Welcome to Huaxia Chinese School New York New Web Site *** 欢迎来访纽约华夏中文学校*** For latest WCC closings call 914-606-6900, visit www.sunywcc.edu, or listen to WHUD (100.7 FM), WOR (710 AM), WFAS (103.9 FM), WCBS (880 AM), or watch News 12 TV
Weekly Newsletter Jan 12th (Subscribe to HXNY newsletter: http://eepurl.com/gQ_AH)
HXNY Newsletter - 01/12/12 Table of Contents
*HXNY 2011-2012 School Budget Highlights * Recap of Education Seminar: College Application * HXNY Board Vote On 2012 School Budget and Bylaw Amendment Budget * Update from the Bylaws Amendment Committee * Bylaw Dabate on 1/29 held by Parent Council *Last Call: HXNY Ski Trip – Jiminy Peak *Chinese New Year Parties
* HXNY 2011-2012 School Budget Highlights:
The school 2011-2012 budget was approved on Jan 4th. We have 578 children students this year with about $354K estimated income and about $390K estimated expense. Major expense items include (1) $156K for teacher's compensation, training, supplies, etc, (2) $122K WCC classroom rental, (3) $46K education expense, (4)$23K office and IT expense, (5)$16K Admin/PTA appreciation. Compared to last year, we increased expenses in teacher compensation, WCC rental, education expense, while reduced expense in Admin/PAT appreciation, general office, telephone, PTA transfer and miscellaneous expenses. For details, please see the link here http://hxcsny.org/hxny/20112012/2011-2012_School_Year_budget_final.pdf
Should you have any questions of comments, feel free to discuss it with the Principal (dapeng.hu@gmail.com, 203-588-1883). The Principal and The Treasurer will give a financial report in the All-member meeting on Feb 5th.
* Recap of Education Seminar: College Application We had a very successful seminar on College Application last Sunday. Julia Zhou, Principal of Alumnus Group, shared with us her firsthand experience on how to help kids apply for their dream universities. She introduced a lot of the unique and key information to us. Many parents attended and actively joined in the discussion. Contrary to main stream belief, Ms. Zhou believes that the process should start as early as 8th grade. Admission to top colleges takes much more than just SAT scores. Ms. Zhou is happy to assist you with any further questions. If you would like to contact her, or want to get a copy of the presentation, please email her at: julia@alumnusgroup.com. Besides, please feel free to join and participate in the school education discussion forum at http://hxcsny.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewforum.php?165
* HXNY Board Vote On 2012 School Budget and Bylaw Amendment Budget
Time and Date: January 4 2012
Board Members Participated: 7 Lida He, Ying Huang, Shengjing Li, MingHui Lei, Gutuan Zheng, Ching Zhou, Li Zhu
Meeting Minutes:
Board started to review the 2011-2012 school budget proposed on October16, 2011. Board found some items not clear and request admin team to append new information and resubmit the budget. After the admin submitted the new budget and the board reviewed carefully again. On January 4, 2012, the board held an email voting and 6 board members participated. 6 board members voted YES. HXNY 2011-2012 school budget is approved by the board.
Board started to review the proposed HXNY bylaw amendment process budget proposed on October16, 2011 . Board suggested some changes and the budget was revised. On January 4, 2012, the board held an email voting and 6 board members participated. 4 board members voted YES for the budget. HXNY bylaw amendment process budget is approved by the board.
Board will make the 2011-2012 school budget and bylaw amendment process budget available to all school members.
On Jan 8, 2012, the Board hosted an open meeting to allow the Bylaws Committee to present their first draft. Before the meeting, hard copies of the draft, change summaries, and survey were distributed. The Committee would like to thank all of the Board members, principal and some school officers, and many members for attending the presentation, offering their comments and suggestions, and returning their surveys. If you missed the presentation in the past Sunday, please check out the presentation in https://sites.google.com/site/hxnybylaws/documents. The Committee was pleased to see an agreement in many areas, such as honorary membership, school-wide election of the Board, election committee, communication channel access etc. As expected, we also noticed different opinions on some areas, such as limited voting method, membership termination, principal election and dispute resolution etc. The Committee would like to stress that the draft is still a work in progress, and we are open to suggestions from members, the Board, Admin, and PC. In the next two months or so, the Bylaws Committee has proposed to hold multiple open sessions to get feedback from our members and keep them informed on the latest changes of the bylaws. Please stay tuned to our open session schedules. The Committee strongly urges our members to review the draft and summaries, and send their comments to HXNYBylawsCom@yahoogroups.com. We are looking forward to hearing from you.
