Chimerica

by Benjamin Nelson

You may of heard about Chimerica around the school. It is a school-based program where students in the Discovery School video conference with Chinese students in Beijing, China. Chimerica is a program that Mrs. Jones started with a lady named Wenyan Zhou. Last year Mrs. Zhou appeared at her door and asked if she could do math classes with her class. Mrs. Jones agreed. Soon enough, Mrs. Zhou figured out that Mrs. Jones had been to China. Then they figured out that the Chinese government would pay for a teacher to come to the United States to teach language, culture, dance, etc. of the Chinese. Hopefully, this will happen next year.

Chimerica is also for leadership. Next year Mrs. Jones will be working with the Chamber of Commerce and Leadership Rutherford. They will be bringing in good leaders like the Mayor so students at DSRR can “pick their brains” and learn to be good leaders.

The goal of Chimerica is to teach children to get along with the Chinese and other cultures, since the U.S. has many business partnerships with the Chinese. It is very beneficial to the Chinese as well. Many Chinese students are learning English, and they are able to practice it on us. When we video conference with them, we tell them about our cultures and they tell us about theirs. During the last video conference, we told them about some of our cultures and celebrations in the fall (like football and Thanksgiving) and they told us about some of their many festivals (like the Lantern Festival). The students that do these video conferences are volunteers from each 5^th and 6^th grade class. We hope to see you at our next video conference.

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