Dear NWCS families,

First of all, wish all NWCS moms a very happy Mother’s Day! A poet in the Tang Dynasty named Meng Jiao wrote the following, translated in English.

慈母手中線，遊子身上衣。臨行密密縫，意恐遲遲歸。誰言寸草心，報得三春暉。

Threads adeptly brandished by a loving mother,
sewed into garments for a son so soon to depart.

Her sewing picks up pace as the date approaches,
worries of belated return echoing in her heart.

Who dare claim that the green grass
might somehow repay the sun for its warm hearth?

http://www.wiptranslation.ca/blog/%E6%B8%B8%E5%AD%90%E5%90%9F-%E5%AD%9F%E9%83%8A-hymn-of-the-traveller-by-meng-jiao/

The long delayed raffle drawing will take place this Saturday. Please be there to cheer for the raffle winners. (And nominate them for staff and board openings. Let’s see… we have principal, treasurer, registrar, and several board seats open. This is a volunteer run school so let’s work together to get to 50!)

CSL move up assessment nomination and dates
We have scheduled June 3 and June 10 to conduct the speaking and dialog portion of the move up assessment. Since this year’s move up assessment is voluntary, please work with your teacher to decide if you wish to nominate and let our registrar Mr. Tony Wu (registrar@nwcsny.org) know. The evaluation dimensions, along with sample pages from students’ workbook, are published at http://www.nwcsny.org/?p=1699

Registration is open with new fee effective July 4
Fall registration is open at sis.nwcsny.org. The board has approved the full year tuition to increase from $620(check)/$630(credit) to $670/$680 after July 4. Regular electives are $270/$275 with a $50 discount for language class students. Special electives such as SAT and computer programming have their own per semester fee schedule. We are also increasing the sibling discount to $30 to encourage sisters and brothers to attend Chinese school together.

Last call on speech contest video
We will be sending the trophy lists out to the teachers for confirmation after this Saturday. If your kid missed it, no worries. Send us a video clip. Our judges are happy to review them. We want to encourage our kids to practice and speak in every way we can.

Open house and spring roll
We had a fantastic open house last week! Thanks to all the preparation work, including marketing, flyer and brochure plus the impressive array of spring roll ingredients. Thanks to teachers and students’ work on the posters. The refresh allows us to retire many of the old posters from the past few years. I have posted some photos here. If you have taken some more, please send them to me. http://www.nwcsny.org/?p=1680

NWCS Book Club
Read a timely book and make a difference for NWCS… and hopefully, the world. Our own Dr. Ifay Chang has offered to donate $10 to our school for every purchase of his new book at $20. Send an email to davidbquinn@me.com to reserve your copy.

Here is a summary of the book.

The Changing Giants: The U.S. and China
By Ifay F. Chang

The U.S. and China are the world’s two major countries undergoing rapid changes. If you follow the media, you will find that the U.S.-China relation has swung from worse to better, and better to worse in the past few years while each has been changing politically and economically. The recent change for the worse in the U.S.-China relations is worrisome for the entire world. The already complex relationship between the two giants is further compounded by the fierce 2016 U.S. Presidential election resulting in a new administration which prefers to play Trump cards in a no-trump game (bridge jargon). The new U.S. Administration seems to disregard old game rules, conventional suits and existing contracts, thus creating great uncertainty in its China policy which is troubling and challenging China, and bewildering the U.S. allies. China, on the other hand, is gearing up more efforts to inject itself into global affairs while trying to maintain its healthy economic growth and keeping the U.S. at arm’s length. Whether the two giants will change for better or worse is the author’s quest for answer in his writings. The Changing Giants – The U.S. and China is Dr. Chang’s third book following Understanding the U.S. and China (2015) and U.S.-China Relations (2014) to track the development of the U.S. and China, as well as monitor their changing relationship. In this book, Dr. Chang closely examines the current events happening between the two nations and interprets their consequences in the light of the unique historical background of each nation. Through the pages of this book, the author hopes that better understanding of the past can lead people to influence the future. The author hopes that the two changing giants will develop a collaborative relationship for the sake of world peace and prosperity.

Here is a link to the summary in Mandarin.

http://www.chinausfriendship.com/chinese/book1.asp?mn=361

Your principal,
Yuan-Chi Chang 張元極