* Bylaw Dabate on 1/29 held by Parent Council
家长会将于1/29举办bylaw辩论会 会议地点(Meeting location): AAB-104 时间(Time): Jan. 29 from 10:30am to 11:30am
The bylaw draft and highlights are available here 1 & 2.
* Last Call: HXNY Ski Trip – Jiminy Peak
For those of you still interested in the HXNY Ski Trip to Jiminy Peak next week (1/20-1/22, free Thursday 1/19), we are happy to announce that the deadline has been extended. Reservations continue to be accepted. Please follow instruction here to book: http://hxcsny.org/hxny/20112012/ski.pdf . See previous two Newsletters for more details. If you have any questions, please contact Liang Wang at wangliang@hotmail.com, or 914-235-0694, 914-355-1250.
* New Year Parties
1. HXNY Chinese New Year partywill be held on 1/29 at Woodlands High School, raffle tickets will be sold on site from 1pm. see here for detail. PTA is still in need of volunteers for HXNY Chinese New Year Party. If you would like to help, please email ptateam@hxcsny.org with your name, contact info and your child's class number.
2. WACA 23rd Chinese New Year party:2:30pm-9:30pm on Saturday 2/4/2012 at New Rochelle High School, please see details here. Discount tickets available until 1/29/12! Please order online or watch out for the tickets sale in your school or community. Tickets will be sold outside of HXNY school office on 1/19 at prices of $25 Adult / $15 Senior (65+ yrs) / $15 Child (3-12 yrs) or online at: http://cny2012.eventbrite.com/
As announced in yesterday’s newsletter, on Sunday Jan 8th, AAB 104 will be used only for PTA’s Chinese New Year show rehearsal, which has been reserved on Dec. 12th. Parents, teachers and students who have already signed up for the rehearsal or plan to do so, please go to AAB 104 at your scheduled time.
We noticed that Mr Jianren Li had posted a message on a blog on Jan 4th announcing an open boarding meeting this Sunday and Mr Li Zhu had sent out an email to many members through his own un-official list on Jan 6th to announce the meeting to be held in the “Orchestra room next to school office”. We want to clarify that the meeting can not be held as announced because AAB 104 can not hold two events at the same time. We also want to remind all members please refrain from using un-official members email list.
The admin team had informed Mr Li Zhu yesterday the room was not available. No other large classroom is available as we also have an education seminar and WCC required all classroom reservations for Jan 8th to be made before Dec 23nd. Given the schedule conflict, we published the bylaw draft in yesterday’s Newsletter, following some board members suggestions, so that members can have opportunities to preview the draft before a meeting.
Since the meeting was supposed to be a presentation to the three teams, we immediately informed Jianren and Board upon receiving Jianren’s initial meeting request on 12/20 that both teams have pre-scheduled activities and will not available on Jan 8th and suggested to schedule the meeting in another time. Unfortunately that was totally ignored.
We suggest again Mr Jianren Li and Mr Li Zhu work with Admin and PTA to reschedule the bylaw presentation. Forcing a meeting without coordination with school administration can seriously interrupt the school’s normal operation and cause confusion among members. The admin and PTA teams are committed to supporting HXNY’s bylaws reform.
Highlights Education Seminar: College Application School budget approved Bylaw draft is available 第九期小语世界已经出版 Ski trip - Jiminy Peak Chinese New Year party tickets (last day)
Education Seminar: College Application (10:00am-12:00pm in AAB116 Sunday January 8th) We have Julia Zhou: educational expert from Alumnus Group come to our school to provide an honest, detailed guide to U.S. college admissions. In this seminar, they will dive into the process of selecting and getting into the best college for each student. Topics include: - What U.S. colleges want: academics, test scores, extracurriculars, and more. - How important is the SAT really? Insights on how colleges use your SAT score. - Understanding the Ivy League: who gets in, and how you can be among them. - Advice for juniors, sophomores, and freshmen: get a head start now. This is an intimate event for Huaxia Chinese School of New York. Please join and attend the event.
