School Community Project

Jingyi Zhao

Introduction and summary

My principal and I met on September 6th after school discussing about
this school community project proposal. The proposal is about the
Chinese club at Post Oak Academy. After we went through its current
situation including things have been running well and problems still
existing, needs and potentials for development, and possible ways to
improve, my principal agreed that my proposal of improving the design
and implement of our Chinese club is feasible and beneficial.
Define the issues or needs
1. The teaching contents of our Chinese club is not systematic nor well-
designed as usually teachers just chose random topics to teach instead of
having a big map ready ahead of time or having a determined goal to
reach.
2. The culture goal of the World-readiness Standards of learning
languages focuses on Practice, Product, and Perspective. The Chinese
club at Post Oak is supposed to emphasize on developing students’
Chinese language skills and the awareness to Chinese cultures. However,
a long-exiting problem of our Chinese club is that usually students only
have the chance to learn ‘product’ but not having chance to learn
‘practice’ and ‘perspectives’. They do artworks and handcrafts, sing
songs, dances, yet do not know the cultural meanings behind those artistic
forms.
3. Our Chinese club has been running for years and each semester we
have Chinese clubs for K-6 grade students. However, we could still
hardly see noticeable outcomes after a semester’s learning.
Define the solution
1. I suggest to choose one theme/topic to teach throughout a semester,
such as Chinese traditional 360 professions, Chinese festivals, Chinese
minorities, Chinese architecture, Chinese cloth, Chinese life ceremony, or
interesting life of Chinese children, etc. By doing so, teachers will need to
design the lesson plans, teaching materials, activities and assessments
ahead of time to make sure the lessons in a semester is coherent, well-
directed, and systematic.
2. I suggest that teachers also teach well-designed and systematic cultural
knowledge (which are ‘practice’ and ‘perspective’ ) aside from letting
students experience making ‘product’, so that students will know ‘why
we have a certain product or a certain culture’. For example, before
teaching students to actually make a kite, the teacher can walk students
through a PPT talking about the Chinese tradition of 春日踏青, the
typical patterns/objects on kites and their cultural meanings, and then
implement an activity for students to express their thoughts or questions.
3. I suggest to do project-based learning in Chinese club. Each semester,
the teacher and students can choose to do one or two projects, and then
combine Chinese language, cultural knowledge, and certain artistic forms
together to perform/display as the outcomes. For instance, if a semester’s
learning is about Chinese minorities, then as the final outcome or
assessment, students will use the cultural knowledge they have learned to
write/say an introduction of a certain Chinese minority they choose, and
also display and describe the minority painting they have done in Chinese
club.
Goals of project
Based on the meeting with my principal, My goal of this project is to
implement the methods of improvement described above during my
Chinese club class in 2019 fall semester (my students will be second
grade students). During this semester’s implementation, I will take photos
and write journals to record the progress and problems, and make a final
reflection for next semester’s modification and proceeding.
Timeline/Outline of project
October 8th: Chinese club and my project start. From the week when
Chinese club starts, I will have a 50-minutes long Chinese club lesson on
every Tuesday after school, and for this semester, there will be about 13
or 14 Chinese club lessons in total.
Semester theme: Traditional Chinese 360 Professions
Week 1-6: use PPT, authentic Chinese books/photos/videos, authentic
products, to walk students through the first part of traditional Chinese
professions. Along with the cultural knowledge, I will also prepare
students with main vocabularies and sentence structures for expressing
the contents. From the beginning, students will know there will be a
colorful clay sculpture project starting from the fourth lesson, so when
they are learning, each of them can take note and choose one or two
specific professions which they want to do for the project to focus. After
finishing the project, students will introduce the profession they choose,
such as what it is and how it functions, its cultural background and the
philosophy of life behind the profession, also, they will show us their
colorful clay sculptures.
Week 7-12 or 13: use PPT, authentic Chinese books/photos/videos,
authentic products, to walk students through the second part of the
traditional 360 professions. Along with the cultural knowledge, I will also
prepare students with main vocabularies and sentence structures for
expressing the contents. From the beginning, students will know there
will be another project starting from the ninth lesson, so when they are
learning, they can take notes or photos and choose one or two specific
professions which they want to do for the project to focus. This project is
that students can work independently or with another one or two students
to either make and paint a kite or draw a folk painting to show some
traditional professions. After finishing the project, students will describe
their works, such as what it is and how the professions function, or its
cultural background and the philosophies of life behind the professions,
also, they will show us their art works.
Week 13 or 14: the first 20 minutes will be used as students’ practice
time, and during the next 30 minutes, we will arrange an event to invite
their parents, other teachers and students to come and see my students
report their two projects. Also, I will take photos or videos and send to
their home room teachers so they can send to students’ parents, and I will
display their works including written texts and art works for a while
before they take them home.
I assume that by implementing this plan, the issues/needs mentioned
above will be solved to a big extent, and students will be able to learn
Chinese culture combined with language, moreover, students will receive
a systematic course which encompasses the three elements of culture
teaching: product, practice, and perspective.
Implementation update and reflection
