The International School of the Peninsula gets a new principal

Chris Livaccari has been a huge proponent of Mandarin and Mandarin immersion at the Asia Society in New York and now he’ll be leading a school in a very immersion-rich area (the San Francisco Bay area.) I don’t know the school at all but will expect to see a lot of innovation coming out of there very shortly–Beth

A Farewell

By Chris Livaccari, Director, Chinese Language Initiatives

I began teaching Chinese and Japanese almost a decade ago, after a five-year tenure in the U.S. Foreign Service. Since that time, I have seen the field of Chinese language teaching and learning not only expand, but also mature and develop, and I am hopeful about its future. So hopeful, in fact, that I have decided to return to a school environment. Starting in August 2013, I will begin a new role as upper elementary principal and director of the K–8 Chinese language immersion program at the International School of the Peninsula (ISTP) in Palo Alto, CA. ISTP has offered Chinese immersion for more than fifteen years (one of the first handful of Mandarin immersion programs in the United States) and French immersion for well over thirty, so I am looking forward to learning a lot from our teachers and watching our students enjoy the kind of linguistic opportunity that I scarcely could have dreamed of as a child.

Please read more here.