School budget has been approved by the board on Jan. 4th, 2011, a summary of the budget will be published next week.
Bylaw amendment: The bylaw draft and highlights are available here 1& 2.第九期小语世界已经出版(click here),本期编辑林伊茗。请老师和家长继续鼓励孩子们踊跃投稿;请联系邮箱:studentcorner_ny@yahoo.com.
PARENT COUNCIL ANNOUNCEMENTS
HXNY Ski Trip – Jiminy Peak reserveThere is still time, and the deal has just got better! Jiminy Peak has just sweetened our Stay-n-Ski package with a “Thursday Free” offer. Instead of Friday (1/20) checkin Sunday (1/22) checkout, you can choose to arrive on Thursday (1/19) and checkout on Sunday (1/22). You will receive two all-day adult lift tickets for the extra day too. Follow the instructionhere to reserve your trip. Again, the Stay-n-Ski package includes lodging at an one-bedroom Country Inn Suite (with kitchen), plus two adult all-day lift tickets. The price is $329 per night including all tax and fees. The regular price is ~$50 more. If you have any difficulty booking, or have any questions, please feel free to contact Liang Wang at wangliang@hotmail.com, or 914-235-0694, 914-355-1250.
Ticket will be sold at $5 on 1/8 by HXNY main office, covering the lunch, kids game, raffle and goody bag for kid. The ticket sold on 1/29 will be $8. A rehearsal is scheduled on 1/8 at AAB-104 from 9:40am-2pm for the registered programs.For those classes with entire class participating, we strongly encourage class parents to get the count and purchase tickets as group on 1/8 for the classes to avoid pay higher price on 1/29. Meanwhile, getting the headcounts early will help PTA plan food and other supplies and run the event smoothly.
Recruiting: video recorder to video tape the performance, please contact Wu He at 718-319-1855 or <wuhe@gmail.com>,
*Education Excellence Committee Update * Recap of Education Seminar * Update from the Bylaws Amendment Committee * Notice on Mobile Library
Marry Christmas and Happy New Year!
* Education Excellence Committee Update:
The Education Excellence Committee had two group meetings last week. The textbook team group held a very productive meeting, which covered three topics. First, the evaluation of textbook systems. Team members were assigned to review Standard Chinese, Meizhou Chinese, and Ma Liping, along with other alternative textbooks. The team will use the attached assessment template as a framework http://hxcsny.org/e107_files/public/1324596778_114_FT4484_ textbook_evaluation_template.xlsx. Second, the meeting discussed Reading/Practice Books/on-line Resources. The team will examine some suggested websites and provide detailed descriptions of them for easy access/usage. Third, the team had a brief discussion on HXCS training, which will benefit the textbook team. If parents have any suggestions on the above three topics, please feel free to email education.textbook@hxcsny.org. The assessment team had a group meeting too last week. The team reviewed the progress of the assessment efforts and laid out a short-term plan for the school year. A few board members and parents also participated in the discussion. As a critical step of the assessment project, we will discuss the Overall Learning Goal of our education program during the first week of January 2012. Team members are soliciting input from teachers, parents and the board members. In the attached assessment report, you may find a draft of overall goal, and grade-by-grade learning objectives of Standard Chinese, which serves as a reference. You may also find these documents from the link http://hxny.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?4535. and http://hxny.org/e107_files/public/1324587185_113_FT4535_ assessment_team_dec16_minutes.doc. Please direct any comments to assessment team at education.assessment@hxcsny.org by Jan. 5, 2012. The teaching method team had a group meeting recently. The team will focus on 2-3 key topics such as师资培训, 分班和班级之间的衔接,增进学生学习兴趣/改善学习方法。The objective is to come up with recommendations to the school by the end of January 2012 on these 2-3 topics. The team had a brief but productive discussion on 师资培训. One suggestion is to hold regular informal 1-hour discussion sessions for teachers of similar grades during the culture class period on regular school days. Teachers attending these sessions will be compensated for 1 teaching hour per discussion session. Teachers can share ideas, best practices, extra reading materials, and other topics of mutual interest. Teachers can also take turns to give simulated class lectures. The nice thing about these informal sessions is that they take place during regular school days, easy to arrange and topics are closely related to actual class room teaching. The group leader Mingbao plans to have weekly teleconferences after the New Year. Of course, please feel free to share your ideas at any time via education.teaching@hxcsny.org.
