It's just after noon in a basement classroom at Shady Side Academy Senior School in Fox Chapel, and eight students in Chinese I are getting their first lesson on how to write -- or, more accurately, how not to write.
"Do not write along a straight line," said their teacher, Ma Yan, demonstrating the artful Chinese characters that represent the numbers one through five. "We are human beings -- try to be natural."
At this time last year, the 27-year-old Mr. Yan was teaching English at the Beijing Dance Academy in his native China. He is now one of more than 100 teachers from China participating in the International Chinese Guest Teacher Program, which is co-sponsored by the College Board and Hanban, a Chinese government office that promotes Chinese language instruction.
In addition to Mr. Yan, there are two other guest teachers in Western Pennsylvania: Likui Meng, who arrived at Kiski School in Saltsburg, Indiana County, in January, and Junhui Kang, who just started teaching in the Indiana Area School District last month.
As the students at Shady Side Academy are learning, even the fundamentals of Chinese are completely foreign -- from the motions of their tongues to the shapes of the characters to the grammatical structure.
The College Board, which this year gave its first Advanced Placement Chinese test, developed the guest teacher program to help fill a shortage of teachers qualified to teach Chinese in American schools.
The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages estimates that partly as a result of China's surging role in the world economy, 30,000 to 50,000 U.S. students are now taking Chinese classes -- up from 5,000 seven years ago.
In Pennsylvania, at least 50 to 75 public schools offer Chinese, either through distance learning or through a live instructor, said Mike Race, spokesman for the state Department of Education.
"Chinese is a burgeoning area of interest," he said. "There's a lot of demand for it among students, and there's a lot of competition to find teachers who are able to do it."
Locally, a handful of schools offer Chinese in addition to those participating in the China Teaching Fellows Program, including Allderdice High School and Sewickley Academy.
Shady Side Academy has actually offered Chinese classes for 20 years, and was interested in Mr. Yan to add depth to the existing department.
At the Kiski School and Indiana Area School District, however, the Chinese programs are brand new.
"About five or six years ago, we decided to phase out German," said Christopher Brueningsen, headmaster of the Kiski School. "We decided that we either wanted to add Latin back in or add Chinese. This program was an outstanding opportunity for us."
Thirty-three of the school's 200 students signed up for the introductory Chinese class this fall, with some motivated by economic potential and others by sheer variety.
"It's one of my favorite classes," said Nathan Weimer, a senior from New Alexandria who previously had taken Spanish and wanted to try something different. "He tells us what it's like in China, and asks us to teach him English."
Sometimes the smallest aspects of Chinese culture are the most fascinating, said another senior, Nik Ueker, who is also fluent in German. For example, he said, if you are a guest in someone's house in China and they offer you food, the polite thing to do is to say you're not hungry and then wait for them to force it on you.
Mr. Meng relishes the opportunity to teach Americans, because it was a visiting American professor at his university who inspired him to become an English teacher.
"I really respected that teacher and I was moved by her," he said. "When I first heard the information about this program, I thought, 'I want to come to the United States like my American teacher used to come to Beijing.' "
In Indiana, Pa., the school district was encouraged to join the program by Stuart Chandler, a professor at Indiana University of Pennsylvania who is fluent in Chinese. It now has 19 students enrolled at the high school.
Like the other teachers, Mr. Kang will teach for two years, with the possibility of a one-year extension.
After just a little more than a month in the United States, Mr. Kang is still settling in. He's learning new English words every day from his students -- one day last week he learned "hang out" and "experience," which he dutifully recorded on a note card.
He's also learning to make his way around Indiana on the bicycle that the school district provided, and has already accomplished one of his goals for his time in America: spotting a deer. He's still hoping to see a bear before he leaves.
He learned English partly through Hollywood movies and was surprised at first to see that real-life America doesn't have quite as much action as is depicted in "Independence Day" and "Forrest Gump."
But he's been surprised by his students' misconceptions about China: Many are shocked to find out that China has McDonald's and Starbucks, not to mention more basic modern amenities.
He's also adjusting to the educational differences.
Chinese schools do not have extracurricular activities, and Mr. Kang, who is setting up a Chinese club at an Indiana elementary school, initially had no concept of what an after-school club was.
From an instructional standpoint, one of the biggest differences that all three teachers see in American schools is the degree of class participation. In China, classes are much larger -- perhaps 40 to 50 students each -- and teachers function more like lecturers.
Mr. Yan believes that class participation not only benefits students, but makes him a better teacher because he has greater insight into whether the students are following the lesson.
His classes begin with students standing up and doing a few tai chi movements, and he's created PowerPoint presentations and recordings of Chinese songs to help with instruction.
During classes, he makes an extra effort to provide students with encouragement, fawning over their attempts at drawing Chinese characters on the blackboard and smiling broadly at their efforts at pronunciation.
He said that teachers who gave positive feedback inspired him to pursue a teaching career.
"There's no bad students but only stupid teachers," he said. "Every student is a miracle."
First Published: September 26, 2007, 8:00 a.m.