for these students was successful.

Back to Top

Hamilton Elementary School

Hamilton Elementary Gearing Up for Chinese

Lilly Cheng visited Hamilton Elementary School on May 24, 2010 with the purpose to visit and plan the 2011-2012 school year. Hamilton Elementary School was recently added to the Confucius Classroom family. Over the past year, Hamilton has had an after school Mandarin Program that was initiated which proved to bring great results. The success here has lured a film crew from CCTV to visit Hamilton and even interviewed some of the students. Above the horizon, new programs will be launched in the fall semester of 2011 with a Chinese wall being created at Hamilton Elementary School and a classroom will be designated as the Chinese classroom.

Back to Top

High Tech International High School

CI at SDSU Supported High Tech High International Internship Program

On Friday, February 1, 2013, High Tech High International School Intern Counselor, Jill Chiodini, led three students to visit the Confucius Institute at San Diego State University for an observation of their fellow student, Ava Toledo’s progress as an intern. Ava is a student from High Tech High who came to CI for her student internship program. Under this program, each student would work for 3 weeks at his/her choice of work place. Yearly, there are more than hundreds of corporations, retailers and academic institutions participated in the internship program.

Ava shared her experience at CI office and showed the visitors various works she had completed during her 3 week’s schedule. These included promotional fliers, tri-fold bulletin board, classroom presentations, etc. Through the guidance and supervision from CI staff, Ava completed her internship with a newfound understanding of the workforce, work ethic, and Chinese culture.

Back to Top

CI at SDSU Attended High Tech High Student Mentor Internship Meeting

On December 13, 2012, CI at SDSU Project Coordinator, Jonathan Lee, attended the Student Mentor Internship meeting at High Tech High School’s. This meeting was to prepare High Tech High students and company mentors for the upcoming internship program in January. As always, CI at SDSU will be partaking in this program, receiving one intern during the month of January to prepare the intern in a work place environment before they graduate and advance to college.

The meeting began with an opening statement from High Tech High School Director, Robert Kuhl, introducing the internship program to the over 50 attendees. The introduction was followed by group discussions on topics, including ‘how to make the internship meaningful to the student’ and ‘how to prepare for the internship.’ The meeting provided much insight on what was to be expected from the internship. All of the attendees left with valuable knowledge for the upcoming project.

Back to Top

CI at SDSU Internship Program - Ava Toledo

High Tech High student Ava Toledo interned at CI at SDSU for the month of January as part of her student mentor program.

Click here to check her internship log

Back to Top

High Tech High International Internship Program

On Friday, January 27, 2012, led by their teacher, Joanne Sith, a group of four students from High Tech High International, Claire Norhrop, Kirby Brennan-Riddle, Melissa Garbito, and Josh Shtein, came to the Confucius Institute at San Diego State University to visit their friend Alexandra Nambo. Alexandra was a student from High Tech High who came to CI office for her internship. Under the internship program designed by HTHI, each student would work for 3 weeks at his/her choice of work place.

During their visit, Alexandra shared her experience at CI office, and showed them the fliers she designed for the Chinese New Year events in town. The report was done so well that her teacher was very pleased with the outcome.

Back to Top

CI at SDSU Internship Program - Alexandra Nambo

High Tech High Student Alexandra Nambo is currently doing an internship at the Confucius Institute's office in San Diego State University.

Click here to check her internship log

Back to Top

Hilltop High School

CI at SDSU Attended Multicultural Event at Hilltop High School

On March 15, 2013, in support of the existing Mandarin program at Confucius Classroom School at Hilltop High School, CI staff attended its annual Multicultural Fair. This event was to promote awareness and tolerance of multi-cultural diversity. This year’s program included various dancing performances, foods, and activities with South American, Asian, and European essences.

Project Manager Anne Chu, Project Coordinators Jonathan Lee and Crystal Qian, and Project Intern Albert Chan, set up a booth showcasing Chinese culture among other stands. Hundreds of students flocked to CI booth to get their names written in Chinese calligraphy style, or to have a temporary tattoo with beautifully drawn Chinese characters. This was the first time CI was invited to participate at the Multicultural Fair; the students were excited to see how their names were translated into Chinese. Many of them lingered around CI’s booth way after the schedule of the Fair was past.

The 2013 Multicultural event at Hilltop High School provided a wonderful opportunity for CI to continue its endeavors of promoting Chinese language and culture far and wide.

Back to Top

CI at SDSU supports Mandarin class at Hilltop High School in Sweetwater School District

On January 24, 2013, Co-Director of CI at SDSU, Professor Wei Lu, and Project Manager, Anne Chu, attended a reception at Hilltop High School for the visiting delegation group. Assistant Principal, Shu Feng Zhao, led this group from the high school attached to Northeast Normal University in Chengchun City, China.

On behalf of Principal Ernesto Zamudio, Vice Principal Eduardo Reyes of Hilltop High School welcomed the group warmly by introducing each member of the group. Representatives from the associated student body further expressed their welcome in both English and Mandarin. A series of entertainment programs were performed to the crowd’s delight. They included the Hilltop High School orchestra band; a Japanese traditional dance, and traditional Latin-style dances performed by the talented students. Assistant Principal Shu Feng Zhao addressed the audience, thanking them for the warm hospitality the delegation group received. He further expressed his personal commitment to strengthen the friendship and exchange program between the two groups.

Chengchun Normal University and Sweetwater School District established a partnership more than 20 years ago. Each year, 2 teachers from the high school attached to Northeast Normal University came to Chula Vista to teach Mandarin at Hilltop High School and Hilltop Middle School. Both of the aforementioned schools are now Confucius Classrooms that promote Chinese language and culture.

