Every year all four campuses come together for TIA’s Chinese New Year celebration. The students put on a performance in Mandarin Chinese for family and friends to watch.
Xiuqing Sun – Chinese Program Teacher
”TIA’s very own students perform at the Chinese New Year celebration. Most of the students have no Chinese experience whatsoever prior to attending TIA. We take all students, even Kindergarten, and teach them how to speak Mandarin, pronounce the words correctly. We teach about Chinese culture and the difference between American cultures and also the similarities. All the students will sing or rap in Chinese, dance Chinese dances while wearing traditional Chinese clothes.
Our Schools mission is to prepare students to be global citizens. If you can speak English, Spanish and Chinese, you can communicate with 70% of the entire world population. I try to make the show as exciting as I can. Also, I hope the audience can get a taste of Chinese culture and language, how we speak, how we pronounce words. I hope that the audience can get interested in the Chinese language.”
Dr. Jennifer Herrera – School Superintendent
“This is an annual Chinese New Year’s event. This is a chance to showcase the Chinese Mandarine language that is taught in our classes from kindergarten through 12th grade. The kids are very excited. They get to dance, sing, recite poetry. Sometimes they get to share information that they have learned about in their Chinese class. It’s a very exciting event for our whole community!
All four of our campuses are represented here tonight to perform a dance, song, and poem all in Chinese and even to share historical information they are learning in their Chinese classes. We are Tucson International Academy. The reason we put “International” in there is because the world has become a smaller place. With the internet, businesses, and the sharing of ideas – it’s all global now. So it’s very important as we educate the kids, that we constantly give them the global perspective through history, math, and in every subject that we teach. By offering foreign languages of Spanish and Chinese, the students are able to understand foreign concepts that only the language supports. It teaches them how to get along in this world and appreciate the diversity that we have.”
Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUnYDyoAad0