Program visibility

My capstone project is to establish a sister school partnership between my host school in the US and my home school back in Egypt. The STEM school I work at back in my home country is well known by its interest in teaching languages. This relation between my students here and back there in my country is going to both open students' horizons and widen their scopes about understanding each other's cultures and different languages.

A grand Chinese New Year celebration was held in Plantation Middle School during Chinese New Year. The students and staff in our school and feeder schools and the officials from our county were invited to spend the wonderful afternoon with my Chinese students who well performed the Chinese-styled programs and showed their projects about Chinese culture. Some students from feeder schools also sang Chinese songs which I taught them during outreach. This capstone raises people's interest in China and Chinese culture and establishes mutual understanding among different peoples.

As Chicago is a city with diversity, our students also come from different cultural backgrounds. One of our traditions is to immerse students into a diverse world. With the coming of Chinese New Year, the students who are majoring in Chinese practice dragon dance themselves, and they will have a big show in our campus!

Moos Elementary has a Spring Festival showcase which involves around 100 parents and students from Pre-K to K6. The school is an IB school so lots of students are from different backgrounds. Our Spring Festival showcase helps spread the impact of the program and increase interest in Mandarin. After the showcase, the students will be proud of what they have done in Mandarin class. The students will have gotten to know more culture about Chinese New Year Celebration traditions. All the Chinese learners in Moos will have also gotten a chance to show their improvement in Chinese.

The theme of our capstone project is culture boxes. And it is also our CLP. Both of my home school and host schools are willing to establish a sister-school relationship. Therefore, we plan to ask students and teachers to communicate with each other through a series of activities called culture boxes.

Most People in the valley do not know anything about the TCLP or the Arabic class.
I had a year long plan to showcase the program and the Arabic language and culture to everyone in the valley. Accordingly, I followed a plan that included many actions and events:
First, I created collaborative classes with other teachers to raise awareness for students at my school. So, I planned different outreaches:
1- An outreach with Cosmetology teacher in which I introduced the history of cosmetics in Egypt.

Butter lovers-(梁祝) also known as "China's Romeo and Juliet" is a Chinese legend of a tragic love story of a pair of lovers. The most popular love story in China tells the legend of two 4th century Chinese lovers who could not marry due to different family backgrounds. After the hero dies of a broken heart, the heroine leaps on his grave and the two turn into a butterfly couple after their deaths. For centuries, the story has been adapted into traditional operas, movies and TV plays.

My project is divided into two parts: Chinese New Year Gala and Chinese New Year Food which takes place on Feb.7 and Feb 10. The Chinese New Year Gala consists of 9 performances where I include the most typical Chinese cultural elements and demonstrate students’ Chinese language skills at the same time. For the food part, I ordered authentic Chinese food in the restaurant and invite teachers and students to share the food.

I divided my capstone project into three parts:
1-Henna tattoos party

Project Goals:-
1- Increasing community and students’ awareness and interest in the Arabic program at my school.
2- Achieving sustainability for the Arabic program in my school.
3- Encouraging more schools to adopt Arabic courses.
Project objectives:-
1- Introducing the school program to the community by sharing students’ work, taking part in performances and exposing members of the community to the target culture products (music, dances and foods) in different school and county’s events.