SYA China: The Early Years
SYA to Launch Program in China
Reprint from Fall 1993 SYA Newsletter
As the most populous country in the world works to create a more open society and a more market-oriented economy, it is clear that experts familiar with its culture and language will be increasingly needed in the West. We believe that Asia in general and China in particular will play a major role in the lives of the next generation. In launching a program in Asia similar to SYA's successful centers in Europe, we offer the training that will allow future American leaders to participate fully and effectively in the rapidly evolving Asia-America relationship.
As in our programs in France and Spain, we seek to give our students a rich and challenging cultural experience in a society very different from what they have known at home, without sacrificing rigorous academic study and strong preparation for U.S. colleges. Students will be able to take SAT and ACH tests in China and will stay on schedule for college preparation and applications.
In China we will have to alter certain elements in our format, but we will maintain the essentials: heavy emphasis on language and culture, academic rigor and full U.S. credit, first-rate teachers and administrators who will be attuned to the needs of students inside and outside the classroom. Applicants may be students entering grades 11, 12 or postgraduate who have begun the study of Mandarin Chinese in any American or international high school.
SYA China will be based at Middle School #2, the secondary school attached to Beijing Normal University. Students will live in a renovated school dormitory during the week and with Chinese host families on weekends and vacations. They will be able to participate in sports and extracurricular activities at MS #2, at the University across the street, and perhaps at other high schools with which SYA has made contact. Classes offered will include English, math, Chinese history, and Chinese literature translation, all taught in English by teachers in on assignment from our U.S. consortium schools, along with spoken Mandarin, written Mandarin, Chinese poetry, Chinese painting, and Chinese martial arts, all taught in Mandarin.
The Resident Director, the math teacher and the English teacher will come from cooperating schools in the U.S. Teachers of Chinese language, art, poetry, and martial arts will be either members of the faculty at MS #2 or other teachers from Beijing hired to work with our students. The SYA program will begin with two weeks of intensive language classes either in the U.S. or Hong Kong; and it will be complemented by vacation travel, probably to the Kunming area of southern China and to Vietnam, where we plan to participate in a village redevelopment project, teaching English and helping to rebuild a school. Classes will begin in mid-August, last the equivalent of an academic semester, and conclude in December, in time for students to return home for Christmas vacation and the beginning of the second semester or winter term at their home schools.
As in the European programs, financial aid will be available to students with demonstrated need.
SYA China: How Did It Go?
Reprinted from Winter 1995 SYA Newsletter
by (then) Executive Director Woody Halsey
The SYA China pioneers are back from their ground-breaking semester in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Ha Noi and people ask me, “How did it go?” “We succeeded,” I reply, “and I will be forever grateful to the adventurous souls who made it happen — but we need to redouble our efforts to ensure that we offer our kids as much in Asia as we do in Europe.” Resident Director and English teacher Charles Miller ES’86F, math teacher and dorm parent extraordinaire Gillian Recesso of Loomis Chaffee, and history teacher Jeffrey Smith worked against monumental odds to create almost from scratch a program which the 18 students in their charge will never forget.
Undaunted by 20-hour train rides, balky fax machines, monolingual switchboard operators, elusive VCRs, uncooperative computers, and host school administrators who often did not know what to make of the Americans in their midst, Charlie Miller and his team taught excellent courses themselves and tried to convey to their Chinese colleagues how hard our students were willing to work to learn Mandarin.
They arranged for martial arts and calligraphy instruction; led the students in exploring The Great Wall and the Yungang Buddhist caves of Datong; hiked with them in the Fragrant Hills; shared their amazement over the life-size ceramic warriors in Xian, capital of the ancient Chinese Empire; trekked and experienced living in yurts in Inner Mongolia, and then continued classes and viewed what they had all learned in China from a different perspective during the final two weeks in Vietnam.
Although we accomplished much of what we had set out to do (several China alumni have echoed the evaluation long familiar to SYA: “the best experience of my life”), we need to do even more as we build for the future. Specifically, we must provide more significant family stays than were possible this year, and we must continue to work with our Chinese colleagues to develop stimulating, direct- method (no English) language instruction.
To help us move towards the first goal, I have hired a host family coordinator in Beijing, and I continue to urge our partners at Middle School #2 to let us entrust our students to native families who are eager to work with us. As I write, we are still at an impasse: the administrators want to keep our students tightly controlled, traveling as a group by day and locked into a dorm at night; we want them to explore and learn on their own, and to face the challenge of adapting to life in a Chinese family. Negotiations will continue ...
To ensure the first-rate language instruction SYA is famous for, we are organizing a combined teacher workshop and student orientation in California next summer to which we will invite our Middle School #2 colleagues to work with master teachers of Mandarin language in the U.S. We have requested a grant from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation to support the project.
