Avondale School District teacher travels to China

Linda Beaupre, 1st grade teacher at R. Grant Graham Elementary in the Avondale School District with students and staff at the RiSE School in Guiyang, China.

Avondale School District first grade teacher, Linda Beaupre, had the experience of a teacher’s lifetime when Oakland University sponsored an opportunity for her to teach in an English Immersion School summer camp in China.

The school, RiSE, is a premier English language immersion school in Guiyang, China focused on an immersive approach to language acquisition, with students acquiring English in the same way that native speakers do. In addition, instruction has a strong project-based learning component that fosters communication skills and provides real-world context for using the English language. The summer camp that Beaupre participated in was the first one of its kind at the school and was designed with a two-fold intended purpose. Students had opportunity to experience American culture and traditions, provided by American teachers who also introduced the students to an interactive classroom concept that values and thrives on the individuality of the students. Traditional Chinese classrooms lean more toward conformity and rote learning.

The opportunity for Beaupre was made possible through the Avondale/Oakland University Partnership, which affords enhanced teaching and learning experiences throughout the Avondale School District. Avondale Superintendent, Dr. James Schwarz is grateful to the university for facilitating and funding the trip for Beaupre. “This is one of those occasions where our partnership with Oakland University took a teacher, and by extension of her experience, her students and colleagues beyond the textbook,” he said. “Linda is the type of teacher to roll this into so much more in order to enhance teaching and learning in her classroom.”

Beaupre, who spent 10 – 11 hours a day at the summer camp which lasted two weeks, found her 6 – 11 year old students to be eager and engaged as well as fluent in reading, speaking and writing English. At the end of the camp session, her class presented a completely student-created play based on the story, The Great Kapok Tree. It was the culmination of 2 weeks of rain forest and conservation study along with many other explorations and discoveries the students made along their learning journey.

During the camp, Beaupre presented each of the children in her class with a Petoskey stone for them to sand and polish, eventually revealing the hidden coral fossils, “unique in all the world to Little Traverse Bay,” she said. “As it turned out, these bright, endearing International Summer Camp students were a gift to me, unique in all the world to this amazing place in China.”