Upper School Chinese teacher Dr. River He led a group of students to Seton Hall University to give their final presentation for the New Jersey 14th Annual Chinese Cultural Project Contest, co-hosted by the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures and the New Jersey Chinese Culture Studies Foundation. The MKA team won second place, earning a trophy, certificate, and a grant award of $600.

Additionally, to recognize MKA’s performance, the team was presented with the “Best Team Award.” Dr. He commented, "This is a tremendous success for our MKA Chinese program. All five contestants started their Chinese learning in our Middle School Chinese program and now are in an AP class. As we know, it is challenging for our non-heritage students to compete and win at this competition in which most of the participants are from bigger Chinese programs of public schools, with more heritage students. This is a team success for MKA students, teachers, and parents!"

This year’s research topic was “How American and Chinese shows reflect the cultures.” In the past three months, MKA’s AP Chinese class worked on collecting materials, designing surveys, conducting interviews and writing a research paper. In total, the class received about 350 survey responses and conducted 19 interviews within the MKA community and our sister school in Xi’an, China. In the twelve-minute final presentation, the MKA team delivered a formal research presentation, performed a traditional Chinese talk show “shulaibao,” a song with sign language interactive dance, and then answered questions from the judging panel. A Chinese newspaper highly praised the MKA team for its understanding and insight into Chinese culture research, its strong language proficiency and its efforts to present the project in a fun and exciting way.

Congratulations to Ben Sherman 22’, Phoebe Williams 22’, Clara Turck 22’, Mona Marshall 23’, and Gianna Zou 23’ on a job well done!