Dear Century Chinese Language School (CCLS) Families:
Last Sunday, we all gathered at Algonquin High to celebrate the Chinese New Year, to recognize those who have made a notable contribution to CCLS, and, most importantly, to watch our children on stage demonstrating the proficiency of their Chinese language. That moment of time seemed to pass quickly, but it will be locked away forever by the memories of our parents, teachers, and students.
Performance at CCLS’s Chinese New Year show on Feb. 2 (photos by Jie Yan).
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I’d like to extend special thanks for all the parents who volunteered their time to help from the beginning to the end. I would also like to give major credit to all teachers who kept all their students on the seats during the show. We had a very successful and an enjoyable celebration, which would not have been possible without your support and cooperation! As for CCLS admin team and I, it is worth every effort to see all the smiling kids and delighted parents!
With 2013 behind us, we can now take a look at our school’s incredible accomplishments over the past year. Here are just a few highlights:
14% increase of enrollment: Compared to 2011, CCLS’ class enrollment jumped from 245 to 280. This is a huge achievement considering that there is a new Chinese school in Wellesley and existing schools in Newtown, Westborough and Worcester. These newcomers come from different towns but for one reason: CCLS has the best team of teachers. CCLS provides our teachers two professional development training sessions a year; one internal and one external. All teachers are required to attend and to give a presentation in the internal workshop. This requirement is not just about an educator’s professional growth at CCLS, it’s what is the most essential to establishing a specific, rigorous exercise in the ways that best impact student Chinese language learning. Given large class sizes and limited resources, CCLS is facing tremendous challenges, but our teachers and staff are determined to continue improving and implementing the best approaches for your children.
Class web pages in School Website: Last year, we set a new standard requiring CCLS teacher to have a Weekly communication with their students and parents and post the homework at the class page in CCLS Web. CCLS teachers are approaching this mandate as an opportunity to collaborate with parents to help our students to achieve their best. You can read most of our teachers’ weekly letter at: http://ccls-usa.org/orchid/index.php/class-homepage . This method has been approved as a very successful tool to enhance the interactions between parents and teachers.
Updated CCLS website: http://ccls-usa.org/orchid/ The current CCLS admin team and I have never been more proud than when we have had our website updated, as our old website hasn’t been changed for so many years. I am right now just full of gratitude to my team, especially IT director Lei Yu and Vice Principal Ruowen Rong working together; we brought our website up to date. Right away, it becomes an excellent avenue to showcase our school, our teachers, and our unique excellence. CCLS’ new website makes me feel certain that we shall see truly mighty gains in the future coming years. In the meanwhile, we will continually improve our website to align with new technologies and learning goals.
This past year has been a great one for all CCLS students, teachers and parents who like to write. The pioneer issue of Century Forum (世纪文坛) was published on our website in May 2013 containing articles from students, teachers and parents. In December, the second issued was brought out with more than 30 articles; most pieces were written by CCLS students.
The intent of the 世纪文坛 is to create a culture atmosphere in order to encourage our students and teachers to write. Writing is one foundation of language skills and properly conveying ideas and concepts. I would like to ask our parents to serve as role models for writing. You could sit and write with your kids, starting with simple Chinese paragraph in order to help them develop a basic Chinese writing ability. Chinese writing is more and more critical in current business world as more companies operate in China, emails are replacing telephone communications. Let’s work together to push our kids’ Chinese in to a new level.
I would like to take this opportunity to express my deepest appreciation for those individuals bringing such honor to CCLS. It is a pleasant to see the passion, competencies, and insight in these papers. Their sharing in CSAUS Newsletter definitely will enhance the name of CCLS!
As we move into the first month of Chinese New Year, CCLS will continually seek the improvement of learning environment and instructional practices. 2014 will be sure a productive year; we all have much to contribute to CCLS. Let us constantly remind each other of the importance of Chinese, for Knowledge is indeed power. As always, I will continue to do my best working with all of you to help our kids become the kind, determined and hard-working people that we want them to be.
In this Coming year, the CCLS current school team and I wish you a happy healthy and prospective year!
Helen Mingzhu Chen
Principal of CCLS
Feb. 6, 2014
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