Exchange Program : Ties Strengthen Between Ojai School and Sister Institution in China

A year after launching a sister-school relationship with a private boarding school in China, the Ojai Valley School is hustling to keep up with the rapid changes and events that have accompanied the international partnership.

In the last eight months, two groups of Chinese students have visited Ojai Valley School and another group will arrive this summer.

In November, an Ojai teacher traveled to Dujiangyan, China, for six weeks to observe and advise the sister institution, the Guang Ya Private Primary School.

And next month, three Chinese educators will visit Ojai Valley School as part of a seven-city tour of the United States. The trip, sponsored by the United States Information Agency, will focus on elementary and middle school education, both public and private.

“It has gone faster than we normally develop these relationships,” said Headmaster Michael Hall-Mounsey. “But that’s why we felt we needed to send an official over there.”

Third-grade teacher Shelley Hermes was selected from the Ojai school’s faculty for the trip in November. Her role was to serve as a curriculum adviser and teacher trainer to Guang Ya.

Since the People’s Republic of China authorized school privatization in 1992, hundreds of private schools have cropped up. Many of them are located in centrally situated Sichuan province, including the Guang Ya school, said Anne Elvin, an officer at the Institute of International Education in Washington, D.C.

Leading the rush to privatization, Guang Ya was the first private primary school to open its doors since 1949. Its founder and namesake, Qing Guang Ya, wanted to model his school after an American private institution. With the help of the United States Information Agency, he found Ojai Valley School.

In February, 1993, the school was approached by the energetic Chinese educator, who said he wanted to develop a relationship between his struggling new private school and the 82-year-old Ojai school.

And the rest hasn’t even had time to hit the history books.

“The changes that are occurring in China are happening very rapidly,” said Michael Connor, admissions director at Ojai Valley. “You’re talking about a country with 300 million students and this private education idea is so new. Up to this point Chinese education has been centered on political ideology, and now it’s making a shift toward educating people for themselves.”

The relationship between Ojai Valley and Guang Ya is the first of its kind between American and Chinese private schools, Connor said.

“Clearly we’re spending more time on the fax machine, but it’s not something that’s been distracting--it’s been exciting,” he said.

The most exciting aspect came in November, when Hall-Mounsey and Hermes traveled to Sichuan province to observe Guang Ya school. “We felt a need from the school officials that to gain credibility, they needed to demonstrate a sincere exchange and a strong link with an American school,” said Hall-Mounsey, who visited for a week.

“They have a huge task in front of them,” said Hermes, who has taught at Ojai Valley School for five years and was a student there. “They would like this American-style education, but it’s hard when they’re so immersed in their own culture and language.”

There are 240 students enrolled at Guang Ya, which offers a preschool class and 11 elementary classes in grades one through six. Classes meet six days a week, from 6:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.--a rigorous schedule that American students would not be able to handle, Hermes said. “Our kids would go nuts.”

Guang Ya isn’t cheap: Tuition is approximately $5,000 a year. One reason the school is so strict, Hermes said, is that it attempts to transform the wealthy students there into well-behaved citizens of the world.

During her six-week stay at Guang Ya, Hermes worked closely with the students and faculty, which includes five American teachers. In addition to helping develop the curriculum, she taught an English-language class to a group of six- to 12-year-olds, which the 34-year-old teacher described as “one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done.”

One aspect of American education Hermes hopes the school adopts is a focus on the individual student.

“Their educational style is not directed for the individual, it’s for the group. There’s a norm set for the group and the whole group has to achieve at that norm,” she said. “One of my goals was to have them look at these children as individuals . . . to appreciate each child for (his or her) own individuality.”

Hermes said she learned an important lesson from the trip, which she intends to impress upon her students. “Tolerance. Be tolerant and respect our differences and enjoy them.”