The stars have finally aligned to enable SPICE to launch its first online course in China, Stanford e-China—an interactive, virtual class for Chinese high school students. Many factors now make this venture possible: access to China’s education system via partners on the ground in country; capable virtual technology; compelling student interest among Chinese high school students to study abroad at universities like Stanford; and the identification of a highly qualified instructor.

The inaugural Stanford e-China online course, Technologies Changing the World: Design Thinking into Action, will start in Winter 2020, open to enrollment of high school students throughout China. Students will explore cutting-edge technologies that are defining the future and providing exciting areas for academic study, professional opportunities, and entrepreneurial innovation. Focusing on the fields of green tech, finance tech, health tech, and artificial intelligence, students will engage in live discussion sessions (“virtual classes”) and real-time conversations with Stanford University scholars, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, as well as American high school students.

Carey Moncaster, Stanford University, and Julia Gooding, BE Education, at the International Association for College Admissions Counseling (ACAC) Conference 2019, London, Canada

As a final project, Stanford e-China students will delve into an area of personal interest in one of the technology fields, applying aspects of the Design Thinking framework, to develop a prototype pitch. The top three students from each course will be invited to Stanford University to present their pitches and sharpen Design Thinking skills with Stanford practitioners in person. Design Thinking is a very hands-on, interactive, team-based experience that is dependent on critical feedback from other people. Translating the Design Thinking concepts online, with students, scholars, and practitioners virtually scattered across the world presents an exciting opportunity to create curriculum that effectively introduces the skills and mindset.

SPICE is drawing on the expertise of Mariko Yoshihara Yang and Rie Kijima, co-founders of SKY Labo and long-time collaborators with SPICE and the Stanford Graduate School of Education. The technologies explored in this course—green tech, finance tech, health tech, and artificial intelligence—have timely, global impact. The contributors to the Stanford e-China’s development span the world as well—from Stanford to Britain, China, and other countries of Asia. The Stanford e-China course is informed by over 16 years of SPICE online course offerings for high school students in other countries in Asia as well as throughout the United States. Stanford University scholars will also play pivotal roles as lecturers and guest speakers on the course’s leading technological fields and related pressing issues.

SPICE Director Gary Mukai recently noted, “The roots of SPICE date back to the establishment of the Bay Area China Education Project (BAYCEP) at Stanford University in 1973. Since then, SPICE has produced curriculum materials on China and hosted teacher professional development seminars on China for teachers in the United States, and more recently has offered an online course on China for high school students in the United States—all with the goal of helping Americans better understand China. I am delighted that 46 years since the establishment of BAYCEP, Stanford e-China has become a reality and for the first time in its history, SPICE will be working formally with students in China. SPICE is grateful to be collaborating with BE Education in this initiative.”  

The inaugural 10-week course will be offered in Winter 2020. Shorter 4- to 6-week courses will be offered in Summer 2020. Course details and application deadlines are available at http://stanfordechina.org. The online course is offered in English. Stanford e-China students should expect to allot 3–4 hours per week to complete the lectures, virtual classes, discussions, readings, and assignments. Although participation in virtual classes (held on Saturday mornings) is mandatory, students will be able to structure the other work around their individual schedules.

Carey Moncaster is developing the course as the Stanford e-China instructor. After graduation from U.C. Berkeley, Carey lived and worked in China throughout the 1990s as the country embarked on monumental economic changes. This experience was followed by graduate studies in East Asian Studies at Stanford University and her initial work with SPICE. She has launched educational programs for U.S. high school students throughout Asia, and most recently returns to SPICE from Seattle’s high-tech world of start-up ventures.

For more information, please contact Carey Moncaster, Stanford e-China instructor, at cmoncaster@stanford.edu.

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Last week, 23 educators from across North America gathered at Stanford University for the 2019 East Asia Summer Institute for High School Teachers, a teacher professional development seminar offered by SPICE in partnership with the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia. Over three days of rich content lectures, discussion, and experiential learning, institute participants deepened their background knowledge on Asia and began to rethink and revamp their curriculum plans for the coming school year.

