ELGIN - The students at the experimental primary school U46 Superintendent Jose Torres visited loved to be photographed, he said.

 

They insisted on showing the superintendent how to build an electric circuit. He got to "throw the switch" at the end, he said.

 

The students were attending school in Tianjin, China, which Torres visited in November as part of a Chinese Bridge Delegation sponsored by the College Board and Hanban, a division of the Chinese Ministry of Education.

 

The superintendent called that visit "pretty impactful" and said it has him talking now to the city and School Board and thinking of ways Elgin schools might partner with schools in China.

 

That comes almost exactly a year after Chinese President Hu Jintao's four-day visit to the United States, in which he stressed building partnerships between the two countries. And it comes as both Elgin Community College and Judson University continue to strengthen their partnerships with schools in the Asian country.

 

Right now, Torres said, "It's just a visionary thing, and I haven't put any legs to that."

But, he added, "It makes sense from my perspective in terms of Destination 2015 and our goals. I've begun to do some research around this."

 

The travel, lodging and all other expenses for the superintendent's trip were paid for by the College Board and Hanban, according to Karen Fox, chief of family and community engagement in U46.

 

Torres said he "must have visited seven schools in four days" while in Beijing and Tianjin.

There, he spoke with secondary school teachers, who said most classrooms had 45 to 50 students, and watched all 2,000 students at one school participate in "morning exercises" — supervised by only one teacher. Those students attended school from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., with a 90-minute lunch break in the middle of the day and an average two to three hours of homework at night.

 

By comparison, U46 targets about 33 students in its middle and high school classrooms, according to Fox. Lunch recesses are staffed one adult to each class — about 22 to 34 students. Middle school students attend school from about 9 a.m. to 3:25 p.m., and high-schoolers, from 7:40 a.m. to 2:55 p.m., she said.

 

The purpose of the trip was to expose American educators to Chinese language and culture with the hope they would expand Chinese character learning in U.S. schools, Torres said.

 

That's something the superintendent said fits with the goal of U46's five-year accountability plan, Destination 2015, to prepare students for college and the workplace. Mandarin ranked second to English in 2011 Bloomberg rankings of the languages most useful for conducting business around the world, he noted.

 

And, he said, "If one in six persons in today's world is Chinese-speaking, how well have we prepared our students for college and the workplace if they have no knowledge of Chinese language or culture?"

 

There are 7,000 students studying language in U46: 956 learning French, 438 learning German and 113 learning Japanese. There are 3,540 students learning Spanish in high school and, since courses began two years ago, 2,000 learning Spanish in middle school.

But there's no Mandarin, he noted.

 

That will change next school year when The World Languages Academy at Streamwood High School adds Mandarin as its third language, Associate Principal Brian Moran confirmed. And Torres posed the question in his weekly message from the superintendent on Dec. 2: "What would it take to have 5 to 10 percent of our students sufficiently proficient in Chinese by 2020 or 2025 to take Advanced Placement exams in Chinese?"

Torres said he plans to discuss with U46 how the district might proceed with either Chinese immersion or dual language programs at elementary schools and additional language instruction and courses on Chinese culture, history and the arts at secondary schools.

 

Already, he's spoken with the College Board about taking a delegation from U46 to China.

 

He also has met with Elgin Mayor Dave Kaptain, and, he said, they're "beginning to have a discussion about what it would look like for the district and the city to move forward."

U46 isn't the only educational institution in Elgin moving forward with partnerships with schools in China.

 

Judson University has plans to open a China Center on its Elgin campus, 1151 N. State St. That center will introduce Chinese language and culture to non-Chinese-speaking people and the Judson community.

 

Already, the private Christian university has signed an agreement with the Teachers University of the People's Republic in Yancheng to explore academic offerings for its students at Judson and Judson students in Yancheng. And the dean of the Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture was the keynote speaker at Judson's first architecture symposium at the start of the school year.

 

Elgin Community College also has signed memorandums of understanding with officials from the Chengdu Sanyuan Foreign Languages School and the Southwest University of China. Those partnerships will allow the schools to exchange students and faculty, according to the university.

 

It also has a memorandum with the Chongqing Business and Technical University in Chongqing that will allow Elgin staff and students to visit the Chinese city annually to learn Mandarin quickly.