Back to Top

Hilltop Middle School

CI at SDSU Attended Hilltop Middle School Multicultural Festival

On November 16, 2012, CI at SDSU attended Hilltop Middle School’s multicultural festival in support of the Chinese program at the school. Throughout the night, several performances were held on stages including solo performances, group singing, and student dance performances. CI invited Three Treasures Performing Arts group to perform the lion dance for the audience. All the attendees were thoroughly and gave the performing group a grand applause. This is the first time for some of the parents and students to witness a live traditional Chinese performance up close. CI was provided with a booth to promote Chinese culture in which CI Staff and volunteers would write the names of students in beautifully drawn calligraphy. Teachers, students and their families alike came up to the booth and excitedly got their names drawn.

Back to Top

Lakeside Middle School

Multicultural Fair at Lakeside Middle School

On the evening of Tuesday April 24th, 2012, from 5PM to 7PM, Lakeside Middle School held its annual Multi-Cultural Performing Arts event. This event was held to inform both parents and students alike of the schools outstanding English, Spanish, and Chinese immersion programs, as well as to boost the interest of multi-lingual instruction for even more people. CI at SDSU was onsite to fully support the event.

During the fair, Lakeside Middle students first presented a rich and colorful program, including the recital of ancient Tang dynasty poems, a short rendition of “Alice in Wonderland” in Spanish and other performances. CI at SDSU intern, Jeff Kaemmerling, gave a trilingual self-introduction and shared his experience with everyone about his learning and being immersed in multiple languages. Afterwards, Jeff Kaemmerling gave a strong Chinese Kung-Fu and Tai-Chi demonstration. His multi-talented performance won bursts of applause and cheers from the many spectators. This exchange increased the parents and students’ interest towards Chinese culture and Chinese study, as they enthusiastically await more of these cultural exchange and show opportunities.

Back to Top

CI at SDSU received vistors from the 15st Middle School at Beijing

On January 30, 2012, a group of 45 students and 5 teachers from the 15th Middle School at Beijing, China came to San Diego during their visit to the U.S. The purpose of this trip is to learn of the American education system and through interactions with their American peers, to expand the understandings among races.

Through the arrangement made by CI of SDSU, the first stop for their visit in San Diego was Lakeside Middle School. LMS was well known by its various extracurricular programs. Under the supervision of their director, the Strings Band performed a few songs to welcome the visitors. The visiting students were then escorted by the ambassadors sent out from the ASB Association at LMS for a tour of the campus.

The Choir group and Dance Troupe at LMS later on also presented their individual shows to express their hospitality toward these guests. The guests from 15th Middle School of Beijing presented songs and poem recitals at the end to express their gratefulness of the warm hospitality they received.

The visitors then went on to visit Riverview International Academy and Elementary School nearby. They were hosted for lunch upon arrival. The students were divided into smaller groups as they were escorted by the Chinese teachers at Riverview to visit the Mandarin programs in various grade levels. The guests also had opportunities to interact with local students to learn of the similarities and differences between two cultures.

Back to Top

Lakeside Middle School Students Host Chinese New Year Festivities

Traditional Chinese singing, dancing, eating, painting and exhibiting Chinese culture filled the auditorium; one may have thought they were in China celebrating the New Year. On Tuesday, February 9, 2011 between 11am-1pm, the Confucius Institute helped collaborate with Lakeside Middle School students to hold a wide range of festivities to celebrate Chinese New Year with their fellow classmates.

Students put on various shows which were arranged by Ms. Li Lei. To open the celebration, students sang a famous Chinese song "Gongxi Gongxi" which is a popular term used during the New Year which is used in combination with other words to bring luck and prosperity for the upcoming year. Also, some students performed traditional Chinese choreographed dancing while wearing Chinese dresses and carrying paper umbrellas.

Following these performances, students were free to walk around the auditorium to their classmate's exhibition booths. Students were given a sheet of paper to fill out as they visited each booth to better comprehend Chinese New Year by answering questions such as "What is the story behind why Chinese light-off fireworks?". Some of these booths even included homemade chow mein and dumplings cooked by the students. Another booth presented traditional Chinese fashion and its significance. They also had a booth explaining the order of the Chinese Zodiac and the underlying meaning of each animal.

The Confucius Institute offered activities ranging from writing student's names in Chinese calligraphy to face painting. Jeremy Yan, a teacher at Lakeside Middle School, volunteered to help CI by phonetically translating student's English names to Chinese characters. Michael had the longest line as students waited to get Chinese characters painted on their faces.

As the bell rang to return to class, students were still lingering around to get additional face paintings and Chinese calligraphy names for their family members. Now, these students have a better understanding of the events that occur on the biggest celebrated holiday in China.

Back to Top

Manhattan Beach Middle School

CI at SDSU visited Manhattan Beach Middle School District for Chinese Club program update

On May 08, Project Manager of CI/SDSU, Anne Chu, and intern, Crystal Qian visited Manhattan Beach Middle School District. They met with Education Sources Director, Ms. Carolyn Seaton for an update on the progress of the Mandarin program being implemented at Manhattan Beach Middle School since September 2011. Parent representative, Mrs. Jenny Wang-Cohn, and CI volunteer teacher, Ms. Ziyi Geng were also present at the meeting.

Ms. Seaton first informed CI representatives that due to the overwhelming popularity of the Chinese Club program at Manhattan Beach Middle School, parents and school officials from neighboring elementary schools enthusiastically requested Geng Laoshi’s presentation at each school site as well. Since March 2012, Geng Laoshi introduced the Chinese Club activities at Pacific Elementary School to the 5th grade students. Each Tuesday during lunch break, from 12:15PM to 12:45PM, many students flocked to the Chinese Club classroom; they participated excitedly in each week’s activity, whether it be making paper cutting patterns, or learning to draw Chinese paintings. The faculty staff at Pacific Elementary School shared the student’s excitements; Principal Kim Linz displayed the students’ works on the window of her office, which attracted even more attention from parents and other students.

