Book Adoption

A small conference room in a Shanghai hotel was crowded with a mix of Asian and Western educators attentively watching a presentation.  The speaker, an animated, middle-aged Irish woman proudly displayed the newest teacher and student text book editions from Pearson.

And where were we?  We were late, very late.

The early morning rain had made traffic irritable.  The clouds gave way to rains as thick as monsoon season.  It felt like the first day of snow in Indiana as we sat stuck in traffic on the interstate.    

Fortunately, we made it to our text book adoption meeting only 15 minutes after it had begun.  I accompanied my principal, along with two others from our school administration. We quickly made our way to the back of the room, where the remaining vacant chairs stood.

We had missed the entire introduction of the newest reading series of Scott Foresman and Language Central.  This would have been excellent to watch!  I thought, thinking of all the assessments we could use to track our students' progress.  The speaker changed to the next slide, the Envision math series.

I critically watched as the speaker brought up videos, games, and other interactive manipulatives that made their curriculum much better than their competitors.  There is no doubt that Pearson is an excellent book publisher with quality resources and curriculum, but I was very conflicted:  do Asian international schools really want a western approach to education?

We were given a short break to discuss some of our noticings.  I walked across the room and spoke with a Chinese group of individuals.  One man brought up the issue that all textbooks were in American English, not British English—this poses a problem, many Asian students choose to study in countries other than America because the requirement for college admittance is lower.

This was not the only issue concerning the American book publishing company today.  I walked across the room and spoke with an American whose teaching situation is similar to my own.  She told me, "Only Chinese teachers teach math at our school."  Yes, it's true.  Even in my current school, Kunshan International, only Chinese teachers teach math.  This is because many Asians think the American curriculum is not challenging, especially when it comes to math instruction.  

So, I guess math isn't Pearson's strongest selling product in China.  

I also noticed that the text book's use of vocabulary is very dense, something that a non-native English speaker might struggle with.  For example, my group of kindergarten students are learning basic English words like coat, shoes, and food (this is our word this week).  They do not speak English at home, or for that matter, any time outside of my class.  I can’t even imagine using Pearson's kindergarten material with my students.  It would be like handing them Shakespeare and expecting them to recite pages from memory. 

For me, the meeting was useless, but it got me thinking—What kind of curriculum would best suite a non-native English speaker in the early grades?  And, how can we take the strengths of both the Asian and western educational systems to improve our education in The States?

For further reading...

I found this interesting website that talks about what we can take from Asian teaching.  What do you think?  Check it out:  http://www.tdl.com/~schafer/Asian.htm.