Two-way teaching

Mark Ostow

View full image

Since 1909, the Yale-China Association has been sending Yale graduates to China to teach English. Now, they’ve turned that idea around, bringing two native Chinese speakers to New Haven for a year to teach Mandarin alongside teachers in two New Haven public high schools. Long Chuan (pictured) and Deng Haihui previously taught English at Yali Middle School, the school founded by Yale-China in Changsha. Long says teaching Mandarin to American students is harder than teaching English to Chinese, but she’s excited to be a “pioneer” in this venture. “We are making a tiny contribution to the big dream of building the US-China relationship,” she says. The association hopes to expand the program beyond New Haven in future years.