April 23, 1998

Pete Eubanks, Staff Writer

With increasing global relations and dependence on other countries, exchange of ideas and cultures among countries is becoming a key aspect of understanding between people around the world.
 
An agreement between Northeast Yucai School in Shenyang, China and Appalachian State University for the exchange of  educators and students was reached last year.

Dr. Henry McCarthy,  assistant dean of the college of education curriculum and instruction, said, “It’s the first high school, middle school exchange that we know of in the United States.”

The primary purpose of the exchange is to share ideas about integrating technology into classroom instruction, but there are also many other goals, McCarthy said.

Three Chinese educators have been at Appalachian since March 5 and will conclude their stay in Washington, D.C. on May  2.

The educators are Wan Jing Hua, a geography teacher, Ann Jiang Juhui, an English teacher, and Gu Zuyu, an associate principal at Northeast Yucai School.

They have attended a variety of workshops, lectures and seminars and also experienced three days at Watauga High School from a student perspective.

Northeast Yucai School is considered to be one of the top three public schools in China.  According to Professor of Leadership and Education Studies,  Dr. John Tashner, the school is similar to the North Carolina School of Science and Math.  It  employs 120 teachers and has 1,600 students enrolled in classes.

The students at Northeast Yucai School are middle and high school age individuals considered to be some of the most talented in China.

Associate principal, Gu Zuyu, said he and his collegues have really  had a good time and learned a lot.

Zuyu said, while at Watauga  High School, they learned that American students are creative and excel in arts and crafts.

According to  McCarthy, the teaching methods in China are more traditional than American methods.

“The Chinese feel they can learn from us creative ways of teaching. And what we can learn from them, I think, is probably more structure, discipline and hard work,” said McCarthy.

“Our aim to come here is not only to learn about  technology, but to have a cultural exchange,” said Zuyu.

The two cultures can contribute to each other because they are so different, said Dr. McCarthy.

In the upcoming days, the Chinese educators will attend schools in Winston-Salem and Washington D.C. They will also visit monuments in Washington D.C. and meet Congressman Richard Burr, a North Carolina representative.

Seven students seeking masters degrees from Appalachian’s Reich College of Education leave for Bejing May 27.

In Bejing, they will go sightseeing for a few days and then travel to the  Northeast  Yucai School.

Tashner and the graduate students will exchange materials collected by students in the educational media program, as well as copies of lesson plans.

The graduate students, also technology specialists in area community colleges, will survey computer networking capability and software and hardware needs at Northeast Yucai School.

According to Tashner, the school has 75 modern computers and is one of the few public schools in China to have Internet and World Wide Web access.

It’s very useful for students to get information by themselves from the Internet, said Zuyu.

“We have much to learn from them, both in terms of their culture, as well as in terms of how they are educating their people,” said Tashner.

McCarthy said Appalachian has had a number of universities call inquiring on how Appalachian acheived the exchange.  The credit is due in part to McCarthy’s son, Hank McCarthy, an Appalachian graduate and teacher in China, who started the communication between Northeast Yucai School and Appalachian.
 
 
 

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