How one district helps new teachers get settled
At our school, Starr King in San Francisco, there’s one mom who takes it upon herself to give each new teacher a day-long tour of the neighborhood where our school is and the neighborhood they live in (if they just moved to SF.) Simple things like knowing which supermarkets are expensive and which are more reasonable, where to get Chinese groceries, even where to park and not to park to keep your car from getting broken into (we are in the city after all) are really helpful to folks who are new to town.
Now that I write this I realize that mom’s youngest has moved on to middle school so I need to check with our PTA president about who will do the tour next year.
Beth
A warm Southern Utah welcome for Chinese guest teachers
If Utah leads the nation in Chinese language education with more public immersion programs than any other state, Washington County is the apotheosis.
Washington County School District – situated hundreds of miles south of the state’s bustling population center of Salt Lake – has five Chinese immersion programs, more than any other district.
It’s a feat that the district has managed, despite its relative isolation. There isn’t a ready pool of Chinese immigrants or university-trained Mandarin speakers from which to draw upon to staff the program. Instead, the district relies on guest teachers furnished through the Hanban, a division of the Ministry of Education in China. That, and good-old-fashioned hospitality.
Please read more here.
Mandarin Immersion Parents Council 