Ms. Seaton also provided an update on the Mandarin class at Manhattan Beach Middle School. Many 6th grade students are now regular participants at the Chinese Club every week; also most of the 7th grade students currently enrolled in the Mandarin class would continue on to their 2nd year in the program；there were plans to expand the Chinese class to 2 schedules for each level next year. Ms. Seaton would submit an official application request to CI office for 2 Hanban teachers for next school year of 2012/13.

Back to Top

Manhattan Beach Middle School Plaque Ceremony

On November 15, 2011, co-sponsored by CI/SDSU, Manhattan Beach Middle Schooled staged the plaque ceremony to celebrate its Confucius Classroom accreditation. Many distinguished guests were present to join in this wonderful event, including Mayor of Manhattan Beach City, Mr. Nicholas W. Tell, Superintendent of Manhattan Beach School District, Dr. Michael D. Matthews, Executive Director of Educational Services at MBUSB, Ms. Carolyn Seaton, Superintendent of Hacienda Heights La Puente School District, Mr. Norman Hsu, and Education Consul from the Los Angeles Consul General Office, Ms. Cuiying Xu.

The ceremony started promptly at 3:30PM at Manhattan Beach Middle School. After Principal John Jackson opened the afternoon’s program by introducing the honored guests, he invited Superintendent Matthews and Managing Director of CI/SDSU, Dr. Lilly Cheng, to the podium to unveil the beautiful golden plaque bearing the title, “Confucius Classroom at Manhattan Beach Middle School”. More than 75 people in the audience, including supportive parents, students, roared with delight. The students in the symphony and choir group at MBMS provided live entertainment for the guests; they were also marveled by the singing, in perfect Chinese pronunciation, from the students of the newly established Chinese Club. At the end, Dr. Cheng’s demonstration of Chinese calligraphy left the guests in awe.

Both Dr. Matthews and Dr. Cheng addressed the audience pledging their respective support to the Mandarin program at MBMS. Witnessing the strong support demonstrated by many parents, they had no doubt that this new program of foreign language teaching at MBMS would take off in no time.

Refreshments in Chinese theme were served after the ceremony ended; many guests lingered around as they continued to enjoy the high spirits evident in the Hall.

Back to Top

Back to Top

Montgomery Middle School

CI Attended Montgomery Middle School’s Back-to-School Night

On September 20, 2012 at 6PM, Montgomery Middle School held its annual ‘Back to School Night’ to welcome parents and students to the new school year. Mandarin classes have been offered at Montgomerysince 2009, but this was the first year that Mandarin classes were open to all grade levels, 6th – 8th.

Principal Jacqueline Luzak opened the evening’s program by welcoming all the parents, at which time she introduced Project Manager of Confucius Institute at SDSU, Anne Chu, to the audience. Principal Luzak expressed her gratitude for CI’s and Hanban’s generosity and continual support for providing a Chinese teacher and the numerous text books and other supplementary teaching materials.

After the opening presentation, parents were invited to visit each student’s classroom. They were met with Hanban’s teacher Ms. Du Hou at the Chinese classroom. Ms. Du Hou is an experienced Mandarin teacher from China’s Zhongshan University. Anne Chu and Ms. Du Hou met with parents of each grade level. Ms. Hou shared her teaching plan, and the topics that would be covered during the student’s trimester schedule. In the 8th grade class, Anne Chu shared information on the Chinese Bridge Summer Camp program for American high school students. Many parents expressed interest in the program. Ms. Jodi Willhite, the resident teacher of the 8th grade Chinese class, invited Anne Chu to come back to Montgomery in the near future to give a more detailed presentation to the students and their parents.

Back to Top

Quanzhou No.5 Middle School visits San Diego

On February 6, 2012, a performance troupe of 83 students and teachers from Quanzhou No.5 Middle School in Quanzhou, Fujian province, China, arrived in San Diego. It was led by Ji-ping Li, Chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Committee (CPPCC) of Quanzhou city. Other group leaders included Wen-wei Zheng, Director of the Education Bureau of Quanzhou city; and Shu-fang Liu, Principal of Quanzhou No.5 Middle School. Before they came to San Diego, the troupe had just delivered a successful performance on February 1st at the Headquarters of the United Nations in New York, which was part of the “Culture of China ‧ Chinese Intangible Cultural Heritage Show”. Their show, “Southern Music at the Lantern Festival”, was a mix of several unique traditional musical and dancing styles, such as castanet, lantern swaying and chest beating, which were popular in the coastal rural regions in Fujian province.

The troupe was warmly welcomed at a luncheon organized by Wen-xiong Chen, President of San Diego Fujianese Association, and other Chinese community leaders in San Diego. During the luncheon, San Diego County Supervisor, Mr. Ron Roberts, who had visited Quanzhou city three times in the past, commented that this was his first time to welcome a students’ performance troupe of such size in San Diego. He would keep a close watch on the students’ performance in the future. Peng Peng, a volunteer from the Confucius Institute at San Diego State University, served as the Master of the Ceremony.

After the luncheon, the troupe visited Montgomery Middle School in El Cajon, one of the Confucius Classroom schools under CI/SDSU. The troupe was accompanied by David Du, Honorary President of San Diego Fujianese Association; George Peng, President of San Diego Chongqingnese Association; and Peng Peng from CI/SDSU.

