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Hubbard students learn Chinese, Spanish cultures
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Zhen Zhen Li assists sixth-grader Jenna Kelvert with her work. Over the past five years, Hubbard school district has introduced both Chinese and Spanish to its elementary and middle school curricula.
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Linda Slater talks through the number line in Spanish with kindergartners, from left, Daphine Hendrix, Tyler Saunders, Kennedy Perline and Oylan James. She has taught Spanish in various forms for 13 years, but this is her first time teaching it to elementary students.
Hubbard
For the past five years, the chatter among the city’s elementary and middle-school students could be in English, Chinese or, as of this year, Spanish.
Via grants from the College Board and Chinese school authorities, beginning in 2006 Hubbard introduced its third- through seventh-graders to China’s culture and language by hosting visiting teachers. Also starting this year, kindergarten through second-graders are taught Spanish.
“We learn to speak English at an early age,” said Hubbard superintendent Richard Buchenic. “We should do the same with foreign languages. The brain is actually ready to learn at that age.”
Zhen Zhen Li, or Ms. Laoshi — Ms. Teacher — to her students, moved here in July from Henan Province and will be here three years. This is the 26-year-old’s third teaching position. She taught Chinese for two years in China, and English for two years in Beijing.
“It’s a whole new dynamic,” she said of the opportunity to teach 350 Hubbard students.
But it’s been more than just learning American culture and adjusting from spicy noodles to hamburgers and bagels. She has learned from the American structure of schools and its teacher-student relationship and teacher-principal relationship.
“When I was a kid, I endured a more strict way of teaching,” Li said.
But here, she encourages her students, and when necessary, sends students to the principal’s office when they are misbehaving.
In China “if we are sending a student to the principal’s office, they are being expelled,” she said.
The program Li is in sends Chinese English teachers to learn more about the American educational system and to apply the positive aspects of it on the return home.
Assistant Superintendent Lucille Esposito said the Buckeye Association of School Administrators hopes to make the cross-cultural education reciprocal by sending administrators to China’s schools.
“They want us to establish sister schools,” she said.
In a second-story classroom in Hubbard Elementary, Spanish teacher Linda Slater and a group of kindergarten students counted to 10 in Spanish.
The students are among the 400 she teaches the history and culture that are coupled with Spanish.
She said by teaching the students Spanish early, they are essentially eliminating the first couple of weeks of Spanish 1.
“They are so eager and excited to learn,” said Slater, who has taught Spanish for the past 13 years but is in her first year of teaching the language to elementary-school students.
“I feel like I’m the most disruptive force in the building. When I walk through the halls it’s always ‘hola, hola, hola’ [hello, hello, hello] everywhere I turn.”