From: NWCS Principal Date: 4/25/2014 9:33 PM

Welcome back! I hope that everyone enjoyed their Spring break and is ready to continue learning Chinese. I have to admit, I did enjoy a family night out on a Friday night for a change … Our twins were like “Wow! So this is what other kids feel like on a Friday night? Unlike us, always having to do Chinese homework while other kids are out having a good time…”. To that I said “Wow! So this is how other moms feel on a Friday night? Unlike me, always have to be sitting next to my two 13 year olds to help them with their Chinese homework… unlike other moms with 13 years old kids who know how to do their own homework while the moms are out having a GREAT time!”

One parent mentioned to me that the communication in our school seems to be mostly in English. She felt that since we are a Chinese School that we should communicate in Chinese. I couldn’t agree with her more, but the idea of communications is to ensure that we can share what we want with others. As we have more and more non Chinese speaking families, we tend to use English more and more … That said, her question made me start to think, … (uh oh!) these past couple of weeks. How do we strike a balance, so that we can continue to communicate in Chinese and reach the same audience at the same time. Then I remembered more than 5 years ago when I was the Secretary of our school, I used to write the weekly message in English and in CHINESE! I went through my archives to look for them … I will try in the future, to use that format again! While looking through the archives, it brought back a lot of memories of how I used to spend time looking for an appropriate proverb in Chinese to translate to English or vice versa. Ah Ha! Here comes another light bulb!

Our high school grade students are faced with the challenge of managing the busy curriculum in the regular school while still completing the Chinese School homework, not to mention all the sport activities on the weekend. And we have heard from many people that our students need the opportunity to use the language … it would be great if our kids can use the words they learned over the years in real life …

So here is an idea that I am planning to bounce off our teachers and board members … our 10th, 11th and 12th graders will be in one class…the NWCS School News Team. We will have a Chief Editor, Chief Editor Assistant … not sure what other titles there will be… from the 11th and 12th graders. Our 10th graders will have the roles of the School News Team Reporters. The NWCS School NWCS team will need to create, design and produce one Chinese School Year Book by December. And that’s not all! For each month from September to June they will produce a monthly newsletter on all topics (appropriate topics). This team will require everyone to speak, listen and write in Chinese, while showing off their creativity. Yes, there will be a teacher monitoring and guiding the class, and she or he will only speak Chinese in the class.

I really love this idea! Gotta think about it some more … but first, I need to go sit next to my twins to help them with their Chinese homework again. After all, it is Friday night!

Last but not least, due to Spring break, we are changing the contest date to either May 10th or 17th! I will confirm by mid-week next week. Too many school events and we need to make sure that it does not interfere with our activities. One correction: I kept on saying that it is a writing contest. A teacher corrected me that it is more like a word recognition contest. You need to be able to put the word in a phrase, and know the meaning. For example, on a powerpoint slide, you will see a word, “ 老” lao3, you have to say a phrase like “老虎” and translate it “tiger”. If you don’t know the word, you can pass. After the time limit, the judge will record how many phrases you answered correctly. Ok?

See you all tomorrow! Classes start at 9am sharp! Please be on time.

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李宜蓉 Eileen Y. Lee
北威校長 NWCS Principal, 2009-2014
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GO NWCS!!!! Visit www.nwcsny.org
or email LearnChinese@nwcsny.org