The Chinese club in this semester has had three lessons so far. It went
really well at multiple aspects:
1. The students have shown big interests in the theme which is Traditional
Chinese 360 professions (360 is just an traditional expression not the
exact amount of Chinese professions). During the past three lessons, they
took down notes and word lists as well as raised many interesting
questions about the cultural contents like how agriculture in China
supports people’s life, which animals and products Chinese animal
husbandry feed and produce, etc.
2. During the first lesson, I walked students through the syllabus so they
all know what to expect and what they are expected to do in each lesson.
Every Tuesday we reviewed some important previous contents and then
continue learning under the same theme. Their motivation is much higher
than before, and their learning process is more well-directed.
3. I have shown that this Chinese club is not a random course nor they
can do random things just to spend the time, instead, they knew that they
can learn language, culture, and art aimed at our goals, so they were busy
with practicing language, discussing the cultural topics, and coming up
with ideas on what they wanted to do for their first project. That
contributed to the classroom management too. During the past three
lessons, students were behaving well and very focused like it was their
normal class instead of a Chinese club where students usually are loud or
being too excited.
4. I combined vocabularies, common used sentence structures, cultural
facts and perspectives, art, and social study contents in the curriculum.
For example, students learned to use 中国有很多职业，这个是...行，这
个职业卖..., 在这个作品里有...,etc. To introduce a certain profession.
For another example, students learned why we say 360 professions, what
the expansion and division of professions would bring to the development
of a society, what main industries China has, how Chinese people live
their lives, how folk artists express work scenes and lives through arts,
etc. During discussions, some of the students made comparisons between
China and the U.S. Both my students and I enjoyed having this
meaningful and interesting course.
However, after three lessons, I have found that my original plan has to be
modified since the contents for each lesson seemed to be too much and
students could not take them all. I have to consider to delete some less
important contents, and extend the preparation time for each project.
Even though I chose the vocabularies and sentence structures carefully to
fit their levels, whereas the language contents are still new to the students
so they need more time to take in especially when they only have Chinese
club once a week so they do not have enough time to remember those
contents, and they had many questions to discuss on which also occupied
much more time than I planned. Moreover, I am thinking that this course
might be an one school year course instead of an one semester course.
Final Report
The Chinese club lessons now have been half way through this semester
and we have had 7 lessons so far. It went really well as the followings:
1. The needs for this project were to make Chinese club a course which
has coherent and systematic lesson plans instead of teaching separate and
random contents, and provides students with opportunities to learn
cultural products, practices, and perspectives, as well as designs activities
and provides scaffolding for students’ language, culture and art outcomes.
By implementing this project, I chose only one theme/topic to teach
during the whole semester’s Chinese club, which means all the contents
are about traditional Chinese 360 professions (360 is just an traditional
expression not the exact amount of Chinese professions). To immerse
students into an environment full of Chinese language, Chinese culture
and arts, and fulfill the culture goal of the World-readiness Standards of
learning languages, I have been teaching students knowledge about
Product, Practice and Perspective, such as how many traditional Chinese
professions are there and what are they, how and why did they appear and
transit from the original forms to modern forms, how those professions
contribute to the development and expansion of Chinese society and what
impacts this process had on the appearance and growth of Chinese urban,
how different traditional professions support or entertain Chinese
people’s lives, what traditional activities Chinese people do related to a
certain profession, how legends and folk artists interpreted these cultures
and expressed their ideas, hopes, wishes, feelings,etc. In order to make
those contents easier to be understood by young students, I taught them
relevant vocabulary and common used sentence structures so that they
have a scaffolding, also, I used lots of visual cues like pictures, videos,
and body language, accompanied with simple and interesting texts,
stories, dialogues, and discussions to help them understand and output.
By doing so, aside from the art projects to make Products, students also
learned Chinese language and cultural products, practice and
perspectives. To help the Chinese club have outcome, I designed two art
projects for students to do in small groups. By implementing project-
based learning, students’ learning performances were more well-directed
and motivated during each lesson. During the report session of a project,
students are expected to display their art works, and introduce the
professions that they chose to show in their art works using the language
contents and cultural knowledge they have learned from Chinese club.
This way, the outcome after half a semester’s and then a whole semester’s
Chinese club learning can be seen and heard, and it includes language, art
and culture.
2. It is the first time I saw and heard about students’ high interests and
motivations towards an after school Chinese club in the past recent years.
Before starting to make changes to Chinese club, including me, teachers
at our school viewed Chinese club as only an after school program and
normally taught randomly chosen art/culture contents. Sometimes
students experienced similar lessons more than once and found things to
do in Chinese club were unpredictable and kind of boring, not mentioning
not being beneficial to their Chinese language learning. But during the
past 7 weeks, students kept telling me that how much thoughts they put
on coming up with their project ideas, why and how sad they were for not
being able to attend last week’s Chinese club and asking what we talked