The troupe performed their famous program to show their appreciation of the hospitality from Montgomery Middle School; the beautiful traditional costumes and the ancient festive holiday melodies transported the audience to a distant realm in southern China. Principal Kelly Madden of Montgomery Middle School exchanged gifts with Principal Shu-fang Liu of Quanzhou No.5 Middle School. They expressed their mutual interest to strengthen the interactions between the two schools in the future. Superintendent of Cajon Valley School District, Dr. Janice Cook, also attended the luncheon and enjoyed the performance at Montgomery.

Back to Top

El Cajon Valley High School Confucius Classroom Inaugurated the Ceremony of Year of the Dragon Chinese New Year Theatrical Performances

Beginning the year of the dragon, Zhejiang Normal University teachers and students was led by the Vice- Principal Jiang Guojun, a group of 25 people visited San Diego as their first destination in the United States for their performance tour. Delegations arrived in San Diego on February 1st, and after a short break, the group members were escorted to the performance venue for the February 2nd performance for a rehearsal.

Their first performance was held at El Cajon Valley High School on February 2nd. On the same day, El Cajon Valley High School also held an opening ceremony for officially becoming a Confucius Classroom. The San Diego State University Confucius Institute Managing Director Dr. Lilly Cheng and Project Manager Anne Chu arrived at the scene early to help with the preparation. The ceremony was presided by the Principal of El Cajon Valley High School Erin Richison. Superintendent Ralf Swenson of Grossmont Union High School District and Confucius Institute Managing Director Dr. Lilly Cheng congratulated the teachers and students of El Cajon Valley High School. Principal Jiang Guojun also gave a speech welcoming teachers and students the opportunity to visit China.

Following, the performance officially began. The students and teachers of Zhejiang Normal University provided an extremely unique Chinese song and dance performance. The opening dance “Lion Spring Festival” attracted the students’ attention and activated the atmosphere. Next, the euphemism rolling, ethereal and elegant Chinese folk music, and beautiful folk dance was warmly welcomed and applauded by the students. The martial arts performance was the most popular out of the entire show. The performers were uniformed, and show firmness and flexibility to play the essence of Chinese martial arts. They won the audiences cheering.

Through the network connection, live coverage of Montgomery Middle School, Malibu Middle School and Rialto Middle School were being broadcast. Teachers and students were watching the performance, and were deeply infected by the sense of culture, making this performance significant. Teachers and students felt that the performance itself was more meaningful compare to all the paintings, music, and dances.

The performance ended with the cheering and blessing of the entire school. In the following days, the delegations of Zhejiang Normal University will continue to perform at Central Elementary School, Barnard Mandarin Magnet Elementary School, and the University of San Diego with three performances.

Back to Top

CI at SDSU received vistors from the 161st Middle School at Beijing

On February 02, 2012, a group of 85 students and 5 teachers from the 161stth Middle School at Beijing, China came to San Diego during their visit to the U.S. The purpose of this trip was to learn of the American education system and through interactions with their American peers, to gain mutual understanding among races.

Through the arrangement made by CI of SDSU, the group visited Montgomery Middle School in El Cajon. Under the program designed by Principal Kelly Madden, Montgomery teachers, Mr. Tim Dobbins, Ms. Jodi Willhite and Ms. Catherine Xi, along with their students in the Mandarin class, presented a series of interactive programs. The visiting students were escorted by the hosting students for a tour of the campus first, and then each was guided to a classroom to be engaged in the classroom activity.

After a nutritious lunch, all students went on to the playground for a group activity. Every one of them expressed their appreciation of such an opportunity to interact at the end of the group activity. Students and teachers also exchanged a small souvenir to one another to express their gratefulness of being part of this day’s presentation.

Back to Top

The 3rd Confucius Classroom Forum of CI/SDSU

On October 25, 2011, from 9:00AM – 3:00PM, the 3rd Confucius Classroom Forum of CI/SDSU was held at Montgomery Middle School in Cajon Valley School District in San Diego County, California. More than 40 attendees, including school district superintendents, principals and teachers were present. Director of Education Consul, President Zhuenmin Chen, as well as Education Consul Madame Cuiying Xu from Consulate General of The People’s Republic of China in Los Angeles attended the forum as well. Principal Kelly Madden of MMS, Project Manager of CI/SDSU, Anne Chu, were the hosts of the meeting.

Professor Guijun Ruan from Wuhan University was the first speaker of the day. He gave the audience an introduction of the Confucius Classrooms at the University of Pittsburg. In addition, he addressed the issues of teleconference teaching and shared his experience in it with everyone. Instructor Yuan Quan from Yuan Quan Art Studio showcased her unique pedagogy of Chinese language through teaching of Chinese culture and arts. Fully utilizing her artistic expertise, she had designed an immersion teaching program combining Chinese characters with painting to lead students into an environment full of Chinese arts, such as calligraphy painting, identifying Chinese characters and understanding short sentences. A few examples included panda painting, beginners’ appreciation of Chinese calligraphy & Chinese painting, and using the story of the little tadpole searching for its mommy. Yuan Quan also presented a few sets of calligraphy works, including a piece which featured 24 variations of the word "water", composing of a pictogram and a painting. The vivid and lively presentations suddenly became a fun-packed event. The audience was mesmerized by the remarkable productions from her students. Mr. Felix Bonomo, a local photographer, brought in his exhibit, "Chinese Women Holding Half of The Sky", to share with all. His fascinating narration was met with cheering applause.

