The Roslyn School District recently welcomed four Chinese students as part of the school’s foreign exchange program.
“They got in on Feb. 22 from Beijing, got their curriculums and are already attending classes,” said Art Mandel, the director of the Roslyn High School guidance department and coordinator of the Roslyn-China Initiative.
According to Mandel, the students, who are staying with hosts from the school district, will be studying at Roslyn High School for the next two months.
“We’ve now been to China three times. It will be our first time to take them in,” he said.
As part of integration process, the students say they’ve chosen English names they’d go by throughout their stay at Roslyn High.
“The English teacher wants to call me Johnson but I didn’t listen,” Zhang Siwei said.
He chose to go by Terry while Cheng Yuanhan chose Emily, Cui Haoxuan chose Percy and Zhang Conglin chose Price.
Hao Wu, the director of counseling who is traveling with the four students, chose Maria as her name.
Siwei explained the major difference between his school in China and Roslyn High.
“When class is over, they are too in a hurry to get to the next class,” he said.
Every year, the Roslyn-China Initiative, created by former Superintendent Dan Brenner, grants between six to 12 students permission to travel to China where they get fully immersed in the Chinese education and culture.
“Last summer, I travelled to Beijing with two students,” Mandel said.
The two students took classes at School No. 35, one of China’s public schools in the mornings and toured Beijing and Shanghai later in the afternoon.
The foreign exchange students typically spend 10 weeks in Beijing during the school year while being paired with Chinese students.
“We made sure it wasn’t just a teen tour,” Mandel said. “It’s supposed to be an educational program.”
Mandel also said every student who have participated in the foreign exchange program come back more mature and goal oriented.
“For a lot of kids, the experience is life changing,” Mandel said. “There are kids who came back and took up Mandarin classes.”
At the Feb. 25 Board of Education meeting, trustees welcomed the students to Roslyn High School.
“We are very excited to have you,” board President Meryl Waxman Ben-Levy said. “And I would have baked you something but my oven is broken.”
