Chinese school has been among the very short list of things that my children did not have a choice. Both children had spent over a decade of Friday evenings in Chinese classes. My older child is in her third year in college, and my younger child will start college this fall. I am no longer part of their Chinese learning, and I wish they will continue in their own ways.
I attended the School’s Annual General Meeting every year in the past decade. When my daughter was in the elementary grades, I stayed in the classroom often. Naturally, I volunteered as room parent. By the time I joined the Board, my children were already in mid grades and I no longer “attend” classes with my child.
For the subsequent five years, I have been the Curriculum director, the PTA director and the Registrar. These roles link me to the many perennial events on the school calendar.
The Annual General Meeting marks the beginning of the year. The attendance is a barometer of parent engagement in their children’s education, and it has been improving. It is still an aspiration to get close to 100% parents’ attendance.
Chinese New Year (CNY) is always my favorite. Together with Student Council, we always try to make the CNY festive, make it traditional and make it memorable. We are a Chinese School and Chinese New Year is our way to welcome a New Year. If there is only one event to keep, CNY will be it.
To those who participate in the inter-school ANCCS contests, I deeply admire the hard work of the students and, even more so, their parents and our school teachers in the two months before the April event and on the event day.
The promotion ceremony marks the end of the year, I get goosebumps to listen to our graduating students making speeches. To graduate, it requires more than a decade of Friday’s evenings in a classroom learning Chinese. I believe many students will look back to see such persistence has shaped their life in some ways.
Board members are in position to create lasting changes that affect current and future students too. I remember a few of these changes.
Few know our school used to have a school library with hundreds of books. We closed our library in 2013. That year, we took out all the books from the school library, and for a few weeks, we displayed the books and let the teachers/parents claim them for free. Those books deserved to be in better hands than being left alone in our cabinets. I remember the happy faces of the teachers/parents when they picked up their favorite books or books that can help them teach.
2014 was our school’s 50th anniversary. We all got pretty busy in the celebration planning. Our board members, our ex-board members, our ex-principals, and our alumni joined forces to prepare the yearbook and the anniversary events. It was concluded with a very memorable 50th anniversary dinner. My daughter, now an art-and-design college student, created 3 short videos to chronicle the school history. Looking at the photos over the years, listening to the interviews of the founder and the many principals, l feel we all owe to those who have built the school platform and have contributed selflessly to Chinese education. I wish that the 55th anniversary would be equally memorable.
In 2015, we established a new AP class offering to meet the demand of students who want to focus on Mandarinand College Level Chinese. A few of us on the board spent many extra hours to discuss and debate about it. It was a fun and rewarding time. I would like to thank our AP teacher and our ex-principal for being passionate and selfless to push forward the idea. In the past two years, a few students graduated from the AP classes with visible improvement in their Mandarin ability, not to mention, they earned good scores in the AP Chinese exam. I wish for more success for the AP class.
We thought hard to strengthen the board members with parents of younger children. We were fortunate that there were some strong additions to the board in the past few years including our current secretary, our current PTA director, and our current Marketing director.
In 2016, we had fun in learning how to improve the page ranking of our school website. It was eye-opening in figuring out how to make that happen, and it was lots of learning to use AdWords. As we strengthen our online presence, more parents find us online, more parents contact us, and more families join our school. It has been very rewarding
In 2017, we revamped our school website to bring it up to the era. I am so impressed with the work done on our new school website. At the same time, we took an ambitious effort to transition to online registration and online payment.
Many think of volunteering as activities that take away their time and underestimate the rewards of it. As Chinese parents, we want to place the children in the best school. Chinese school is among the most reachable way to do something to make their education better.
Most board members, that I started with, have retired; I am thankful for the foundations that they have built and have lots of fun with the current board members along the journey. Time has come for my retirement from the board. It has been good fun and I wish more people can experience what I have been through.
oliviatamccue 
It is good to read with which passion you seem to engage in the school. Good job!