During breaks in between the forum, Principal Madden invited each attendee to introduce him/herself. Managing Director of CI, Dr. Lilly Cheng, expressed her deepest gratitude to all the Chinese teachers for their great performance. She further encouraged everyone to fully utilize the opportunity at this forum to learn and share their experience with one another, thus elevating the Mandarin program at each Confucius Classroom school to the next level. Later on, Director Cheng introduced Director of Education Consul, Mr. Zhuenmin Chen to the podium. Under Chinese teacher Catherine Xi’s supervision, the 6th and 7th grade students at Montgomery provided live entertainment for the audience. They each introduced themselves in Chinese, demonstrating a short skit in groups of 2-3 individuals. Their fan dance and red silk dance won a standing ovation from the crowd. The forum ended after a presentation by Montgomery teacher, Ms. Amber, on the subject of “Approaches to Learning”. Everyone who attended this forum was very appreciative of the opportunity to exchange their ideas and experiences.

Back to Top

Montgomery Middle Gets a Taste of CI’s Chinese Summer Camp

On June 3, 2011, the Confucius Institute was invited by Principal Kelly Madden of Montgomery Middle School in El Cajon, CA to encourage students to participate in the 2011 Chinese Summer Camp. To boost awareness, Project coordinator, Michael Sedurifa along with CI volunteers, Cici Wang and James Dopp created group competitions among three different classes totaling over 100 students utilizing program details and highlights of the Chinese Summer Camp.

Michael first introduced the program and then to make things more exciting, he divided the 3 classes into groups and named them after a popular cartoon series, The Last Airbender featuring Chinese elements such as water, fire, and earth. Some of the highlights that were shared were learning Chinese calligraphy, making jianzi and jiaozi, visiting the San Diego Chinese Historical Museum, and taking part in a scavenger hunt through the Convoy district. The teams then competed for prizes using camp highlights which were turned into themes such as best calligraphy writing, which Xi Laoshi acted as the judge, jianzi competition, Chinese trivia, and memorization of the Chinese zodiac.

Each student was fully engaged and enjoyed the presentation. After asking who was interested in attending the camp, about half of the students raised their hands, and asked for applications. The presentation created excitement and gave students a little taste of Chinese summer camp.

Back to Top

Back to Top

Business Education Committee at Montgomery Middle

At 8AM on February 18, 2011, CI/SDSU Project Coordinator, Anne Chu, was invited to join the Business Education Committee of San Diego East County, Chamber of Commerce in its February Meeting. The location was chosen at Montgomery Middle School (MMS) in El Cajon in order to learn about the new Mandarin program being offered as one of the elective subjects in September 2010.

The mission of the San Diego East County Chamber of Commerce’s Business Education Committee is to bring school districts, colleges and member business together to foster an environment of collaboration, to make the resources of their business community available to educators, and to conduct annual education-related events.

Principal Kelly Madden, international Baccalaureate Director, Jonathan Green and Assistant Principal Robin Hagemann gave an impressive presentation of the innovative initiatives being undertaken at MMS. Being an international Baccalaureate Candidate School, the goal for MMS is to expand its IB program by incorporating Mandarin class as one of the IB courses. Teacher Catherine Xi, under a partnership program between CI/SDSU and Xiamen University, came to San Diego County in August, 2010. She would stay in the U.S. for 2 years.

The audience was impressed that after only 3 months of learning Mandarin, the students were able to converse and perform in Mandarin. Ms Chu gave a brief presentation of CI and the support system provided by Hanban. She also addressed the challenge of placing qualified teachers without California Teaching Credential in any of the local school. Mr. Douglas S. Deane, P.E, Chair of the Committee, expressed his willingness to advocate any measure that could fulfill the need for teaching staff for schools to the local School District legislators.

Back to Top

Point Loma High School

Proclamation to CI at SDSU by SDUSD

On September 11, 2012, San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) Board of Education held its regular meeting in the Board of Education Office. During the meeting, a proclamation was awarded to the Confucius Institute at San Diego State University for its dedication and devotion to the Mandarin programs throughout San Diego County and City. CI at SDSU has been supporting the Point Loma Cluster Schools, such as Correia Middle School and Point Loma High School to establish its Mandarin Program for the last four years, and has provided over 50 language and cultural activities to Barnard Mandarin Elementary School, which included teacher training, Chinese summer camps, and Chinese Bridge Program, just to name a few.

On behalf of CI at SDSU, Managing Director Dr. Lilly Cheng received the honored proclamation from President of the Board of Education, Dr. John Lee Evans, and Vice President, Mr. Scott Barnett. Members of the Board of Education, Mr. Richard Barrera, Mr. Kevin Beiser, Mrs. Shelia Jackson, and Superintendent of SDUSD Mr. Bill Kowba were all in attendance to offer their congratulatory wishes to CI. Co-Director Professor Lu Wei, Project Manager Anne Chu, and several members of the CI at SDSU staff, including some of the CC school teachers and visiting scholars were present to celebrate this memorable occasion.

Back to Top

Premier of "The Romance at the Western Chamber"

On October 10, 2011, a group of 25 performers led by Deputy Dean of School of Music from Zhejiang University of Media and Communications, Prof. Baohua Wang, arrived in San Diego as their first stop in the United States on their “Eastern Rhyme of Passion” American Campus Tour.

A group of local volunteers, led by Managing Director of CI/SDSU, Dr. Lilly Cheng, welcomed the touring group at San Diego airport. These volunteers acting as chauffeurs gave the performers a quick tour of the San Diego Harbor before bringing them to Barnard Mandarin Chinese Magnet Elementary School for their first show. Cheering students excitedly greeted them upon their arrival. Despite of the limited time for preparation, these musicians, dancers presented a beautiful show.

The main performance of the evening was held at Point Loma High School. Hundreds of students, teachers and friends of CI crowded the auditorium eagerly waiting for the program. The highlight of the show was a short presentation of “Romance of the Western Chamber – Xi Xiang Ji”, being adapted into an English musical by Dr. Howard Rubinstein. This would be the first time it was performed in the United States after its premier in Zhejiang on September, 09, 2011.