This year’s participants came from as far away as Concord, New Hampshire and Vancouver, Canada, although most attendees were high school teachers in the San Francisco Bay Area. They represented a wide range of teaching subjects, from history and language arts to statistics and genocide studies, but all sought to strengthen their teaching through a clearer, more nuanced understanding of Asia, U.S.–Asia relations, and the Asian American experience—the three main areas explored in this year’s summer institute.

Participant Hellie Mateo poses with a book she made by hand using traditional Japanese book-binding methods.

The institute’s guest speakers came from similarly diverse backgrounds, being scholars, artists, authors, and Stanford University professors with expertise on a specific aspect of Asia, U.S.–Asia relations, or the Asian American experience. Interwoven between their captivating content lectures were classroom-focused lesson demonstrations, hands-on activities, and pedagogy discussions facilitated by SPICE curriculum designers. “We make sure we balance subject-matter content with practical application in all of our teacher professional development seminars,” notes SPICE Director Dr. Gary Mukai. “That’s why we focus so much time and energy on pedagogy and lesson demonstrations. We want to help high school teachers translate their newfound knowledge directly into the classroom.”

To that end, summer institute participants each receive several free books, films, and SPICE lesson plans to help them bring Asia alive for their students. They also receive a stipend and become eligible for three optional units of credit from Stanford Continuing Studies.

“Being in the Bay Area—and particularly at Stanford University—we have access to such incredible experts on these subjects,” says institute coordinator and facilitator Naomi Funahashi. “Our job is to connect those experts with teachers in a way that supports teacher needs. That’s our goal for this summer institute.”

Although the high school teachers have now returned home from Stanford campus, their work is not done. They will now use the content they learned at the summer institute to create original lesson plans to incorporate into their own practice. When they reconvene for a final online session in late July / early August, they will share their lesson plans with each other, and each teacher will walk away with 22 brand new lesson plans designed by their colleagues. “We can’t wait to see what kinds of innovative lessons our teachers will come up with!” says Funahashi. “And we can’t wait to see how they incorporate these new lessons into their plans for the next school year.”

To view photos from the summer institute and read a more comprehensive recap what happened, please see the SPICE Facebook page.

Related articles:

• Application open for 2019 Summer Institute for High School Teachers
• The Freeman Foundation: Supporting the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia for 20 Years
• Institute highlights the teaching of Asia and the Asian-American experience

Tomorrow marks the 150th anniversary of the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad. The tracks of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads met at Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 1869. In a ceremony, Central Pacific Railroad President Leland Stanford drove the last spike, now usually referred to as the “Golden Spike,” at Promontory Summit. What has largely been left out of the narrative of the First Transcontinental Railroad is the estimated 15,000 to 20,000 Chinese laborers who worked on the Central Pacific Railroad. They were paid less than the white workers and as many as a thousand lost their lives, and they eventually made up 90 percent of the workforce that laid the 690 miles of track between Sacramento, California, and Promontory. In a recent Stanford News article, Olive H. Palmer Professor in Humanities Gordon Chang, one of the lead scholars of Stanford’s Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project, noted that “Without the Chinese migrants, the Transcontinental Railroad would not have been possible. If it weren’t for their work, Leland Stanford could have been at best a footnote in history, and Stanford University may not even exist.”

Provost Persis Drell with SPICE Director Gary Mukai and SPICE Instructional Designer Jonas Edman

At the event, SPICE Curriculum Consultant Gregory Francis and I gave an overview of the curricular component of the Project, which helps to make the Project’s findings and materials accessible to teachers and students. The four free lesson plans that SPICE developed bring all of the Project’s “bells and whistles” to high school students and help them understand this often-overlooked part of U.S. history.

The Chinese Railroad Workers Project lessons touch upon many key issues in the high school U.S. history standards, including the building of the Transcontinental Railroad, immigration to the United States, challenges faced by immigrants like the Chinese Exclusion Act, and the growth of the American West. SPICE worked closely with Chang, Fishkin, and Dr. Roland Hsu, Director of Research at the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project, to plan and write the free lesson plans, which are available for download from the SPICE website. Each lesson incorporates the Project’s scholarship and primary sources.