and did last week, and they love to come to my classroom for this year’s
Chinese club, etc. Some of them told their parents about our meaningful
knowledge and cool projects. Also, they enjoyed a lot during the
discussions that we had about some complicating topics, and they were
excited to show each other what they have written down on their notes
and that they can use their notes to express their thoughts during
discussion. This is the first time when I experience a Chinese club
without misbehavior and being noisy.
3. Students take over a big part of the proactive learning responsibility.
Because I walked students through the syllabus in the first lesson, since
then, students’ learning were aimed at their projects and they found the
contents or elements that they were interested in, so they would not feel
overwhelmed if the knowledge was a little complicating. On the contrary,
they were happy to inquiry and explore. Moreover, the art projects
became more meaningful. In the past, students thought that they come to
a Chinese club and finish an art work, that’s all, but now they said it’s
their project, and the art work they were doing was created to show their
ideas about traditional Chinese professions and Chinese people’s lives. I
am very proud to hear and see that when they were making the clay
sculptures, they could explain what they were making and why they were
making in this way, mostly in Chinese, but for some things that they did
not know how to say in Chinese, they came to me and ask me to teach
them how to say or write that in Chinese. Moreover, I have been feeling
that my role has been shifting to a facilitator or guider. Even during the
clay making sessions, I first taught them and demonstrated modeling for
them about basic techniques of using clay to make sculpture, and then I
became more like an instructor or helper by providing information that
they needed or solving their technical problems.
Generally speaking, my project will be a good way to address the needs
of Chinese club at Post Oak and has been on the way of successfully
meeting the goals (because this semester’s Chinese club has not ended
yet).
However, along with implementing this project, I have found a problem
that I should continue to seek for solutions to solve: I have found that the
whole contents of traditional Chinese 360 professions that I integrated
originally in my curriculum were too many for a single semester’s
Chinese club. In my original plan, I intended to teach the introduction and
general knowledge and two big categories of traditional Chinese
professions, as well as complete the first project during week 1 through
week 6, and then teach another two big categories of professions during
week 7 through week 12 or week 13, and then use week 13 or week 14
for students’ preparation and their showcase. But I could only finish
teaching the introduction and general knowledge and one big category of
traditional Chinese professions as well as completing the first project in
week 8. Because I did not think that students were having that many
things to inquiry and discuss about the general knowledge. While I
thought many of their questions are meaningful to talk about and I did not
want to discourage their interests in learning Chinese cultures, so I
decided to modify my lesson plans. In addition, even though I chose
carefully about the vocabulary and sentence structure, and students
understand well, but it was still hard for them to master the language
contents within a short period of time as I planned since they only came
to Chinese club once a week, so I decided to give them more time to
review and practice. Now that I had to delete some planned contents and
extend the time for the first half of this semester’s learning, I have to
modify my lesson plans for the second half of this semester’s learning as
well. I am thinking I should only teach another one big category of
traditional Chinese professions and complete the second art project from
week 9 to week 12 or week 13, meanwhile, decrease the amount of the
language contents (good thing is that most of the sentence structures they
will need have already been learned during the first half of this semester.)
and have better control of the discussion topics. Moreover, I have been
thinking that I should make this curriculum a full school year Chinese
club course.
Though the process of doing this school community project, I had a
chance to reflect on my teaching experience during the past two and a
half year, from teaching summer camp and doing intervention to teaching
K-2, and teaching different grades Chinese club. I have learned and
practiced a lot, this project gave me an opportunity to think what are the
good things we have done and what are the things that still waiting to be
improved. I am happy that I can contribute to our Chinese program by
bringing our Chinese club a positive change. That also reminds me that I
should keep working on adjusting my ideas to better benefit the program
and the students, and improving the skills of being a teacher including
lesson/curriculum designing, teaching techniques, and so on.
Based on the past 7 weeks’ Chinese club lessons, I think this project
should be introduced and spread to more Chinese teachers so that Chinese
club lessons can be more systematic, coherent, interesting, and comply
better with the culture goals of the World-readiness Standards of learning
language and our Chinese immersion program. I will continue to adjust
and modify this project, and make a final reflection after this semester’s
and/or this school year’s Chinese club lessons, and hope then I can share
the project to other Chinese teachers.
Appendix
 (students were taking notes.)

(students were making sentences that they wanted to use in their project.)
(students’ own vocabulary notes.)
(discussion about agriculture in China.)
(students orally describing folk art works using the knowledge they have
learned.)

(making conversations about the professions they chose.)

(learning how animal husbandry and farm support human’s life.)

(students retelling stories about the relevant legends using the key
vocabulary hint.)
(discussing how increasing professions throughout the history contribute
to the development and expansion of Chinese society.)

(students were working in groups to

come up with the idea of their first project, and then report to me .)
(students were working in small groups to make their clay sculpture.)
(students were painting their clay sculptures.)