HONOLULU (Dec. 1, 2010) – Fifteen elementary and secondary school teachers from China have arrived at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawai‘i, for the inauguration of a new educational exchange in which the teachers will spend six months living, learning, and working with their counterparts at host schools in six U.S. states. EWC is offering the China-U.S. Educational Exchange Residency Program in cooperation with the Chinese Ministry of Education.

“Strengthening the quality of the educational experience in our schools is a fundamental goal and shared value of both the U.S. and China as we prepare students for the knowledge economies of the 21st century,” said EWC Director of Education Terance Bigalke. “Our school systems have a great deal to learn from one another about how we are grappling with these issues, and engaging at the level of individual schools, teachers and principals seems the right way to get started.”

Bigalke said the program was intended to help both nations learn about dealing with complex differences in educational access “within and across our two vast countries.” Goals of the program, he said, include sharing best practices, improving cross-cultural knowledge and “building ongoing relationships at the school and educator level that lead to a more sophisticated understanding of our two societies.”

The Chinese teachers will be joined in Hawai‘i this week by nine teachers from the American host schools for several days of discussions and seminars before they travel in pairs next week to begin their residencies in diverse U.S. communities, including Hudson, Massachusetts; Scarsdale, New York; Charlotte, North Carolina; Massillon and Canton, Ohio; and Portland, Oregon.

Following those residencies, the Chinese educators will return to Honolulu for intensive discussions on what they have experienced, and how this can be applied to their home schools.

The residency program is the first phase of the planned educational exchange project. The second phase of the program, involving hundreds of additional Chinese educators traveling to the U.S. on a short-term exchange, is tentatively slated to begin in the fall of 2011. The third phase will involve U.S. host school teachers traveling to China to further ongoing exchange.

###

The EAST-WEST CENTER promotes better relations and understanding among the people and nations of the United States, Asia, and the Pacific through cooperative study, research, and dialogue. Established by the U.S. Congress in 1960, the Center serves as a resource for information and analysis on critical issues of common concern, bringing people together to exchange views, build expertise, and develop policy options.