District 158 official visits Taiwan

Call it teacher diplomacy.

Mary Olson, Huntley Unit District 158's curriculum and instruction director, returned last week from a trip to Taiwan that could establish a pipeline for Chinese teachers in the district.

On the 10-day trip, paid for by the Taiwanese government, Olson learned about Taiwan's educational system and Chinese culture and interviewed potential teachers.

"It was the trip of a lifetime," Olson said Wednesday, a day after she returned. "We really got a feel for the culture as well as the educational system."

During the trip, Olson and 20 other educators from around the United States visited universities, high schools, a private Buddhist school in Hualien on Taiwan's eastern coast and culturally important sites.

Olson's visit comes as the district's Chinese program, introduced last year, is expanding.

The district began offering Chinese 1 last year at its middle schools and high school and will start offering Chinese 2 this year.

District officials hope to eventually offer Advanced Placement Chinese, and Superintendent John Burkey said he'd like to start offering Chinese at lower grade levels.

The district now has two Chinese teachers, but as the program grows, higher-level courses are added and other suburban districts add Chinese to their curriculum, it will become increasingly difficult for District 158 to find qualified instructors.

"It's been tough, but we've been fortunate enough to find them," Burkey said. "I don't expect we'll always have that luck."

That's where the program sponsored by the Taiwanese Ministry of Education comes in.

During her trip, Olson met qualified teachers but could not offer contracts to any of them - with school less than two months away and new teachers already hired.

But the curriculum director said she will explore what procedural steps - like procuring visas - need to be taken before the district can consider hiring teachers from Taiwan next spring.

The district could also send future Chinese-language students to Taiwan during the summer for intensive training, Olson said.