Are you interested in taking a foreign language and not overly
interested in those taught at schools?
Are you interested in taking a foreign language and not overly interested in those taught at schools?
Do you want your children to learn the language of their family’s culture and don’t want to travel to San Jose or beyond to take the class?
Do you want to strengthen your math skills? Starting Sept. 10, Chinese language classes will be offered by Asians for a Better Community for all levels of age and skill. The classes will focus on Mandarin, one of the two languages spoken in China. Cantonese is the other.
In all, five classes will be offered: Two Chinese courses geared toward those where Chinese is spoken at home, a Chinese as a second language for adults, English as a second language for adults and a math class called mental math.
Classes are Fridays at the Learning and Loving Center located on 16890 Church St. in Morgan Hill, just south of Dunne Avenue. Classes run for 16 weeks: Mental math is from 6-7pm and the language classes run from 7-9pm
The classes are a part of a trend to bring together the Chinese community into South Valley.
Susan Fan, a Realtor in Morgan Hill who also works on the ABC committee, said Chinese members of the community don’t always get together with each other. Through the school, ABC hopes to change that and bring the community together.
The ABC held a Chinese New Year celebration in January which met with great success, said Rosemary Kamei, a Morgan Hill resident and member of the ABC committee.
Following the celebration, meetings were held to discuss what else the ABC could do. The answer was to create a Chinese school in Morgan Hill so residents of Morgan Hill, Gilroy, Hollister and San Juan Bautista won’t have to travel to San Jose or Cupertino so their children can take classes.
For now, Kamei said the focus will be limited, only concentrating on language and math. She said cultural classes such as dancing, calligraphy and martial arts would be something the ABC would like to offer, but for now they want to stay small and build up later.
“We’re going to keep it simple,” Kamei said, “but there is an interest to do more.”
The first two courses are geared toward children: One for ages 5-7 and one for 7 and older. These are designed more for children who have Chinese spoken at home, though anyone is welcome to sign up.
For adults, the CSL course is more like a traditional language course taught in schools.
The ESL course is offered for Chinese speakers who want to learn English. An ESL course is offered at the Community Adult School, but Kamei said the class is geared toward Spanish speakers, making it hard for a Chinese speaker to ask questions.
Mental math will teach people how to do math in their heads. Various techniques will be used, including the use of the abacus, the earliest counting device from China.
The ABC is a non-profit organization, so all classes will be taught by volunteers.
Kamei, who had a mother from Puerto Rico and a father from Guangzhou, China, took Cantonese language classes growing up. She recalls not liking to go because school was on Saturdays, giving her a six-day school week. Her father eventually gave in and stopped sending her to the classes.
Kamei, however, decided as a teen to learn the language again. She took classes in college.
“I’ve always had an interest in the language,” Kamei said. “I loved it and enjoyed it.”
Kamei took her daughter to Chinese school for 12 years, but had to travel to San Jose to do so.
“Making the drive every Saturday was a task,” Kamei said.
Fan came to the United States two years ago after working for more than 10 years in Taiwan. When her father died, she came to stay with her mother. Fan doesn’t want to see the Chinese culture die once a family moves to the United States.
“I would like to see the culture passed on from generation to generation,” Fan said.
Registration is $20 with an additional $150 fee for the language class and a $75 fee for the mental math. Additional fees will be added for class materials, but those numbers have not been decided yet. The deadline to register has been extended to Aug. 25. Details: Call 202-0855 or 782-2062 or e-mail abcinf2004@ yahoo.com
Cheeto Barrera is an intern at the Morgan Hill Times. He can be reached at cb******@*************es.com
