P02.V53.I01
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SUMMER 2012
Page 2A
Continued from page 1A
translator.
Throughout the seven days of
instruction, we provided guided
practice and modeling of the
structure of American newspapers, news stories, editorials,
cartoons and features. Page 1 was
news, page 2 editorials, page 3
features and page 4 photos. The
end product didn’t have to be perfect, but we wanted the students
to have a valuable experience
that would carry them through
the next year without the guided
practice from my students and
other teachers in our group.
The easiest skill for them to
learn was how to take photographs and interview. Nearly all
of the students had either stateof-the-art cell phones or digital
SLRs. When interviewing the
Americans, there were no inhibitions.
“This could have been partly
because they wanted the opportunity to talk to the American visitors,” said Annie Curran, one of
seven American students to help
with the project.
For a Chinese student, the
typical school day begins at 8
a.m. and often doesn’t end until
5 p.m., with a two-hour lunch
break. Some of the students live
six-per-room in a dorm on campus
and have mandatory study hall
until 10 p.m. They also have to
surrender their cell phones to the
floor monitor when they check
in the dorms for the night. Many
Chinese students spend 12 to 16
hours per day in lecture or isolated study environments, so there
isn’t much time for socialization.
“I think they also enjoyed the
interaction that interviewing provided,” Curran said.
Surprisingly, Adobe products
are not abundant in Chinese
schools. For the layout of the
newspapers, we had to defer to
one of our Chinese teacher leaders who installed CorelDRAW on
all of their computers. Culturally,
copyright was not a consideration. Like American schools,
the students displayed greater
technological skills and led the
design, importing of photos and
the exporting of JPEGs of the
final pages. In one case, we had to
wean the teacher out of “control
mode” and explain that this was
a student newspaper, and he was
not allowed to write stories, take
photos or design the pages.
This entire project was conceived by Carol Lange, one of the
authors of the three-year grant,
and the lead teacher on previous expeditions. In prior training trips, we taught to smaller
groups and emphasized the soft
diplomacy aspects of gaining
trust with the various schools
that agreed to participate in the
program. We visited schools, met
with principals and held dining
ceremonies with local Communist
Party leaders.
We also beta-tested the curriculum that Carol and I wrote.
Instead of bringing American
texts and cobbling materials
together from various websites,
we had to author the 28-lesson
curriculum