* Recap of Education Seminar: Similar to马立平和美洲华语教学探讨,last Sunday, we had 博览班和标准班教学探讨. Teachers杨志耕 and王虹provided their teaching experience in博览班和标准班, and parents顾克鲁, 洪雪琪 and洪波 shared their learning experience. Parents think that it is a good way for school to provide an option of choice for parents and students, and teachers. Further guideline of the博览班和标准班 needs to be discussed and evaluated. Parents are welcome to review the current documentation in the education committee discussion forum and join the discussion to express their ideas and suggestions. Also please feel free to send emails to education.committee@hxcsny.org. In addition, HSK test word lists and sample tests can be downloaded via http://www.chinesetesting.cn/godownload.do. Please review the words and start practice. After this education seminar, Mrs. YingLing Zhang provided some new concepts for parents on financial planning.
On December 18, the Committee first reviewed all draft amendments that have been further refined. Thereafter, they focused their discussions on elections, specifically on Election Committee.
Election Committee In order for elections to be transparent and fair, an Election Committee (EC) will be formed. · The Election Committee will consist of the non-candidate members of the Board of Directors, the Principal, the Chairperson of the Parents Council and Voting Members from the general membership in the same number as Sitting Board of Director candidates. · The PC chair will be the chair of EC. · The Election Committee will handle election related issues, including but not limited to facilitating the election, preparing the list of candidates, election announcements, balloting and vote counting. · No filtering of candidates is proposed. On Dec 20, 2011, the Bylaws Committee has sent their first draft of the new Bylaws to the Board, principal and PC chair. The Committee requests that the Board schedule a meeting in the near future to allow the Committee members to give a presentation to the Board, Admin, and PC.
* Notice on Mobile Library
More new books are available in the mobile library so please come and check them out. In addition, just a reminder, if you have borrowed books from the school, you can renew them for another 2 weeks after the 1st 2 week period if there is no waiting list on the book. However, you should return them after 4 weeks.
哥伦比亚大学中文部主任刘乐宁教授在视频中指出国际汉语教育的三个瓶颈,教师数量质量的不足,教材的短缺和单一,和教法的适用性欠缺。刘教授讨论了教材应该多样性和适用性,并强调要根据教学对象灵活使用教材教法。宾夕法尼亚大学中文部主任蒋冕华博士比较了中文教育中的学院汉语和实用汉语。她强调华裔学生在小学初中应该着重培养兴趣,以饮食中文,旅游中文和文化传播为主,让学生即快乐又能学东西,为日后学习学院汉语打下兴趣基础。她主张华裔儿童要在美国落地生根,所以不能照抄照搬中国的教材教法。耶鲁大学中文部高级讲师牟岭博士,《新启蒙汉语》编者,根据自己在大学教中文又做过中文学校校长的经验,总结了目前中文学校普遍面临的问题:一是缺少适合美国华人的教材,二是缺乏针对华裔儿童的课堂策略和方法。大部分中文教育过于注重文学性而缺乏趣味性和适用性,造成孩子既不快乐又没学到东西。他反复强调要注重口语教学。大会特邀嘉宾马立平博士在午餐时间和大家分享了她的个人经历,教女儿学汉语的经过和开中文学校编写教材的心路历程。她觉得自己英文不好,必须让女儿中文学好才能跟孩子有深层次的沟通。虽然她的中文学校很成功,可她感叹要让大部分的华裔儿童学好地道的中文是“Mission Impossible”。在分组研讨中,她分别讲述了如何在美国教孩子写作文和如何将美国21世纪外国语学习标准与马立平教材相结合。《朗朗中文》的辛思谦先生演示了他的公司(Yes!Chinese)开发的多媒体教学平台“中文阅读”系统。该系统最大的特色是能够即刻将老师自己提供的文章生成多媒体互动课文,包括拼读,多语言解释,例句和配图。他的演示吸引了很多老师的兴趣。老师和家长可以到www.yes-chinese.com去尝试。《美洲华语》编辑郑佩玲同时也是一位美国中学和中文学校老师。她介绍了《美洲华语》的特色和编辑理念。《美洲华语》每课都有课前活动,课文,相关故事,和会话练习。