WELCOME GIFT. Students from LiDa Middle School in Suzhou, China paid a visit to Hosford Middle School in southeast Portland. At the welcome ceremony in Hosford’s gymnasium, Hosford students presented the LiDa students with t-shirts. (AR Photo/Allison Rupp)

From The Asian Reporter, V19, #7 (February 17, 2009), page 9 & 13.

By Allison Rupp

Tong Su Yuan, a former student of LiDa Middle School in Suzhou, China, looked around the schoolyard at Portland’s Hosford Middle School, which sat shrouded in fog and silent except for a few straggling students late to class.

"There are many people in China," she said, "but here it is very empty."

This was one of many first impressions of America for Yuan, who is now a ninth grader, and the 21 classmates who accompanied her from Suzhou on a visit to Portland. Yuan and her classmates are among the first to participate in a sister-school agreement between LiDa Middle School and Hosford Middle School that was signed last May, when the eighth graders from Hosford’s Mandarin Immersion Program (MIP) visited China.

Following in the footsteps of language-immersion programs in Spanish and Japanese at other Portland public schools, the MIP began in 1998 at Woodstock Elementary School in southeast Portland as the first public Mandarin Chinese immersion program in the nation.

From kindergarten through fifth grade, students in the MIP learn half their subjects (such as English and social studies) in English, and the other half (such as math and science) in Mandarin.

The first students in the program entered Hosford Middle School in 2005, where they continued their language learning with both Mandarin classes and some regular classes, such as geography, taught entirely in Mandarin.

"I was completely taken aback and impressed the first time I heard the kids speaking fluent Chinese in class," said Kevin Bacon, principal at Hosford.

From Hosford, the MIP continues at Cleveland High School, where the first group of students in the program now attends ninth grade.

Not a typical student tour

From the very beginning, program coordinators for the MIP envisioned a capstone trip for the middle schoolers in which the eighth-grade class would travel to China to put their language skills to use and conduct research projects in Chinese.

With the help of the municipal government in Suzhou, a sister city to Portland, school officials selected LiDa Middle School as a sister school to Hosford, hoping to provide resources for the international trip and foster lifelong friendships between the students.

After four years of fundraising (funds for the MIP trip come solely from private donations), Hosford sent 21 of its 24 MIP students to China last May for the first-ever China Research Residency.

The students spent two weeks travelling and exploring historic sights and landmarks, visiting Chinese middle schoolers and their families in a home stay, and researching various aspects of Chinese life and culture, such as attitudes toward bike safety or pet ownership.

For the chaperones, only half of whom spoke Mandarin, the experience was a humbling adventure in trusting the students.

"I don’t speak a word of Chinese, so I was entirely at the mercy of the students in my group," Mr. Bacon said. "They were buying train tickets, negotiating with cab drivers, finding places to eat."

For David "Kojo" Hakam, the trip leader and MIP curriculum specialist at Hosford, the trip marked a change in the overall attitude of his students, many of whom had lost their motivation to speak Mandarin by the time they reached eighth grade.

"The trip really restarted their confidence," he said. "We’re not running a typical student tour to China. The students were doing the travelling, the planning, and the talking. They exceeded my expectations."

The LiDa students’ visit to Hosford, which coincided with their Spring Festival vacation, lasted only six days, pairing them part of the time with current students at Hosford and part of the time with the ninth graders they hosted last year.

In a welcome assembly that took place at the school, students translated speeches by Mr. Bacon and their classmates, presented the LiDa students with t-shirts, and performed a Native American dance. The visitors, who looked a little nervous, took photos and video during the performances.

"I hope you find our city as beautiful as I found Suzhou last spring," Mr. Bacon told them.

The schedule for the remainder of their visit included a scavenger hunt downtown, shopping, bowling, and activities with their host families, such as hiking and going to a Blazer game.

To learn more about the MIP at Hosford, visit <www.hosfordmiddleschool.com>.