About 80 students from grades 7 to 12 went on a Chinese field trip this week to immerse themselves in Chinese culture and language. The trip included visits to the St. Louis Language Immersion School (SLLIS), lunch at Lu Lu’s Seafood and Dim Sum Restaurant on Olive, and a Chinese supermarket. “The goal of the trip is to provide students with an opportunity to use the language skills they have been learning in a real-world environment and to deepen their understanding of Chinese culture,” explains Lily Childs, Upper School Mandarin Teacher.
Overall, the Chinese field trip was a valuable and fun learning experience for the students. It allowed them to practice their language skills in an immersive environment and gave them the opportunity to deepen their understanding of Chinese culture.
Several of the students in Ms. Childs’ and Middle School Mandarin Teacher Zuowei Chang’s classes reflected on how helpful and fun the field trip was:
- “I learned that if you spend all day learning a language, you get so much better at it. I really enjoyed going to the supermarket and that was the highlight of the trip.” ~Shulynn Ragland ’27
- “The field trip was really fun. We went to a language immersion school and talked with a lot of little kids in Chinese. We also went to Olive Supermarket and bought a bunch of stuff. I bought my friends at school lots of snacks while my friends that were with me bought ramen, ice cream, and a lot of candy.” ~ Diane Li ’24
- “At SLLIS, we played games like Spot It and Tic Tac Toe with Middle School students. The students’ personalities were very open and they were very funny. They asked us lots of questions. After we left the school, we went to a Chinese restaurant where we ate vegetables, chicken, beef, rice, and more. ~Chelsey Nwamu ’23
- “The field trip was overall really fun. The kids we saw were clearly very excited about learning Chinese, the food was good, and going to the supermarket was very fun.” ~ Owen Zhang ’23
- “I really liked the Chinese class field trip. We taught Chinese to elementary and middle school students at the St. Louis Language Immersion School, and I thought it was very meaningful.” ~Jeffrey Ge ’24
- “This week’s field trip was a lot of fun. At Lu Lu’s, everyone was very happy because we haven’t been able to go on this field trip for several years.” ~Louis Niemeyer ’24
- “I liked attending St. Louis Language Immersion School and practicing Chinese with the students. We also went to the Olive Supermarket where I bought lots of shrimp chips and even a cup of boba tea. Thank you Ms. Childs for such a fun field trip!!” ~Elizabeth Schmidt ’23
- “I especially liked getting to know the students at STLIS because they were very smart and funny.” ~Oliver Marks ’25
- “The field trip was really interesting and helped me to understand more about Mandarin. We were able to interact with children who were at a similar level to us, which was interesting. The best part for me was the supermarket, as we were able to buy food and take it back with us!” ~Henry Oliver ’25
- “It was very interesting to see little kids who are learning Chinese at a diverse school that teaches kids many dialects.” ~Anna Jiang ’26
- “At the immersion school, we got to meet some students from second grade to eighth grade. Their Chinese is amazing, far better than mine; it was a great display of how with enough commitment to another language, you can reach fluency, even if it isn’t spoken in your area.” ~Charlie Mills ’26
- “During the trip, I was able to look at how younger children learned Chinese. I also got to go through a raffle prize event that gave us Chinese items such as lanterns, keychains, and money(coupons). Later, we got to go to a Chinese supermarket (Olive Supermarket), where we looked at Asian snacks as well as other ingredients used in Asian cooking.” ~ Ella Lin ’26
- “Going on the field trip allowed me to see many activities children do to learn Chinese. The food was good and a few people also won a raffle and got Chinese items.” ~Joy Chen ’26
Thank you to our teachers and SLLIS for such an immersive language and cultural experience for our Mandarin students!