Welcome to Pathways to China!

The Pathways to China program was created to offer Massachusetts students in grades 8-12 an exciting opportunity to study about Chinese culture, history and society through a combination of classroom instruction, travel and online learning. The program currently involves teachers and administrators from nine participating public school districts in greater Boston--Bedford, Burlington, Lynn, Malden, Reading, Watertown, Westford, Weston, and Winchester. These educators recognize the importance of studying about China -given its increasingly critical role in the global economy and growing political and social influence in the world community.

Through Pathways to China, cross-district teams of teachers design and teach twenty-hour interdisciplinary learning modules conducted both face-to-face and online. Students who opt to participate in the modules during summer and after-school time have the opportunity to study with students from across all nine districts to develop global perspective on a variety of topics related to China, to travel to China to apply and extend what they have learned, and to contribute to others’ learning by sharing course projects and personal reflections online. For students, Pathways to China is an exciting alternative to existing Chinese studies programs that focus primarily on learning the Chinese language. For teachers, the program offers a unique occasion for in-depth professional learning that develops 21st century skills, new content expertise, proficiency with classroom instructional technology, and the opportunity to learn, travel and collaborate with other dedicated educators.

In addition to offering learning modules for students, the Pathways to China program provides a unique professional development opportunity for participating teachers. Working in cross-district teams, including a technology specialist from several districts, teachers learn to incorporate new instructional technologies into curriculum and instruction in order help students apply “21st century literacies” for research, collaboration, and critical thinking. Teachers participate in an integrated series of professional development activities based on the Teaching for Understanding approach to curriculum design developed at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, face-to-face technology workshops, a study tour of the Peabody-Essex Museum, field trips to China Town in Boston and New York, and access to the resources at Primary Source and other community-based organizations.

In the first year of the program, and with funding from an MA DOE 170B grant, teachers designed and piloted curriculum modules with students through traditional, face-to-face instruction. In the second year, teachers adapted their curriculum modules for online delivery to facilitate online learning. Subsequent cohorts of teachers design hybrid modules continue to be taught partially face-to-face and partially online. Currently in the third cohort of teachers and students, almost two hundred students have traveled to China, and more than three hundred have taken coursework.

Students from participating school districts must apply and be selected by their schools in order to participate in Pathways to China learning modules during out-of-school time. Modules deliberately include students of varying ages and ability levels, and require a culminating project through which students demonstrate understanding of content. Field trips to the Peabody Essex Museum, Harvard Museums, Chinatown Boston, Chinatown NYC, and participating racing in the Boston Dragon Boat festival have added tremendously to the learning experience. The original module courses were on aspects of Chinese trade, literature, history, politics, philosophy, food, medicine, art, and have now expanded in the second and third rounds to include the 2008 Olympics, the environmental impact of China's development, Cultural Revolution Memoir, the Monkey King, Mandarin Chinese and other engaging topics.

Students who have successfully completed at least two learning modules are eligible for a two week trip to China. Together, the courses and travel components of the program ground students’ learning about interdisciplinary topics in an authentic, compelling cross-cultural experience that goes beyond what typical classroom instruction can offer, and prepares students for the global economy and multicultural world in which they will continue to live, work and learn.