Finally, to further our mission of language teaching and to offer the SYA opportunity to as broad a group as possible, we have opened SYA China to students with no background in Chinese but a strong motivation to begin the language with an intensive immersion experience.
Reflecting on China: A Year Later
Reprinted from Spring/Summer 1996 SYA Newsletter
by (then) SYA China Assistant Director Gillian Recesso
We asked Gillian Recesso, assistant director and math teacher of SYA's first semester in China, for her retrospective thoughts. Here she shares some snapshot glimpses and challenges encountered in that first year.
My expectations, you ask? My expectations were for this to be an “adventure,” and boy, was it ever! Living in a dorm, sharing bathrooms and showers with people from five different countries, sleeping in a yurt in 30-degree-below temperatures, riding a horse across the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, attempting to sleep in a hard bunk eight feet off the ground while traveling by train for over twenty hours, eating horse meat, as well as mutton, right off the bone “Flintstone style,” pulling together a medical evacuation of a student to Hong Kong in the middle of the night, and climbing the Great Wall without seeing another single living soul for the whole day. These are a few of my adventures.
The Chinese went out of their way for us, yet things rarely went as smoothly as hoped. Administratively, we were forced to adopt the philosophy of “the other cheek.” Events almost never seemed to go as expected. We would often ask ourselves, “What could possibly go wrong next?” and yet things often did. In fact, it became commonplace for us to make arrangements with a school or individual, only to show up and find that things were nothing like what we had planned. Losing patience, however, is futile in China.
Yes, there were many challenges, drawbacks, surprises, and lots of red tape. But through it all, the students kept me going. They were a mixed group from across the country, from both public and private schools. There were students who liked to talk, there were students who liked to dance. They even liked to talk and dance while wearing their Patagonias on the pagoda. They wanted to try dog meat, they wanted to eat a lot of dumplings, they wanted McDonald's every once in a while, but most of all they wanted to experience this foreign land as much as possible. They dealt with the setbacks and difficulties we experienced, and they even smiled through it all.
What is life like there? The Chinese have become used to the foreign face in the crowd. Previously, there was an ever-present sense of distance from the Chinese. They would be on their best behavior, which often prevented foreigners from understanding their real-life problems. While we were there, however, we found their polite reserve often evolved into friendly relationships. I was frequently invited to teach a class and to visit the homes of teachers and the friends I had made. We encouraged the students to take advantage of similar opportunities and learn as much as they could about the Chinese people too.
Friends, taxi drivers and teachers were very curious about life outside of China. “What is it like in America? Is it really like 'Baywatch?' I found taxi drivers to be the most direct with their questions: “Why did I come to China? What did I think of their country? How did I know how to speak Chinese? How old was I?” Then the questions became more pointed: “Whose money was I spending, the government's or my parents'? When would I be forced to return? Why wasn't I married at my age? Could I drive a car? What kind of car did I drive? Why would I drive a Japanese car?”
The family structure seems to be breaking down, and yet the danwei (work unit) is still in existence. Discussions of my family prompted interesting conversations, especially since I am one of six children. In China, there is only one child per family, with no possibility of more than one child unless you move out of the city. Those who become pregnant with a second child are forced to have an abortion. It gets more complicated for each family since they need the approval of when to have their one child. One needs to apply to receive a permit to become pregnant. A work force is allowed a limited number of pregnancy permits per year. Understandably, the feelings among families are very strong but remain reserved.
In the streets, there is a constant flow of endless black hair bobbing up and down, down and up. Very seldom does one see red, brown or blonde. You would think some gray would drift by, but due to the extent that hair-dying is done, it is quite minimal.
There is continual motion on the streets: people- stuffed buses weaving between mules, pedicabs, cyclists and walkers-all traveling through the hazy streets and man-made fog which can make the visibility range only a block or less. The 1.2 billion Chinese go about their business surrounded by the continual sound of horns and bells, never moving fast enough to break a sweat on even the hottest days.
Into the late hours of the night, there is a constant stream of rotating pedals. And this is not a completely docile, danger-free activity; there are many accidents. As I ride through the streets of Beijing on my bicycle, I am one with the masses. The face of a foreigner sticks out in stores, on the bus, or in a train-not so on the bicycle.
My favorite afternoons were getting on my single- speed bike and pedaling through the streets of Beijing. The winding hutongs of the old Chinese city house the most interesting places at which to gaze and explore. But no matter where I roamed in Beijing, I would always find myself back in Tiananmen Square at the end of the day. Soldiers still loomed at every corner and wandered throughout the area. This almost holy square is ruled with a tight surveillance. There is no greater plaza in the world containing such great strain.
Our experiences were many and varied. Dealing with life in China meant adapting to a new way of thinking-learning to deal with difficult situations and to take things in stride. SYA China was definitely a lesson worth living.