Area educators present a gift to Tianjin school officials during a visit to China in November.
A delegation of 29 students and eight administrators from a top Chinese high school will be in the Capital Region for four-day trip in mid-January.
Hosted by Tech Valley High School (TVHS), Questar III and Capital Region BOCES, the delegation from Tianjin High School No. 41 will visit the state Capitol, several area schools, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), museums and several cultural locations.
More importantly, the delegation will observe how students in the United States learn, how TVHS is integrating teaching 21st century skills into a project-based learning curriculum, and how U.S. schools in general are meeting ever-increasing demands.
The delegation will arrive on January 16 (Martin Luther King Day) and depart on January 20.
The students in the delegation will stay with TVHS families; adults – administrators and regional education officials from Tianjin – will stay with BOCES leaders and in an area hotel.
A formal welcoming ceremony for the delegation will be conducted on January 17 starting at 9 a.m. at the University at Albany East Campus in East Greenbush. Following that ceremony, the Chinese students will spend the school day at TVHS and enjoy a lunch catered by career and technical education (CTE) students from Questar III, while the adults in the delegation and several student ambassadors from TVHS and Tianjin High School No. 41 will depart for the Catskill Central School District. There, they will meet with educators and tour the schools. That evening, the delegation and their host families will attend the Bethlehem-Shenendehowa basketball game at Bethlehem High School.
On Wednesday, the delegation will visit several area schools, starting with Cohoes City Schools at 9 a.m. and concluding with the Guilderland schools in the afternoon. In between, the delegation will enjoy a lunch at the Capital Region BOCES Career and Tech Education that will be prepared by the students there.
Later in the day, the delegation will play laser tag in Colonie and be the guests of the Albany Devils at the Times Union Center for an evening of hockey.
On Thursday, the delegation will meet with business partners at TVHS. The students will spend the entire day at the school while adult delegation leaders plan to meet with state leaders and tour the state Capitol.
The evening will feature meetings for the adult delegation leaders and local educators while the students spend time with their host families.
A tour of the RPI campus preceded by an 8:30 a.m. farewell ceremony at TVHS on Friday will culminate the delegation’s visit to the Capital Region.
The trip to the area is the latest exchange between educators in China and the U.S.
Tianjin High School No. 41 last year signed a partnership pact with TVHS during a trip to the area. Under the terms of the much-heralded exchange agreement, faculty – including a teacher from Tianjin who taught full-time at TVHS from September through December and collaborated with local teachers from Schodack and Schoharie schools. These partnerships resulted in weeklong student learning experiences on Chinese culture that brought authenticity to the global studies curriculum.
The agreement won praise from state lawmakers and state education leaders, many of whom met with the delegation last February.
The agreement has served as a model for new China-U.S. education agreements. In November, area educators from four institutions signed agreements to pursue educational partnerships with Chinese schools while meeting with educators in China. The agreements allow Questar III BOCES, Capital Region BOCES, Schoharie and Catskill school districts to pursue formalized partnerships that would entail the potential exchange of teachers and even students, as well as professional development opportunities.
Schoharie’s agreement is with Tianjin High School 13, which is affiliated with Beijing Normal School. Catskill’s agreement is with Huagiao High School in Zengcheng and Questar III BOCES and Capital Region BOCES jointly signed a pact with the Bureau of Education of Zengcheng. Zengcheng is a city within the city of Guangzhou, which is the capital and largest city in the Guangdong Province in China. Located on the Pearl River in southern China, it is about an hour from Hong Kong. By signing with the Bureau of Education, the two BOCES can work with teachers and administrators in any of Zengcheng’s 140 public elementary, middle and high schools on behalf of each of the BOCES component school districts.
http://www.techvalleyhigh.org/news/2011_12/January_12/01.09.12_Chinese_delegation_to_visit.html
