Chinese Foreign Language in the Elementary School (FLES)
Scenic Park Elementary School
Contact: 907-742-1650, Karen Pollard, Principal
Web site: Scenic Park Chinese Web page
In the 2008-09 school year the Anchorage School District expanded world languages offered to include Mandarin Chinese. Scenic Park Elementary School students in kindergarten through fifth grade are learning Chinese in an FLES (Foreign Language in the Elementary School) program with teacher Georgette Yang. At Bartlett, the feeder high school for Scenic Park, students are learning beginning Chinese with teacher, Yan Wang. The district began offering Chinese at Begich Middle School in 2009-10.
Chinese is the national language of the more than 1.3 billion residents of China and millions more ethnic Chinese around the world. While more than 200 million Chinese schoolchildren are studying English, often begun as early as the second grade, experts estimate no more than 50,000 U.S. students are studying Chinese.
News from Scenic Park
‘Year of the Ox’ celebrated at Scenic Park event
 Scenic Park Elementary School celebrated the Chinese New Year with an all-community event called “A Night In China” on Jan. 23. This festive evening was organized by music teacher Carolyn Downie, art teacher Linda Wetzel, and Chinese teacher Georgette Yang.
Scenic Park is the district’s first Chinese Foreign Language in the Elementary School (FLES). Students and staff attend Chinese language classes weekly. The staff learned and taught many aspects of the Chinese culture that culminated at “A Night In China.” A 15-foot-long dragon, created by Tom O’Malley and built with student’s help, paraded through the school. Students from all grade levels sang traditional Chinese folk songs. A rendition of “Mulan” was also presented under the direction of their artist-in-residence, Alexander Savinova.
After the musical portion of the program students, staff and community members enjoyed more than 15 activities, including, Chinese food, Chinese bingo, Chinese checkers, Ikebana, Chinese knotting, computer generated tangrams, and storytelling.
by David Shurtleff, for Inside ASD
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