CASPER, Wyo. – Anastasia Lite Li is a soft-spoken woman until her students enter the Chinese classroom.

That’s when the 24-year-old Beijing native with a master’s degree in teaching Chinese as a second language comes alive.

“Ni hao, Mackenzie,” Li said one recent Wednesday morning, bending to shake the hand of a blond girl walking through her classroom doorway. “Ni hao, Braxton.”

Students in this kindergarten class at Paradise Valley Elementary in Casper know the drill: When the bell rings, the English ends. Their names are printed in English on strips of masking tape on a carpet near the back of the room, but little else is said or shown in English in Li’s classroom, which is the first of its kind in Wyoming.

It is not a special program for gifted students, nor a language curriculum like what is offered in high schools across the state.

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