Wednesday, September 9, 2015 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
CHInESE: All three
schools have Chinese
instruction
Continued from page 3
involved in the program.
Tina Cao is teaching at
Sisters Elementary School.
“The idea is to hit every
student in the elementary
school with Chinese,” Per-
kins explained. “The hope is
that the students will have the
exposure to Chinese culture
and then want to go on in the
middle school.”
Cao hails from Henan
Province, the origin-point of
Chinese civilization.
“It’s a very historical
place,” she said. “Four thou-
sand years ago, people lived
there.”
She was drawn to teaching
Chinese as an opportunity to
experience a markedly differ-
ent culture.
“I want to experience
different life,” she said.
“America is so different from
China… Here life is peace-
ful, not so busy. The environ-
ment is so good — it makes
people comfortable.”
All three teachers com-
mented repeatedly on the
blue skies and beautiful nat-
ural environment of Sisters
Country.
Cao made note of another
difference.
Teachers at Sisters Ele-
mentary School “encourage
the students to create some-
thing or express themselves.”
By contrast, students in
China are usually reticent to
speak up for fear of saying
the wrong thing.
Yvonne Tieh will teach at
Sisters High School, where
Vivian Zhang and Eva Xu
are still in place, helping
with making the transition
between teachers.
Tieh, a fitness enthusiast,
loves the natural beauty of
Sisters.
“When jogging on the
road, I met more deer than
people,” she said.
Ti e h w a s i n s p i r e d
to teach by meeting an
American who was teach-
ing English in China.
“The lady was so nice,”
she said. “I thought it was
very good to be a teacher
teaching abroad. I wanted to
be like her.”
She has taught previously
in Thailand.
“I just love teaching Chi-
nese to foreigners,” she said.
American students —
at least in Sisters — are
not quite what Tieh was
anticipating.
“In my imagination,
before I got here, I thought
the students are naughty,” she
said. “I think the students are
very nice!”
Linda Yang, who teaches
at Sisters Middle School,
sees Sisters students as very
different from students in
China. Here, she says, there
is more “learning by doing.”
Class sizes are much
smaller than the 50 or 60 stu-
dents who might be found in
a class in China, where Yang
spent five years teaching
English to Chinese students
before deciding to go abroad.
“American school is a
little bit causal, (more) free
than Chinese class,” said
Yang, who is experiencing
her first trip outside China.
“I think the students are very
29
photo by JiM cornelius
Yvonne Tieh, Linda Yang and Tina Cao with David Perkins. The new teachers are helping to expand and strengthen
Sisters’ Mandarin Chinese program.
active. I think the students
are very outgoing. They
say ‘hi’ to me. In China,
the students are very shy.”
Because of the support
of Hanban, a division of the
Chinese Ministry of Informa-
tion and the PSU Confucius
Institute, there is very little
cost to Sisters School District
to host the teachers.
“The only thing the dis-
trict pays for is their health
insurance,” Perkins noted.
“It’s a great deal for the
school district.”
By integrating the Manda-
rin program through all three
schools, the district is build-
ing a program with legs. And
having full-time teachers in
the high school means sched-
uling problems endemic in
a small school have been
smoothed out, enabling more
students to take Chinese. And
the turnout is impressive.
“ We h a v e 4 4 k i d s
that signed up for Chi-
nese I,” said Perkins. “It’s
a bit overwhelming. It’s a
record-breaker.”
The new teachers appre-
ciate the welcome they have
found in Sisters, and are
enjoying a way of living so
different from their home.
“Very beautiful,” Yang
reflected. “It’s very quiet. I
like this town. The people are
very nice.”
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