Rice helps local schools say ‘yes’ to Chinese course

Rice helps local schools say ‘yes’ to Chinese course
New course in the Institute for Chinese Language Teaching reaches out to YES Prep

BY JESSICA STARK
Rice News staff

Thanks to Rice University, YES Prep is offering its first Chinese course. Funded by a Freeman Grant, the Rice Institute for Chinese Language Teaching (ICLT) program teamed up with YES to make the course possible. More than a dozen 14- and 15-year-old YES students are taking advantage of the opportunity. Most of the students are of Hispanic descent, and none is of Chinese origin.

The course was created as a practicum in the ICLT program, which trains proficient Chinese speakers to teach Houston’s K-12 students. These teachers are learning to create lessons in the Rice course and implement the lessons in the YES course. A 2004 College Board survey showed that nearly 2,400 high schools would like to offer the AP Chinese course in 2006-07 but do not have qualified teachers.

	JEFF FITLOW
	Su-Mei Lee, right, Rice ICLT participant, teaches more than a dozen YES Prep students in the school’s first Chinese course. The ICLT program teamed up with YES to make the course possible.

So in 2007, the ICLT began offering a low-cost, two-year summer program designed to prepare teachers to be certified. The ICLT aims to equip those teachers with the best pedagogy.

“We chose to team up with Rice because it is a premier university in Houston with which we have had enormous success in the past,” said Tarrieck Rideaux, director of curriculum and assessment for YES Prep. “Additionally, we understood it had an excellent Chinese language program for teachers. The demand for such programs has increased because Chinese is the most-spoken language worldwide and a high-needs language for the United States.”

The YES students are taking courses in their own schools, which makes the classes more accessible to students and parents — 90 percent of the class members are of low socio-economic class.

But the classroom setting offers a benefit to the teachers as well.

“Instead of operating the course at Rice University, the project leaders wanted a course that was offered in the schools so that the teachers in training had a realistic setting in which to practice the skills they are learning in their seminar class,” said Siva Kumari, associate dean of the Susanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Studies, who was recently appointed associate provost for K-12 initiatives.

Pe-Ting Tsai, lecturer in the Center for Study of languages, is teaching the supervised teaching seminar, which is part of a four-sequence set of courses in the ICLT. Students implement the lessons developed in that course with the YES students. Qian Yang, who is starting her doctorate in Chinese literature this fall, was hired to teach the YES Prep students. She has integrated technology and songs to teach students the Chinese phonetic system, basic concepts of the Chinese writing system and simple conversations. Her students also ate in a Chinese restaurant and visited a Chinese store and Forbidden Gardens, an outdoor museum in Katy that replicates some of China’s major historic scenes.

“The teachers have brought a high level of energy, and students have shown authentic engagement in each class,” Rideaux said. “This combination exemplifies Rice’s high quality of education and validates YES’ rigorous culture for student achievement.” 

Founded in 1998, YES is a free, open-enrollment public school system that serves low-income minority students in sixth through 12th grade. YES Prep aims to increase the number of low-income Houstonians who graduate from a four-year college prepared to compete in the global marketplace and committed to improving disadvantaged communities. There are currently five YES campuses in Houston that serve 2,800 students.

The ICLT is a collaboration of Rice’s School of Humanities, the Chao Center for Asian Studies, the Center for the Study of Languages and the Glasscock School of Continuing Studies. The institute prepares teachers through classes to address the best practices in teaching Chinese language that aren’t offered elsewhere in the South and grant scholarships for them to pursue Texas teacher certification at Rice or elsewhere. The program is directed by Lilly Chen.