US-China Higher Education Alliance

U.S. Schools to Host Teachers from China
Native Mandarin Speakers to Serve as Authentic Cultural Resources

01/25/07
Thirty-four Mandarin-speaking teachers from China will arrive in the United States this week as part of the Chinese Guest Teacher Program. Teachers will be placed in schools and districts in 19 states and will teach at the high school, middle school, and elementary school level. (Host school and district names are listed at the end of the release.) By 2009, the Program will bring as many as 250 qualified teachers from China to teach in American classrooms for up to three years.
The Chinese Guest Teacher Program is sponsored by Hanban, China’s Office of Chinese Language Council International, in partnership with the College Board. Teacher stipends are being paid by Hanban while host schools provide housing, transportation, and administrative fees (for visa processing and required health insurance). Guest teachers are interviewed by the College Board for pedagogy, classroom management, cultural tolerance, and language skills in both Chinese and English.
The program represents a unique opportunity for students and educators to learn Chinese and learn about China from a native speaker. Schools and districts will start a new Chinese program or expand an existing program. In addition, guest teachers will assist with curriculum development, student recruitment, and materials development. They will also serve as a cultural resource for other subject areas and for cultural enrichment activities in the community.
The guest teachers will work at the host schools for 18 months, and then renew for an additional year if both the school and teacher are satisfied. The Chinese Guest Teacher Program seeks to address the shortage of qualified Chinese teachers in the U.S. and meet the growing interest in Chinese among U.S. high school students. The next group of up to 100 teachers will arrive in August 2007.
“We are pleased to enable more American students to learn the Chinese language, discover the vibrant culture of China, and participate more fully in the cultural exchange between our two countries,” said College Board President Gaston Caperton. “More than 200 million children in China are studying English, yet only 24,000 children in the United States are studying Chinese. In addition, China’s tremendous economic growth will create new opportunities and challenges for our country. It’s time that we offer a twenty-first-century choice to our students.” Chinese is the most widely spoken first language in the world. It is the national language of the more than 1.3 billion inhabitants of China and millions more ethnic Chinese around the globe.
In an Advanced Placement Program® (AP®) survey conducted in 2004, nearly 2,400 high schools expressed an interest in offering the AP Chinese course in 2006-07, but for many of these schools, this goal may go unrealized. They either are understaffed or have no teacher of Chinese, and many see no prospect of finding the teachers necessary to build their programs. This increasingly common predicament underscores the shortage of qualified teachers of Chinese in the United States.
In April 2006, the College Board and Hanban announced the formation of a partnership to build and expand Chinese language programs in U.S. schools. As part of the partnership, Hanban and the College Board will make available scholarships for American teacher candidates seeking state certification to teach Chinese. Last summer, 400 American educators had the opportunity to travel to China to become familiar with China's people, language, culture, and education systems. The trip, which will be repeated this year, provided incentives and strategies for the educators to return to the United States better able to support the growth of Chinese programs in their own schools.

Also last summer, 60 American teachers of Chinese benefited from intensive, three-week Summer Institutes held at Beijing Normal University in Beijing and Shanghai International Studies University in Shanghai. In 2007 and coming years, these programs will expand; more than 500 current teachers are expected to attend the professional development programs in China by 2010.

Established by the Chinese government in 1987, Hanban is the nation's official agency authorized to promote Chinese language and culture internationally, fulfilling a function similar to that of the UK's British Council and France's Alliance Française.
Participating Schools and Districts: