AP Government Students Pitch Ideas to Visiting Chinese Educators

On December 12, Head of School Todd Stephenson hosted a group of 17 principals and superintendents from Beijing who spent a half day on campus learning about teacher recruitment, professional development, and principal/leadership development.

“One of the highlights of the visit was our impromptu stop in the AP Comparative Government class. They were concluding their unit on China with a project in which students had to make a marketing plan to sell an American product in China. Students spent 20 minutes pitching and receiving feedback,” said Todd, adding, “It doesn’t get much better than this.”
AP Comparative Government teacher Linh Tran explained, “For this project, students worked in pairs to pitch an ad campaign for a distinctly American product to the China market.” Students chose from American products like Harley Davidson motorcycles, Crayola crayons, Levi’s denim, Cocoa Puffs cereal, Dr. Pepper, Fiesta dinnerware, Kraft cheese slices, Ford Mustang, Jif peanut butter, Lodge cast iron pans, Pendleton blankets, and Yankee candles. Students had to first learn about the history of the product in the US, then performed market research for China to understand cultural trends in order to create a final ad pitch. (Here’s an example of their Dr. Pepper ad.)

In addition to their classroom visits, the visitors “loved their conversations with [St. Andrew’s Mandarin teacher] Caleb Williams and were amazed with how good his Mandarin was. They also enjoyed speaking with student Rachel Jiang who is a native Mandarin speaker. Then they had lunch with teacher Weiwei Xie. Their translator told me that this was the most Mandarin they had run into at a Texas school,” said Todd.

This is not the first time St. Andrew’s has hosted Chinese educators. In 2016 the Upper School hosted a delegation of 19 educators from China, who spent half a day observing educational practices.  
 
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