“About 3000 students in the Chicago Public Schools, and another 2,500 students from suburban districts, learned weiqi (go) during the last school year,” reports Xinming Simon Guo, 2015 AGF Teacher of the Year and founder of Go and Math Academy in Illinois. “Weiqi is not only an educational manipulative in the math classroom, but also a new way to extend the horizon of students in the language classroom,” adds Guo. September 17th was an Artist In Residence workshop day for Chinese language teachers in the Chicago schools. “We organize this annual workshop at the beginning of every new school year, to bring culture into Chinese language classrooms, and enhance language teaching and learning, ” says Jane Lu, director of the Confucius Institute in Chicago and the coordinator of the CPS Chinese World Language Program. Local artists are invited to present and demonstrate different types of Chinese cultural activities, including Kung Fu, Chinese folk dancing, Chinese painting, paper cutting, and weiqi. Teachers in the workshop can apply to introduce these cultural and art activities to their classrooms if they want to. “Weiqi has been the most popular project among Chinese teachers in Chicago Public Schools since its debut in 2013,” says Guo, “during the last three years, about half of the Chinese teachers have chosen weiqi for their students. After the latest workshop, several new teachers also showed great interest and planned to apply for more classroom instruction.” -Paul Barchilon, E-J Youth Editor Photo by Xinming Simon Guo: students in Arlington Heights learn go.
