Reflecting On The Visit By Delegates From A Chinese Sister School

By Eliza Hallabeck

With a few delegates remaining in Newtown after most of the visitors to Newtown schools returned home to Liaocheng, in the Shandong Province of China, NHS Assistant Principal and Newtown International Center for Education (NICE) Program Coordinator Jason Hiruo reflected on the delegates’ stay in the district.

The delegation arrived on Friday, February 3, and most of the group returned home on Sunday, February 12. Students and one teacher, Mr Hiruo said, stayed on to continue assimilating into the culture at Newtown High School and Newtown Middle School, and are scheduled to leave for Liaocheng on Sunday, February 18. Delegates included administrators, teachers, and students from Liaocheng Middle School #3 and Dongchang Lower Middle School. The delegates visited Newtown High School, Newtown Middle School, and Reed Intermediate School during their stay in Newtown.

During the visit, the NICE program and host families had delegation members attending many different events. The first weekend the delegates were in the area included attendance at a Saturday, February 4, Chinese New Year Celebration at Newtown High School and hosted by the Western Connecticut Chinese Association, Newtown International Center for Education (NICE), HuaXia Chinese School, Danbury Chinese Alliance Church, and the Western Connecticut State University Student & Scholar Association. Delegates also attended Super Bowl Sunday events.

Reed Intermediate School sixth grade teacher Gael Lynch said she attended one Super Bowl Party, hosted by the Morrisey family.

That party and others like it, Ms Lynch said, “probably accounts for all the Super Bowl hats and the many footballs that were being deflated to be stowed away in bags for the plane [before the delegates returned to China].”

Ms Lynch also said she told her Reed students that the visit was important, “because this might be the only face of America for the students and teachers that they would ever see in their lives.”

By Monday, as The Bee reported last week, all three Newtown schools that were hosting delegates held welcoming ceremonies for the visitors.

Other events during the week included a trip to Yale University, a potluck dinner with community members, a Student vs Faculty Quiz Show held at NHS on Wednesday, February 8, following the potluck dinner, a trip to New York City, and a dinner for the adult delegates and Newtown teachers and administrators hosted at the Dana-Holcombe House on Main Street by Board of Education member John Vouros and his wife, Jane.

The stay, Mr Hiruo said this week, also included discussion on how to move the sister-school relationship with Liaocheng and Newtown forward along with having delegates shadow Newtown counterparts. Students, for example, visited classrooms with NICE student ambassadors and teachers shadowed teachers. Educators in the delegation, Mr Hiruo said, observed more than 30 classes each.

The first thing discussed between the delegates and Newtown, Mr Hiruo said, was how to refine the experience of visiting the different schools more for the future. Overall, Mr Hiruo said the meetings went well.

Growing Interest

Mr Hiruo also said he expects to number of participating delegates and community members involved in Newtown to continue to expand.

The number of people who attended the potluck dinner surpassed that in attendance at last year’s event. He also said 35 host families offered their homes to delegation members during their stay, and roughly 40 families who requested to be host families were turned down due to the small number of delegates.

Mr Hiruo also said he has heard from parents in Newtown who are interested in sending their students to China for an extended stay in Liaocheng. Students are scheduled to visit Liaocheng this year, for the second time, in April, but not for the extended period of time some are requesting.

“We’re going to look at identifying that opportunity for our kids,” said Mr Hiruo.

The challenge, he said, is financing those trips for students. NICE, he said, currently has a $6,000 scholarship for students, donated by a Newtown resident, and he said the NICE Parent and Community Organization (NICE PCO) is looking into contacting local businesses to gather more funding.

By Sunday, February 12, when the first round of delegates left, Mr Hiruo said the lobby at Newtown High School was packed.

“Each year,” he said, “I think it will get better and better. Especially as more people learn that NICE is moving beyond China. We’re not just the China Initiative any more.”

This week three students — Greg Hennessey, Eric Song, and Annie Beier— also left to visit Japan with NICE team member Amy Repay, who manages the program’s Japan project, to attend the Ritsumeikan Uji International Student Forum, which will have people attending from 30 countries. The NICE program, Mr Hiruo said, was the only program from the United States invited to attend the event.

Future endeavors for the NICE program will include reaching out to make relationships with schools in France, Italy, and Spain.

As the NICE program grows, Mr Hiruo said team members are also growing to help oversee all aspects of communication with other schools and overseeing activities within Newtown.

Looking Toward Europe

“We started with China. China really helped us develop the core of our program, and how to work things out and develop an initiative,” said Mr Hiruo. “I think that the partnerships that will develop in Europe will actually be easier to develop based on the experiences we have had with China.”

The growing relationships in Europe were also formed through connections with Newtown’s sister schools in China and Japan, according to Mr Hiruo. Developing sister school relationships, he said, takes time, and he does not expect a full relationship with France until 2013.

Mr Hiruo also said he sees it as the program’s responsibility to prepare students for their future in the world.

An estimated 700 students, Mr Hiruo said, took part in meeting with the delegates during their stay in the district.

Funding for the delegation’s stay, Mr Hiruo said, came mostly from a grant through the Hanban-Confucius Classroom Network, with a significant amount of contributions offered from the community, in the form of both money and supplies, and some money from the schools’ activities funds were also used, he said.