Learning Chinese

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Ms. Ping Whittaker, the first Mandarin Chinese teacher in Tennesse, explains the meaning of a poster to Scholastic Student Reporter Aaron Broder. (Photo: Courtesy Aaron Broder)

October 2, 2006

The room was filled with noise. Friends chatted about their weekend. Students frantically went searching in their backpacks for their homework. Seconds later, the teacher walked in. As she did, the students quickly got into their seats and stopped talking.

“Ni hao (Hello and how are you?),” she said to the students.

“Zaoshang hao (It’s a good morning!),” replied all the students from their desk, their eyes shining with an eagerness to learn.

“Let’s begin,” she said.

My school, Martin Luther King Academic Magnet, is one of the first schools in Tennessee to offer a Mandarin Chinese program, but it is by no means the first in the country. In fact, Chinese has been steadily rising in popularity in the United States as one of the languages to learn.

According to a 2005 report by the Asia Society, only 24,000 students grades 7-12 in the United States took Chinese compared with one million students who took French. But since then, the number has risen, as seen in my school. While last year there were only 15 people in the Chinese I class, it has grown to 34 people this year.

Scholastic Student Reporter Aaron Broder and Dr. Pedro Garcia, superintendent of the Metro Nashville Public School System. (Photo: Courtesy Aaron Broder)

To learn more about the Chinese program in my school system, I went to speak with Dr. Pedro Garcia, superintendent of the Metro Nashville School System, and Ms. Ping Whittaker, the first Chinese teacher in a public school system in Tennessee.

“We are very excited about this program,” said Dr. Garcia, “and we plan to expand it to allow as wide a variety of students to take it as possible.”

“We hope to extend the program to include elementary students as well as middle- and high-school students,” he continued, clearly excited with the plans for the program. “We are very committed to this program and will continue to support it.”

Ms. Whittaker also shares high hopes for the program. “[At Martin Luther King,] I wish to make the program run from Chinese I all the way to AP Chinese.”

Back in the classroom, the class was about to end.

“Don't forget to do your homework tonight,” the teacher reminds the students. The students thank the teacher. “Xie xie.” Within minutes, the bell rings. The teacher and students bid each other farewell—“Zai jian!”—eager to continue learning Chinese the next day.

Aaron Broder is a member of the Scholastic Kids Press Corps.

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