Lesson 1 focuses on the use of primary sources to understand and interpret the past. Students review resources and artifacts on the Project website, discuss whether each is a primary or secondary source, and postulate what questions the resource could help them answer. Students then read and discuss excerpts from Maxine Hong Kingston’s classic book China Men.

One of the political cartoons (Harper’s Weekly, April 1, 1882) that students examine in the lesson “Challenges to Chinese Immigration and Assimilation”

Lesson 2 focuses on racism and discrimination broadly and in the specific context of discrimination directed toward early Chinese immigrants in the United States. Students learn the history of Chinese Americans and attitudes toward them during various periods of immigration. They analyze U.S. political cartoons on Chinese immigrants from the 1870s and 1880s and read four short documents from different periods of time regarding issues of immigration, discrimination, and assimilation of Chinese Americans.

Lesson 3 uses photos to show students the physical and natural challenges to building the Transcontinental Railroad and asks them what they can infer from these photos about life building the railroad. Students then work in small groups to read oral histories of descendants of the Chinese railroad workers. They then write and perform a mock script for an interview between the Chinese railroad worker they read about and a group of reporters.

The final lesson explores the historical and cultural background of San Francisco’s Chinatown and its significance to the Chinese community in the United States over time. Students compare descriptions of Chinatown written by Chinese residents with those from non-Chinese visitors, view historical photos of Chinatown, and watch a lecture by Chang on the interdependence of Chinatown and the Chinese railroad workers. Finally, students encapsulate the legacy of the Chinese railroad workers by designing a memorial in their honor.

Applications opened yesterday for the China Scholars Program, an intensive, college-level online course on contemporary China for U.S. high school students. The China Scholars Program is offered by the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE), Stanford University, and is open to rising 10th, 11th, and 12th graders. The Fall 2019 online course will run from late August through December. Applications are due June 15, 2019.

Stanford University China Scholars Program for high school students
Fall 2019 session (late August through December)
Application period: April 15 to June 15, 2019
 

Accepted applicants will engage in a rigorous academic exploration of key issues in China, spanning politics, economics, social issues, culture, and the arts, with an emphasis on the relationship between the United States and China. In real-time conversations with leading scholars, experts, and diplomats from Stanford University and other institutions, participants will be exposed to the cutting edge of U.S.–China relations and scholarship. Students who complete the online course will be equipped with a rare degree of expertise about China and international relations that may have a significant impact on their choice of study and future career.

As in previous sessions of the China Scholars Program, the Fall 2019 cohort will comprise high school students from across the United States. Participants in the current cohort represent states across the nation, including New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Missouri, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Arizona, California, and Hawaii. The immense diversity of student backgrounds and experiences within each online course allows for an especially rich exchange of ideas and perspectives among the young scholars—a crucial and invaluable component of the learning experience.

“It’s been one of the most fascinating, valuable, and formative classes I have ever taken,” says Rebecca Qiu, a recent alum of the program. “Every week, you discuss pressing topics—from technology censorship to the urban-rural divide—with your motivated peers. During virtual classes, you have the opportunity to ask questions and speak with some of the most influential experts and researchers on modern China—I cannot emphasize how valuable this is. [The China Scholars Program] provides you with a huge breadth and depth of knowledge on China and U.S.–China relations that you cannot find in any typical high school class.”

More information on the China Scholars Program is available at http://chinascholars.org. Interested high school students can apply now at https://spicestanford.smapply.io/prog/china_scholars_program/. The deadline to apply is June 15, 2019.

To be notified when the next China Scholars Program application period opens, join our email list or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

The China Scholars Program is one of several online courses for high school students offered by SPICE, Stanford University, including the Reischauer Scholars Program (on Japan), the Sejong Scholars Program (on Korea), and the Stanford e-Japan Program (on U.S. society, offered to high school students in Japan).

Related article:

• The China Scholars Program: Continuing a 45-year tradition of bridging Stanford and schools

SPICE is now accepting applications for the 2019 East Asia Summer Institute for High School Teachers. This free three-day institute is SPICE’s premier professional development opportunity for teachers, combining Stanford’s deep content expertise with SPICE’s award-winning lesson plans.

SPICE/NCTA East Asia Summer Institute for High School Teachers
July 8–10, 2019
Stanford University
Application deadline: May 6, 2019

High school teachers of social studies and language arts are especially encouraged to apply.

