THSP goes to China

Okay, the whole blog isn't going to China, but I am! I am going with a group of about 25 North Carolina teachers who are traveling thanks to the Center for International Understanding, an organization that's part of the UNC system. Our focus is on how new technologies are emerging in China as well as looking at how technologies developed there in the past. Most importantly the Center thinks that sending teachers to the other side of the world will change the way they see the world and therefore how their students see the world - and at a time when teachers are getting bashed left and right, this is a pretty refreshing attitude.

For my part, I'm wearing two hats. First, as a civics and economics teacher, I'm hoping to learn more about how China's amazing "leap forward" in the past twenty years has changed and is changing the balanced of economic power in the world. But I'm also going as a psychology teacher who is fascinated with how China's policies are affecting its people. With such a massive shift of populations from rural to urban, how is the collectivist culture of China changing? What are the planned and unplanned effects of the one-child policy? And how is the education system the same or different as it's portrayed in the media?

So many questions and only 11 days! If you would like to keep up with me on my journey, please follow my new blog at http://mrjtochina.blogspot.com/ or feel free to comment below.

--posted by Steve

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