The audience gave a standing ovation at the end of the program, many expressed their sentiment that they only wished the show could be longer.

Back to Top

Moon cake game – celebrating Mid-Autumn Festival in PLHS

On Sep.11th, 2011, The Mid Autumn Festival, one of China’s oldest traditional holidays, is celebrated at Point Loma High School. On this day, the Chinese-learning students in PLHS experienced something new for the first time: the moon cake game.

The moon cake game is an old folk custom in Xiamen (Amoy) area, usually held during the days of the Mid-autumn Festival and it signifies having good luck from the Moon God.

During the Chinese class, the students learned history, stories, celebrations, and other things regarding the festival. After class, they played the moon cake game. The game intrigued the teachers and students very much as they enjoyed themselves and received beautiful presents relating to Chinese culture.

With the Mid-autumn Festival and the moon cake game, everyone involved became more and more interested in traditional Chinese culture and festivities. They hope to see more of such activities in the future.

Back to Top

Back to Top

Riverview Elementary and International Academy

Managing Director Attended 21st Century Symposium

On March 7, 2013, Managing Director of Confucius Institute at San Diego State University, Dr. Lilly Cheng, was invited as one of the speakers at the 21st Century Education Symposium, held at Riverview International Academy and Elementary School. Attending this symposium was a delegation group of 20 scholars from Shijiazhuang, China who came to San Diego for a one-week training program.

The students from Riverview International Academy greeted these scholars by presenting a dance performance at the welcoming ceremony. These students were able to express their passion for learning Mandarin with the visitors from China.

Back to Top

Riverview International Academy Chinese Lunar New Year Celebration

On January 31st 2013 at 6:00 p.m., teachers and students of Confucius Classrooms at Riverview International Academy under Confucius Institute at San Diego State University held a special Chinese New Year celebration at Lakeside Middle School. More than 600 people joined this event, including Superintendent of Lakeside Union School District, Dr. David Lorden, and Managing Director of Confucius Institute at San Diego State University, Dr. Lilly Cheng.

Staff members from CI at SDSU were stationed at the lobby of Lakeside Middle School’s Auditorium before the evening show began. They provided Chinese calligraphy demonstrations, Chinese paper-cutting and showcased Beijing Opera masks for audiences to enjoy. The evening program lasted two hours which included: students’ singing and dancing; Chinese Gu Zheng performance by Hanban volunteer teacher, Ms. Lu Jing Zhang; a Lion Dance troupe of CI educational partner, Three Treasures Cultural Arts Society; and Chinese teachers singing and dancing, all of which won roars of applause from the audience. Chinese teachers sponsored by Hanban, Ms.Yu Chang Li and Ms. Lu Jing Zhang, also prepared traditional Chinese New Year cuisine, Jiaozi (Dumpling) for the audience to taste.

The event not only demonstrated the Chinese proficiency level of the students, but also introduced more aspects of Chinese culture to the crowd, enticing their interest to study Chinese language. This event also made positive impacts to the public image of CI at SDSU and Riverview International Academy.

Back to Top

San Diego State University Confucius Institute Held the First Local Mandarin Teachers and Teaching Material Workshop

On October 20 – 21, 2012, Confucius Institute at San Diego State University held its first local Mandarin teachers and teaching material workshop. There were a total of 65 educators, including school principals, teachers from public schools and local Chinese schools, as well as Hanban sponsored teachers.

The Education Department of the Chinese Consulate General Office in Los Angeles paid close attention to the activities of the workshop; Chinese education Consul, Madame Cuiying Xu, attended the opening ceremony. The representatives from China’s Higher Education Press Foreign Language and International Chinese Publishing Division and Beijing Chuwei Cultural Communications Company also attended the event. San Diego Chinese media agency “Wu Zhou Si Hai” videotaped and reported on the program.

At the opening ceremony, Consul Xu congratulated CI at SDSU for holding the training program. She stressed to the attendees that training for local Mandarin teachers and teaching material bore important practical significance; she wished the attendees in advanced congratulations for completing the workshop successfully. After the opening ceremony, Principal Edward Park of Barnard Chinese Magnet Elementary School shared his experiences and described the topic of “how to create a real language environment for students to learn Chinese and communicate in an intercultural environment through the building of sister schools.”

During the seminar, Mrs. Olympia Kyriakidas, principal of Riverview Elementary School, introduced the School’s comprehensive support for the Chinese program management, “Chinese Curriculum Provision and Textbook Selection”. Following her lecture, local Chinese instructor Mrs. Chi Ping Chang introduced ‘how to establish Chinese teaching courses to match the requirements of California State University as well as how to select and adapt to the corresponded Chinese textbooks’. Her lecture offered beneficial inspirations for localizing and standardizing Chinese curriculum and referential experiences for leading Chinese teaching into higher levels of mainstream curriculum.

Managing Director Dr. Lilly Cheng hosted two picturesque seminars by taking “To Learn Chinese Everyday” as an example, the textbook being writing by SDSU’s Confucius Institute. She introduced the Chinese textbook’s design, compilation, adaptation and evaluation in detail and invited attendees to join in the simulated class activities, offering beneficial suggestions and proposals to them. Moreover, Dr. Cheng demonstrated how to enable Chinese characters to be more fitted to the classroom such as activities where children are involved in Chinese character writing by inviting attendee to draw the ancient Chinese character of “Long”, which means dragon in English, on T-shirts through her instruction. In addition, Dr. Cheng invited Hanban teacher Mrs. Lijuan Wang to lead interactive stories where the attendees played the roles of characters in the story.