Participants will learn from Stanford faculty and other experts about the geography, cultures, politics, economics, history, and literature of East Asia, including a special focus on U.S.–Asia relations and the Asian diaspora in the United States. Teachers will also engage in pedagogy-focused discussions and receive training on several SPICE lesson plans on East Asia, in order to help them translate their new content knowledge to the classroom. Teachers who complete the professional development seminar will be eligible for a $250 stipend and three units of credit from Stanford Continuing Studies, and they will leave Stanford with several extensive SPICE curriculum units in hand.

This professional development opportunity will focus largely on China, Japan, and Korea. For example, last year’s speakers included Kathleen Stephens (former U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea), Peter Duus (renowned Stanford scholar of modern Japan), and Clayton Dube (Director of the USC U.S.-China Institute). The institute also featured speakers like author Chun Yu (who grew up in China’s Cultural Revolution) and Joseph Yasutake (who grew up in a Japanese American internment camp), whose rich personal stories brought history to life. SPICE staff led complementary interactive curriculum training sessions on China’s economic development, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, South Korean pop culture, and East Asia’s “history wars.”

“Every speaker added a new perspective to historical and contemporary events,” remarked participant Kimberly Gavin. “[The] lectures enriched my knowledge base of topics, curriculum demonstrations gave me ideas for effective lessons in the classroom, small group discussions led to rich conversations about primary and secondary sources, and teacher sharing introduced me to new websites. There wasn’t anything that was done that wasn’t valuable to me… I told my administrator yesterday that this was the best conference I have been to as a teacher.”

More information is available at https://spice.fsi.stanford.edu/fellowships/ncta_for_high_school_teachers. Interested high school teachers can apply directly at https://forms.gle/Jd3PP8EowXyPkAyX9. The application deadline is May 6.

The 2019 East Asia Summer Institute for High School Teachers at Stanford University is made possible by the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia.

Stay informed of SPICE news by joining our email list or following us on Facebook and Twitter.

• The Freeman Foundation: Supporting the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia for 20 Years
• Institute highlights the teaching of Asia and the Asian-American experience

In 1972, after years of frozen relations between China and the United States, President Richard Nixon met with Chairman Mao Zedong and set the two countries on a mutually interdependent path. Only a year later, Stanford University established the Bay Area China Education Project (BAYCEP) in 1973. In 1976, three other projects (on Africa, Latin America, and Japan) were added to BAYCEP, and SPICE was established as the umbrella program of the four projects. In a 1978 paper, Dr. David Grossman, the founding director of BAYCEP and SPICE, noted the following:

Long before we knew or used the term globalization, the origins of SPICE can be traced to the growing awareness that there was a huge gap or lag between the work of scholars and the knowledge and awareness of the general public. The original impetus was the Nixon visit to China in 1972, and the realization that the general public and students were not prepared for this radical shift in geopolitics. The problem was how to bridge this profound knowledge gap… This underlying theme of making recent scholarship more accessible to the public, and particularly to K–12 teachers and schools, became the heart of the SPICE initiative, and has remained so to this day.

For 45 years, SPICE has worked to bring Stanford’s world-class scholarship on China to K–12 schools nationwide through two primary avenues: supplementary curricular materials on China and U.S.–China relations; and seminars on China and U.S.–China relations for educators in the United States. In both of these areas, SPICE has worked in collaboration with Stanford scholars, including Professor Emeritus Albert Dien, who was instrumental in the creation of BAYCEP and remains engaged with SPICE.

In 2017, SPICE added a third branch to its work on China and K–12 schools, the China Scholars Program (CSP). An online course on contemporary China and U.S.–China relations, the China Scholars Program offers high school students across the United States unique access to cutting-edge research on China. Designed and instructed by Dr. Tanya Lee, each module addresses a different theme—such as “U.S.–China political relations” or “urban/rural inequality”—and features a real-time discussion with a scholar from Stanford or another institution.

