Chinanews, Chengdu, Oct 11 – On Wednesday, former US undersecretary of education Susan Sclafani received an appointment letter from the president of Jinsha Primary School in Sichuan. With the appointment, Susan Sclafani will become the honorary president for the Chinese primary school, Tianfu Morning News reported.

 

This is the first time for Susan to become an honorary president for a Chinese primary school. From now on, Susan will visit the school at least once in a year. During her visit, she will try to bring good US educational resources to China.

 

“Do the American kids do homework, too?”, “what foreign languages the American pupils learn?”, “how many courses do they learn every day?”…, soon after the appointment ceremony was concluded, some Chinese pupils began to raise a number of questions to Susan with staggering English.

 

Susan answered their questions one by one. “Yes, American kids also do homework. If they don’t do homework, they can’t make good scores.” Susan, who is currently the executive director of the Chartwell Education Group in US, answered their questions one by one with a great show of patience.

 

In communicating with their president, Chinese pupils are always trying to speak English.

 

“They had never demonstrated such great interest in English as they do now,” said the school’s English teacher.

 

“Before, we knew about the United States only through books or TV. But now, we have a school president from there. So we ought to take this opportunity to learn more about international issues,” said a grade five pupil named Tian Tian.

 

Susan once worked as a teacher in a kindergarten. She told this reporter that ever since she came to China in 1998, she was deeply concerned with the education cause in China. She had devoted great efforts to promote the communications and exchanges between the two countries in the educational field. She had visited a lot of Chinese schools but she finally decided to become the honorary president of the Jinsha Primary School in Chengdu.

 

If everything goes well, some one hundred school teachers from the United States will come to Chengdu in August next year to conduct exchanges with teachers in Chengdu. The exchanges will broaden the vision of the Chinese children and help them learn more about other countries, said Wang Yan, a person in charge at the China Education Association who organized the event.