CI Co-director Professor Wei Lu held three lectures during the workshop. He first introduced and demonstrated how to obtain and utilize Chinese teaching resources. He provided a large amount of Chinese textbooks resources issued by National Chinese teaching program to the trainees. He then introduced how to apply language technology to the exploration and utilization of Chinese textbook. He demonstrated technology such as Pinyin automatic tagging, Chinese character recognition, voice recognition, and speech synthesis, just to name a few. In addition, he took an example of course teaching by introducing and demonstrating how to design and establish interactive Chinese teaching. To conclude his lecture, Professor Lu shared his explanation of language through an interactive Power Point of training, animation demo of Chinese character strokes, and choice questions with offering the access right of Chinese teaching material corpus resources.

Several other seminars were given by local Chinese instructors during the workshop. Mrs. Grace Cox introduced how to apply Web 2.0 to support Chinese teaching and to strengthen learning efficiency and offered internet links to the trainees. Mrs. Sally Lowe introduced and demonstrated how to make learning Chinese more fun through games and activities, stimulating and sustaining the motivations and interests of children. Through the use of these activities, students will be more attracted to actively participate in the class learning. The trainees were asked to join in the activities to understand the concept.

During the two days of training, Confucius Institute at SDSU introduced and exhibited Chinese teaching resources issued by National Chinese teaching program to the trainees, gave teaching textbooks and CDs, offered a Survey for Intention for Use of Textbooks, An order form for textbooks, and a survey for training workshop satisfaction. In addition, SDSU Confucius Institute arranged the lunch time lecture by Dr. Norman Leonard from SDSU Language Acquisition Resource Center to introduce the Chinese teaching resources of the center and El Capitan High School Principal, Laura Whitaker to introduce the Chinese teaching and textbook choosing status in her school at the round table conference.

At the closing ceremony, Dr. Cheng gave awards to all the presenters and certificates of completion to the trainees for attending and completing the teacher training workshop. The trainees gave their appreciated to the Confucius Institute for holding this workshop sponsored by Hanban. The attendees were satisfied with the designation, content, organization, arrangement, and service of the training. The attendees believed that this training was practical and with an abundance of information that not only offered textbooks and teaching resources from Hanban, but the local teaching resource from SDSU Confucius Institute. Along with methodology to using the teaching resource, language techniques through exhibition and manufacturing documents for discussion were greatly appreciated. Some teachers said they learned a lot from this training workshop. Through model lessons and discussion, they have so many new ideas about how to use the teaching materials and widen their horizon. From the interaction and specialist seminar, they know about new Chinese teaching directions, educational technology and teaching methods. They also speak highly of the teaching methods and teaching resource and hope we could have more training programs in the future.

This was the first time that CI at SDSU attempted to hold a local Chinese teacher training by implementing the “2012 Confucius Institute (Classroom) teaching resource training program” from Hanban teaching resource department. CI paid more attention on designation and implementation of the program, and set it to be one of the most important works of this year. CI considered the practice of local Chinese teaching to design and apply the project for training program by the requirement from Hanban. Through labourous hard work and dedication from CI staff and volunteers, and the team spirit from all resulted in the success of the training program. The joint efforts received much admiration from the trainees.

Back to Top

2012 Chinese Summer Camp Program

The 4th annual Chinese Summer Camp Program organized by Confucius Institute at SDSU took place from July 9th-20th, 2012. The program provided intensive Chinese language education to children 5-12 years of age regardless of their level of Mandarin knowledge. Held at Barnard Mandarin Chinese Magnetic Elementary School, Point Loma, California, a total of 18 students from Barnard Mandarin Chinese magnetic Elementary School, Riverview Elementary and International Academy, and many other schools participated in this year’s 2-week summer camp.

During each week, the students were taught by native Chinese teachers and were immersed in many aspects of Chinese language and culture activities. Students learned proper pronunciation, reading and writing Chinese. The students learned to introduce themselves and their family members; asked the day, date, date of birth; addition and subtraction of numbers; describing their favorite food, color, animal and sport in Chinese. Cultural activities included learning Chinese games, songs, calligraphy and what numbers are considered lucky by Chinese. To further enhance their learning experience, the students were paired up with Chinese students from the Shanghai Ladder School, Xinjiang Ladder English school summer study tours, and the Experimental Primary School #1 in Henan Province, China. CI summer Camp students and Chinese students interacted with one another through art projects, games, Tai chi practice, singing songs and group performances.

On the final day of the camp, parents were invited to the closing ceremony and were entertained with songs and short speeches performed in Chinese by the students. “I really had fun at the summer camp.” commented Nicholas, one of the students. “All of the activities were so interesting, unlike any other camp that I went before. And I learned a lot about Mandarin and Chinese culture. I want to sign up for the Summer Camp program for next year now.”

Back to Top

LARC received two visitors from China Hunan Province

On May 22, 2012, two visitors from China arrived in San Diego for a visit to CI/SDSU and its affiliated CC schools. They were Mr. Ouyang Jei Fu, the corporate representative of Beijing Chuwei Culture Communication Co. Ltd. and Mr. Yuan Wei Kun, Vice president of Hunan Mass Media Vocational Technical College. The purpose of their visit in San Diego was to learn about the Language Acquisition Resource Center (LARC) of San Diego State University.

Norman Leonard, Director of Outreach of LARC, Evan Rubin, Director of Instructional Technology, and Chris Brown, Director of Programs/Projects, jointly gave a briefing of the functions of LARC, and demonstrated many programs that LARC has been developing.

