LITTLE ROCK — Leaders in the Pulaski County Special School District are looking for Mandarin Chinese language teachers, and they are taking their search to the People’s Republic of China.
Superintendent Charles Hopson and School Board member Tim Clark of Maumelle are part of an eight member Pulaski County Special district delegation that also includes four principals, a teacher and a curriculum director who will leave shortly on an eight day trip to Beijing and Zhengzhou.
Representatives from the Batesville, Beebe, Wynne and Lincoln school districts are also to take the same trip, which the Chinese government’s Hanban/Confucius Institute Headquarters is organizing and largely funding.
The Arkansas educators will tour a variety of schools, attend lectures on Chinese education and culture, see some of the significant sights and interview Chinese language teachers for jobs next school year in the Natural State.
Hopson said incorporating Chinese will make the instructional program stronger in the Pulaski County Special district.
“It’s about bringing us to a global, world-class standard as a district,” the superintendent said. “We want to be able to provide that opportunity, that exposure, to our students.”
Hopson, who became the district’s chief executive in July, said he plans to hire at least two and maybe three Chinese language teachers who would serve the schools in the southeast, west and Maumelle sections of his district.
While a few Arkansas districts teach Chinese, the 17,000-student Pulaski County Special district - the state’s third-largest behind Little Rock and Springdale - does not offer classes in that language.
The trip to China is expected to cost the district about $3,423, said Deborah Roush, the district’s communication director.
That is half the airfare for the seven district employees. Clark, who is not a district employee, is paying for his share of his ticket. The bulk of the trip - including half the travel and just about all of the expenses incurred while in China - is being financed by the Hanban/Confucius Institute Headquarters.
The Hanban/Confucius Institute Headquarters is a component of the Chinese Ministry of Education and works to provide resources for Chinese language and cultural teaching worldwide. There are some 200 Confucius Institutes in 60 countries.
In Arkansas, the Confucius Institute has been affiliated with the University of Central Arkansas since 2007. It has worked since that time with the Arkansas Department of Education and the state’s school districts to bring Chinese teachers to work in the public schools for two years at a time.
Currently, 11 Chinese teachers work in nine Arkansas school districts and through an educational cooperative as a result of the specific partnership between the state Education Department and the Confucius Institute, said Beverly Williams, the Arkansas Department of Education’s assistant commissioner for human resources.
Over time, the teachers have worked in places such as Hot Springs, Harrisburg, Van Buren and Conway. Most of those teachers have come from East China Normal University in Shanghai and have master’s degrees in teaching Chinese to the Western world, Williams said.
The Confucius Institute also invites district educators to attend an annual conference in China on education, which is the part of the program in which the Pulaski County Special district is involved.
The itinerary for the trip includes time in Beijing, where the visitors will receive an introduction to the Hanban/Confucius Institute Headquarters, hear lectures on Chinese basic education and on how to build quality Chinese language programs. They will also take side trips to temples, the Great Wall and the Forbidden City.
The travelers also will visit Zhengzhou, nearly 500 miles south of Beijing. There, they will visit primary and high schools, plus a vocational school and an international school. Visits to a temple and to museums are scheduled, as is a student performed kung fu show.
Clark, the School Board member, said he became interested in the possibility of adding Chinese language to the Pulaski County Special district curriculum when officials were developing plans for the new 1,500-student Maumelle High School that will replace Oak Grove High when it opens in August.
“We had hoped to incorporate an international studies program in which the new school would be involved in a cultural exchange program with a school in China,” he said.
“That way our students would learn more about the Chinese way of life and the Chinese students could learn more about us. We also wanted to hire teachers who could teach the Chinese language.”
“For our students to benefit in the international market, they have to be versed in languages other than just English. This is a great program, and we hope to take advantage of what is being offered to us.”
In an e-mail to other board members telling them of his plans to make next month’s trip, Clark also said he believed that the district as a whole also stands to benefit.
“I asked Dr. Hopson upon his arrival to the district to please research this for the new Oak Grove/Maumelle School,” Clark wrote. “I applaud his efforts and hope this shows the public that PCSSD is a progressive-thinking district that will offer students opportunities not found in other competing districts.”
Lisa Watson is principal at Pulaski County Special’s College Station Elementary, which features an academic program geared to pupils identified as gifted and/or talented.
The College Station school has typically offered an introduction to French or Spanish.
This semester, pupils take Spanish lessons in a distance learning class provided by the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts in Hot Springs. Chinese language classes through distance learning were offered as a possibility, but a teacher could not be found, Watson said.
Like Clark, Watson talked to Hopson and Deputy Superintendent June Elliott about expanding curriculum offerings to include Chinese.
She said she proposed that lessons at College Station serve as a foundation for more intensive training in the language at Fuller Middle School and Mills University Studies High in the southeast section of the county.
Watson will be part of the delegation going to China, along with Joy Plants, who will be the principal at Maumelle High; Yolaundra Williams, principal at Robinson High; Cherrie Walker, principal at Robinson Middle; Bruce Bryant, director of curriculum; and Cindy Casto, a Crystal Hill Elementary Magnet School teacher who speaks Chinese.
“I want to see what I can bring back to my staff and what I can do to bring the language to my students full time,” Watson said about the trip.
“We are looking at programs for fourth and fifth grades and introductory lessons to the third grade. Right now my kids are excited about getting Spanish through distance learning, but I think having someone [physically] here to teach the Chinese would be excellent for my students.”
Not everyone is pleased with plans for the trip. An anonymous letter addressed to a deputy state auditor and posted on the website savepcssd.org was furious about “a 10-day holiday tour of China” when “we do not even have a respectable plan ... for teaching Spanish, much less Chinese.”
But Watson said she is getting a positive reaction tothe possible addition to her school.
As word has spread about an elementary school program in Chinese, parents have called her, she said, including some from neighboring school districts to inquire about the status of the Chinese program and the procedures for enrolling in the school. She said she shares that enthusiasm.
“We couldn’t believe that we were one of the schools selected, and sometimes I have to pinch myself to make sure it is really going to happen,” Watson said.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/27/2010