“My students amaze me with the enthusiasm and rigor they bring to the course. They understand that a comprehensive understanding of China will be essential to navigating the international careers they want to pursue,” Lee explained. In addition to keeping up with (and sometimes surpassing) rigorous reading and discussion assignments, students spend much of the term researching and writing final papers on topics of personal interest. “We challenge each other,” Lee says. “I push them to explore areas they might not otherwise have considered, and to do so critically—but they are so curious and motivated, I have to be quick on my feet to stay ahead of them!”

One of the course’s two required texts is Stanford Professor Gordon Chang’s Fateful Ties: A History of America’s Preoccupation with China (Harvard University Press, 2015). “I assign Fateful Ties because I love the ‘big picture’ it gives us to frame all of the particular, current issues we explore—not just for its historical breadth, but for the way it integrates cultural, aesthetic, and philosophical influences the U.S. and China have had on each other along with the political and economic. And then for the students to have the opportunity to actually question Professor Chang directly is extraordinary.” Other Stanford faculty who regularly participate in CSP include political scientist Professor Thomas Fingar, economist Professor Scott Rozelle, and sociologist Professor Andrew Walder.  

The China Scholars Program runs twice a year. Applications for the spring 2019 CSP course are currently being accepted. Teachers should encourage highly motivated, advanced students to apply for the opportunity to learn directly from Stanford scholars. Lee remarked, “I am honored to be a part of the legacy of SPICE’s founders in extending Stanford scholarship on China beyond the walls of the university, to equip the next generation to build new bridges.”

To stay informed of SPICE-related news, follow SPICE on Facebook and Twitter.

I vividly remember the first time I met Houghton “Buck” Freeman (former Chairman of the Freeman Foundation) in New York City nearly 20 years ago. A short time after this meeting, he and his wife, Doreen (former Trustee of the Freeman Foundation), kindly took the time to visit me at Stanford University. I never imagined then that SPICE would have remained a grantee of the Freeman Foundation for so many years. I am now in touch with their son Graeme Freeman (President), grandson Alec Freeman (Senior Program Officer), and Shereen Goto (Director of Operations and Programs) of the Freeman Foundation. The Freeman Foundation has funded the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia (NCTA) since its inception in 1998, so this year marks its 20th anniversary. SPICE has been honored to contribute to the mission of the NCTA, which is “to encourage and facilitate teaching and learning about East Asia in elementary and secondary schools nationwide.” SPICE recently hosted NCTA summer institutes for middle school teachers (June 20–22, 2018) and high school teachers (July 23–25, 2018).

Rylan Sekiguchi, Gary Mukai, Shereen Goto, Jonas Edman

The NCTA summer institute for high school teachers—organized by Naomi Funahashi and Sabrina Ishimatsu—also featured scholarly lectures, including one on U.S.–Korean relations by the Honorable Kathleen Stephens, former U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Korea from 2008 to 2011. Her lecture and the recent 2018 North Korea–United States Summit in Singapore stimulated enthusiastic questions from the teachers and fascinating discussions. Sekiguchi, who authored a three-part curricular series on U.S.–South Korean relations, North Korea, and inter-Korean relations, engaged the teachers in the lessons while referencing key points that were made by Ambassador Stephens. Commenting on the institute, Kimberly Gavin, University Preparatory Academy, San Jose, California, noted, “I realized that when it came to East Asian history, there were gaps in my knowledge, and I wanted to have a better understanding of it to be a more effective teacher. Between the readings and the conference itself, I filled up an entire notebook full of information!”

In a post-institute memo, Yoko Sase, The Nueva School, Hillsborough, California, stated, “I want to express my deepest gratitude to the Freeman Foundation for generously supporting us at the East Asia summer institute for middle and high school teachers at SPICE. I was immersed in such a depth of learning from the experts in their fields of East Asia throughout the program. I really appreciate that I not only deepened and expanded my knowledge on East Asia but also actually had the opportunities to practice thoughtfully designed SPICE curriculum lessons. Now I have a toolbox with amazing resources and materials that I have received from the institute, and I’m ready to use it in my classroom! This has been the best professional development I have ever attended!” The NCTA seminars are truly highlights of the year for the SPICE staff and Stanford scholars because it is a key channel through which SPICE curriculum on Asia and U.S.–Asian relations and Stanford scholarship are disseminated to students. Importantly, what an honor it has been to have worked with three generations of the Freeman family.