On May 23, the visitors visited Barnard Mandarin Chinese Magnet School; they met with Principal Edward Park and many Chinese language teachers to learn about the needs directly from these teachers. They also visited Riverview International Academy on May 24 to learn about tri-lingual education. They were able to gather essential knowledge from their visits to CC schools on how to develop the text materials adapting to the local needs.They were eager to form a close relationship with CI SDSU in developing culturally relevant materials for learners of Chinese language and culture.

Back to Top

CI Participated at Riverview Elementary Multicultural Event

On April 28, 2012, Volunteers from CISDSU participated at Riverview Elementary School’s Multicultural Day event. Project coordinator Jonathan Lee and volunteers Ling Zhong and Yalong Song attended this event. Jeremy Yan, a Chinese teacher from Riverview Elementary, also assisted the CI booth. CISDSU had established a booth where they provided the English names of attendees in beautifully drawn calligraphy. Students and parents alike were ecstatic as they left our booth, taking home with them a little bit more of Chinese culture.

Back to Top

Meeting with Dr. Myriam Met to Discuss Standardization of Chinese Text Materials

On April 03, 2012, Project Manager of CI/SDSU, Anne Chu, at the invitation of Sally Fox, FLAP Director at English Learner and Support Services of San Diego County Office of Education, met with Dr. Myriam Met, formal Director of National Foreign Language Center (NFLC) at the University of Maryland. Also present was Chinese teacher, Ke Xu, from Riverview Elementary and International Academy. The purpose of this meeting is for collaboration for standardization of Chinese text materials.

Dr. Met is now an independent consultant who works K-12 for language programs and teachers professional development. She was also a supervisor of foreign language instruction for major urban and suburban school districts for over 25 years. In that capacity, and as a consultant to educational agencies, she planned, implemented, and evaluated language programs K-12 including elementary and secondary programs.

During their meeting, Dr. Met shared her experience of working with various school districts, interstate wise, for the immersion programs of foreign languages. Other subjects included the comprehension and teaching assessments in the classrooms; and teachers training or workshops for modern methodology.

Back to Top

Riverview Elementary Chinese New Year Celebration Report

On Wednesday February 1, 2012, from 5PM – 8PM, the Confucius Institute at San Diego State University came to Riverview Elementary and International Academy to support its celebration of the Chinese New Year. Managing director of CI/SDSU, Dr. Lilly Cheng, opened the ceremony with her OLLE presentation on the brain function and multilingual capacity of children. The audience responded with thunderous applauds to express their appreciation.

Following the opening of the celebration were many shows of Chinese dances, songs, and Kung-Fu performances provided by the Riverview students. Notably, the Kung-Fu demonstration of the 5th and 6th students was led by Jeremy Yan, a Hanban teacher from Xiamen University at Riverview. Special performances were also provided by CI/SDSU volunteers. Mr. Fang played a wonderful flute solo, Ms. Peng performed a beautiful, traditional fan dance, and Jeff Kaemmerling demonstrated various Kung-Fu and Tai-Chi forms. Coordinated by Project Manager, Anne Chu, CI staff and volunteers set up stations of activities in a classroom. Included are Chinese calligraphy writing and paper lantern making. During this exciting time, Anne Chu skillfully painted Chinese zodiac characters on students’ hands and cheeks. Parents and students eagerly flocked to every station and warmly thanked the CI staff for their support to the school and the opportunity to learn a bit of Chinese culture through these types of activities.

Back to Top

CI at SDSU received vistors from the 15th Middle School at Beijing

On January 30, 2012, a group of 45 students and 5 teachers from the 15th Middle School at Beijing, China came to San Diego during their visit to the U.S. The purpose of this trip is to learn of the American education system and through interactions with their American peers, to expand the understandings among races.

Through the arrangement made by CI of SDSU, the first stop for their visit in San Diego was Lakeside Middle School. LMS was well known by its various extracurricular programs. Under the supervision of their director, the Strings Band performed a few songs to welcome the visitors. The visiting students were then escorted by the ambassadors sent out from the ASB Association at LMS for a tour of the campus.

The Choir group and Dance Troupe at LMS later on also presented their individual shows to express their hospitality toward these guests. The guests from 15th Middle School of Beijing presented songs and poem recitals at the end to express their gratefulness of the warm hospitality they received.

The visitors then went on to visit Riverview International Academy and Elementary School nearby. They were hosted for lunch upon arrival. The students were divided into smaller groups as they were escorted by the Chinese teachers at Riverview to visit the Mandarin programs in various grade levels. The guests also had opportunities to interact with local students to learn of the similarities and differences between two cultures.

Back to Top

Riverview International Academy Featured on FOX News

On Friday May 6, 2011, Lilly Cheng visited the Riverview International Academy and was interviewed by Heather Ford of the San Diego local Fox channel. Heather visited the Mandarin classroom and observed students learning Mandarin and using the iPad to learn the Chinese written language. In celebration of language learning, Fox devoted a portion of the morning news program to report on the Mandarin immersion program. Students, teachers and families of the Riverview International Academy were excited to be visited by the Fox channel.

Watch the news video here

Back to Top

Riverview International Academy Hosts Confucius Classroom Forum II

The second Confucius Classroom Forum was hosted by Riverview International Academy in conjunction with the Confucius Institute on April 8, 2011 from 11am-3pm. Chinese teacher and educators alike were treated to a campus tour of their Kindergarten and first grade immersion programs, as well as of their trilingual programs of English, Spanish, and Mandarin. Hosts Principal Olympia Kyriakidis and Chinese teacher Ke Xu wonderfully led forum attendees from each classroom sharing technological resources and curriculum ideas.

As the forum progressed, each Confucius Classroom educator brought insight into their own programs which proved valuable to all participants. All were in agreement that collaboratively the teaching of Mandarin will surely progress, while CI staff and faculty dedicated their service to every Confucius Classroom.