Upfront On the cover: Ohlone Elementary School student Charlotte Palmer, right, greets visiting students from Beijing Yucai elementary school in China, as they arrive on Jan. 22. Photo by Veronica Weber.
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“company store� at Apple’s corporate headquarters, which sells Apple-logo T-shirts, caps and accessories. Google was to be Thursday’s destination where, through some connections, the visiting students expected to actually get inside the buildings to see employees at work. Traveling in two buses, the visitors are based in a hotel in Concord. Ohlone parent Keyi Chang, a Bay Area Chinese-language TV personality, helped to arrange the visit after being contacted by a group called the American-Chinese Environmental Protection Information Exchange Association. “They were referred to me and asked me to find a school,� Chang said. “Because of the Ohlone farm, I thought it would be good for environmental awareness and, also, if they don’t speak that good English maybe they could still communicate because some kids at Ohlone know how to
Shenze Bian, right, a leader of the Young Cultural Ambassadors group, takes a photo of Zitong Zhu, center, and fellow students from the Beijing Yucai school as they prepare to visit Ohlone Elementary School on Wednesday. speak Mandarin.� Indeed, six of Ohlone’s 28 classrooms are Mandarin Immersion classes, designed to develop full bilingualism for native speakers of each language. To greet the visiting Chinese students, Ohlone second- and third-graders read a story in Mandarin about a tiger and a rabbit un-
der the direction of their teacher, Lu Sun. A second group of Ohlone students sang — in English — “This Land is Your Land� and “Make New Friends,� inviting the visitors to join in. Visiting students offered a performance on a ceramic flute, renditions of Chinese songs and one solo
performance of a song — in English — titled “Price Tag,� with a refrain of “money, money, money.� Students divided into groups to visit classrooms — 11 Ohlone teachers volunteered to host — for discussions about recycling and the environment. China has more than 220 million children under age 14, an adult
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leader of the visiting group said in an opening ceremony. “They are eager to communicate as well as to understand each other.� Palo Alto Superintendent Kevin Skelly told the crowd, assembled under Ohlone’s flagpole with the school’s Chinese dragon nearby: “It’s so important as you grow up that you keep these connections and that understanding and friendship as you become adults and become responsible for the relationship between our two countries.� A local Chinese educator who helped to organize the exchange said many of the visiting students are the children of Chinese government officials and frequently travel abroad. Ohlone Principal Bill Overton said student trips to China had been discussed in the six-year history of the Mandarin Immersion Program, but never undertaken. Because of state rules barring parent financing of school-sponsored trips, any such trip would have to be organized by parents and done during vacation time, he said. N Staff Writer Chris Kenrick can be emailed at ckenrick@ paweekly.com.
WATCH IT ONLINE PaloAltoOnline.com
A video of the Chinese students’ visit to Ohlone Elementary School has been posted on PaloAltoOnline.com.
January 25 & 26
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