该教材内容上与孩子日常生活紧密相关,并注重与孩子在英语学校学习内容结合,比如科学和社会课程中学到的东西会在中文课上得到反映。为了让华裔儿童立足本土又为自己的族裔骄傲,该教材讲述很多华人在美国的历史,编辑们的良苦用心让人感慨。部分演讲材料可见http://hxcsny.org/hxny/20112012/MZHY_L6toL9_intro.pdf。宾夕法尼亚大学教育心理学教授陈欣银博士比较了华裔子女和欧美孩子的社会心理特征。华裔孩子更多害羞(shyness)缺少攻击性(aggressiveness),不过这种差别在两岁时就很明显,所以不一定是文化原因,但教育方式让这种特性更明显。陈教授建议家长对孩子多鼓励少批评,培养自信。他很不赞同虎妈的教育方式。我们华夏纽约被总校邀请做三个专题演讲。林宇老师在"课堂教学经验和教材"专题中讲述了"〈美洲华语〉教学初探",演讲生动活泼,受到其他学校许多老师的好评。王硕老师的“HSK全攻略”特受欢迎,大会专门安排讲了两场。许多人过了吃饭时间还不停的向王老师问问题。胡大鹏校长在校长论坛上讲述了中文教育多元化的必要性并介绍了我们学校的一些尝试。校长教务长们对此反映热烈。许多学校也都在同时使用或正在尝试多种教材。大费城分校同时使用3种教材(中文,马立平,美洲华语)两年来深受家长欢迎。看来中文教育多样化是大势所趋。因为路途遥远我们学校和北部其他学校去参加这次会议的人比较少。为了弥补这个遗憾我们计划把一些演讲者请到我们自己的教师培训中。届时有兴趣的家长也欢迎参加。敬请关注。 * 教育委员会:教学评估的研讨和HSK/YCT 考试介绍: Last Sunday, Dr. Jun Lin, our Associate Dean and the education committee assessment group leader, provided a talk on Assessment (教学评估). He discussed the outline of the proposed assessment system for HXNY. As a multiple-year project, the assessment system aims to develop an infrastructure to assure student learning, and to improve the quality of our education program continuously. Once implemented, it will provide solid evidence and feedback for the school to assist future decision-making on education program. Teachers will gain more latitude in their teaching and testing methods, since the focus will be on the learning objectives rather than specific texts. Based on the learning objectives for each grade, the education program at the school level will assure that students learn progressively over the years and achieve the long-term learning goals, which covers a series of desirable knowledge components and skills. The assessment system will also help ease the transition issues among multiple textbook types. A similar talk has been provided to the teachers during the training session in the summer. The detailed documentation and the PPT file could be found at http://hxcsny.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?4497. Please let us know if you have any suggestions or comments. Followed by his talk, 汉语推广与留学中国部主任陈亮 provided an introduction of HSK and YCT test introduction. It covers the history of the HSK/YCT, test structures, schedule and word list, etc. We will continue with the HSK/YCT tests next year, especially for 9th grade students. Please feel free to ask any question or look at the website http://www.chinesehighway.com/for more information.
* Education Seminar: 博览班和标准班的教学探讨 (AAB-116, 9:45-11:00am): As a part of the events from the education excellence committee, similar to 马立平和美洲华语教学探讨,we will have discussion of 博览班和标准班this Sunday at AAB116 from 9:45am-11:00am. Parents and teachers will share their experiences in learning and teaching. Please attend the event. Followed by this education seminar, we will have Mrs. YingLing Zhang provide some new information on financial planning for parents.
* School Directory Ready for Pick-up: School Directory will be ready for pick-up on Sunday outside the office. One copy per family.
* Update from the Bylaws Amendment Committee On December 11, the Committee first reviewed all draft amendments that have been further refined. Thereafter, they focused their discussions on elections and communication.
