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A Foreign Concept

CANDACE C. MUNDY/TAMPA TRIBUNE

Tampa's Independent Day School is hosting four college students from China who are studying to be teachers. The students, who attend Nanjing Normal University, are spending time at IDS teaching students and parents Chinese during the school's after-school program. IN PHOTO: Vanessa Xuan Yang plays a game with the students to help them learn how to pronounce words like mother, father, brother, sister in Chinese.

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By COURTNEY CAIRNS PASTOR, The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 29, 2007

CARROLLWOOD - A year ago, China was a world history lesson, a spot on a map.

Now it is the taste of tea, the soaring notes of the Beijing Opera and the ache in their legs from climbing the Great Wall.

Independent Day School enveloped itself in China this year in an exchange that started with Chinese guests at the Carrollwood campus and ended with a field trip across the world.

The goal?

Just a little world peace, said Linda Boza, middle school associate director at the private school.

The relationship emerged through the International School Connection's annual global summit, which brings together educators from across the world to talk about school development and teaching future leaders.

Independent Day School hosted it in November 2006. Beijing 101, a public school in China, served as the host this past October.

Independent Day School often brings in foreign visitors interested in seeing the teaching methods the school uses. But the summit last year sparked interest from four Chinese college students who asked to stay a few months longer to get a better feel for the American educational system.

Jie Yan, Jun Liang, Rain Yu Guo and Vanessa Xuan Yang personalized their country for the Independent Day School students. They shadowed teachers and contributed facts about their country's lifestyle, culture and politics. They taught Chinese and showed how to write characters. Before too long, students were shouting "ni hao" (Mandarin for "hello") every time they saw their guests.

The personal link helped when it came China's turn to host the summit.

For the first time, the summit included a youth leadership program, which gave Independent Day School students an opportunity to experience the country they had studied. The school invited interested students to serve as its ambassadors, and 13 signed up, along with 12 parent chaperones and four teachers.

"They felt comfortable going over there because they knew someone," Boza said of the students, who ranged from second to eighth grade. "One connection leads to another connection to another connection."

They reached out through the Internet to the classmates who couldn't travel with them, holding a real-time discussion and posting updates. Technology teacher Matt Melnick set up a blog with photographs and journal entries, and the group answered questions the school had e-mailed to them.

"Fourth-graders would like to know what children in China like to eat for breakfast," one class wrote.

"Hello world travelers," the middle school math team chimed in. "We would like to know if they still teach their students to use an abacus for calculating."

Someone else listed several questions, including: "What do they serve in the McDonald's?"

The trip, Oct. 18-30, mixed discussions and explorations. Independent Day School got to reunite with some of the teachers they had hosted. The group visited temples, markets, Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City and the Great Wall. But they also saw daily routines most tourists would not.

More than 80 middle and high school students from three continents attended the youth leadership program. The students held workshops where they hashed out definitions of global leaders and learned about their host country by attending classes at Beijing 101 and participating in cultural activities and a United Nations simulation.

The summit made the trip more meaningful than a standard field trip, where students' involvement is limited, Boza said.

The American students learned martial arts, table tennis and how to maneuver chopsticks. They taught their overseas counterparts the "cha cha slide" line dance and tried to describe America to students who asked.

"They found the commonalities they had," Boza said.

Kritos Vasiloudes, an Independent Day School eighth-grader, had expected more differences and instead discovered similarities. He thought China would look old-fashioned and rural, like in paintings. He was surprised that Beijing had the bustle and lights of New York City.

School, however, was a different experience. Eighth-grader Troy Mainzer was impressed at how hard everyone worked. American students socialize a lot, he said, but Chinese students are there to work.

"Every student is 100 percent focused," Troy said.

Dedication to studies is seen as desirable, said eighth-grader Morgan Mills.

"Their cool kids are the smartest kids in class," she said.

They returned to their school writing about the appreciation they had developed for different cultures.

"We all respect each other, and we all have a common goal - world peace," wrote seventh-grader David Pagliarulo.

Kritos wrote that the summit would help him no matter what field he chose, and he said his favorite part was making friends and learning exotic activities. He said later that he had learned to appreciate something else as well.

"I love Chinese food now," he said.

THE AMBASSADORS

These were the students who attended the global summit in China in October: Eighth-graders Adam Blumenthal, Troy Mainzer, Morgan Mills, Kritos Vasiloudes; seventh-graders Christian Cavaliere, Jonathan Kaschyk, Jordan Nasser, David Pagliarulo; sixth-graders Alec Firestone, Richard Golinello; fifth-grader Reagan Harrison; third-grader Carmen Mills; and second-grader Abigail Melnick.

Reporter Courtney Cairns Pastor can be reached at (813) 865-1503 or cpastor@tampatrib.com.

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