Chinese American International School’s First National Conference on Teaching Chinese Language Draws Over 300 Participants
In response to the growing demand for Chinese language instruction across the United States and to celebrate its 25 th anniversary, the Institute for the Teaching of Chinese Language and Culture at Chinese American International School (CAIS) held its f irst national conference on March 16-18 at Mission Bay Conference Center at UCSF in San Francisco, California. More than 300 participants, speakers, and vendors attended the conference.

“This was an extremely timely and important conference that responds to the growing importance of Chinese in the world today,” said Dr. Fred Genesee, a professor of psychology at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, who was the conference’s keynote speaker. “Educators need to be more proactive to promote interest in China and the Chinese language if the students of today are prepared to do business with China and understand this emerging world power.”

Dr. Genesee’s presentation was titled “Dual Language Learning and the Global Village.”

“I am very pleased with the results. We exceeded expectations,” said Andrew Corcoran, CAIS Head of School and Executive Director of the Institute. “The staff did a marvelous job. The energy level was remarkably high throughout. You could almost touch the excitement in the air. It was also wonderful to see such a broad representation from both public and private schools.”

Founded in 1981, CAIS is a preK-8 th grade independent school in San Francisco that offers a bilingual and multicultural learning experience for American students of all backgrounds. Recently, CAIS was profiled in Asia Society’s “Creating a Chinese Language Program in Your School: An Introductory Guide” as a case study for successful Chinese-English immersion education. “As the world’s political economy shifts to the Asia Pacific region, the time is right to expand the cultural and linguistic horizons of pre-collegiate students throughout America,” Corcoran said. Next year’s conference will be held March 14-16, 2008. For more information, see the conference website: www.cais.org/conference.