Elections
Election is one of the most critical issues that require great efforts from the Committee, in terms of its legitimacy, fairness, feasibility, potential short-term and long-term impacts etc. The progresses made this week include:
The committee further clarified that the term limit (2 terms and max 4 years) for the Board members also applies to all former Board members. Any member who served in the Board and meets either criterion will not be eligible for future Board elections. All candidates for the Board will remain their Board candidate status for the same school year. If any vacancy occurs before the next Board election, the candidate with the highest number of votes will be called to fill the Board vacancy. Based on the NY laws for Not-For-Profit Corporation (NPC), rules for voting by proxy have been made stricter. The written authorization should specify the nature, date and location of the election, name of the voting member and his/her designated person, and signature by the voting member. Also following the NPC laws, in the event of a special member meeting, a clear procedure for member signatures and the meeting notice has been specified. More rules to avoid conflict of interest, i.e., Board members can not run for principal or PC chair, vice versa, spouses can not occupy two elected positions at the same time, have been proposed. The Bylaws Committee had an in-depth discussion on forming an Election Committee (EC), but its details remain to be defined. Communication
The school’s e-mail list and Website are the school’s properties and need to be protected for member’s privacy. Nobody is allowed to use them for non-official business or without the school board’s explicit approval. The Board, Admin and PC will have their own communication channels. At the end of student registration period, the Admin team is required to provide the Board and PC with a complete copy of the e-mail addresses of all members.
Agenda for this Sunday
Review the latest drafts Continue discussions on elections (election committee etc). 第八期小语世界已经出版,请点击以下链接读:http://hxcsny.org/page.php?6 请老师和家长继续鼓励孩子们踊跃投稿; 请联系邮箱:studentcorner_ny@yahoo.com.
* Parents Council News and Activities
1. Chinese New Year party Tickets will be sold this Sunday from 10am-12:20pm outside of school office. The party will be held on 1/29/2012. Lunch will be ready after school, then there is one-hour kids games followed by one and half hour performance. We've invited professional entertainers, and also prepared 30 pieces total of $1000 lottery prizes for luck winners in Year of Dragon. Please see more info here (hxcsny.org/hxny/20112012/cny.pdf).If you are willing to help at Chinese New Year party, please signup at http://hxcsny.org/hxny/20112012/volunteer.html.2. 北美崔哥 On 12/04, our school had a special visitor, 北美崔哥, a well known Chinese talk show entertainer in America. With his unique Beijing style humor and stories tailored for overseas Chinese, he brought us one hour of non-stop laughter. For those of you who could not attend this hilarious event, here is a clip 崔哥 shared with us: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M98Nss-joII
3. WACA Chinese New Year party: Saturday 2/4/2012, 2:30-9:30pm. Please see details at https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer& chrome=true&srcid=0Bxj2QwbaHlMiNjExNmEwYjItZD g5ZC00M2ZlLTg2MGEtM2QxY2I1ZjIzODQ3&hl=en_US4. Congratulations to Singing Star Competition winners. The competition was held on December 11th at AAB-104. Almost 30 students from age 4.5 to 13 participated the competition, audience enjoyed their beautiful voices and cute performances. Thanks to all participants and parents, hope more students sing Chinese songs in HXNY. Congratulations to all winners! First Prize: Cynthia Yu Second Prize: Cynthia Chen Third Prize: 郭昱彤 & 王安娜 5. Class parents meeting has been scheduled on Sunday from 9:45am -10:45am at AAB-104. Thank you all class parents for you hard work on helping school, parents and teachers.
6. Winter GO Tournament Our 2011 winter GO tournament was successfully held on Sunday, December. We had 30 students participated in the tournament. Almost half of the players had only learned Go since September of 2011 and many young players aged between 6 to 8 years old. All of the players showed good sportsmanship and the fact that everyone was able to finish each game itself demonstrated their good learning ability and courageous spirit. Our icebreakers are Melissa Woo, Maxell Yang, Jessica Wang, Grace Tian, Jessica Wang, Ziheng Yuan, Cindy De Dianous, Michael Zhang, Timothy Wang, Dee An Guo etc. For a detailed recap of the event, please visit http://hxcsny.org/page.php?27
7. Parents of the following students are responsible for this week's POD: First Grade: 纪煜暄,Annie Chen,Annie Li,赵炜,彭敏毅,李睿琪,刘思源 Ninth Grade: 王银银,刘远榕,许洁语,陈佳媛,曹蕴璞每周一笑老师问学生:“你叫什么名字?” 学生:“我姓魏。” “魏什么?” 老师又问。 “为什么?我也不知道为什么。。。” 学生回答。