In November 2025, the Sidwell Chinese language program received a national Outstanding K–16 Chinese Program Award from the Chinese Language Association of Secondary-Elementary Schools (CLASS). This prestigious award recognized 12 total schools for innovation, community impact and student achievement in their Chinese curricula.
On Nov. 22, Sidwell Chinese teachers Yuan Angel, Fei Reed, Qihui Tang and Xuan Wang traveled to New Orleans to receive the award at the CLASS Luncheon Award Ceremony. These four teachers, along with Lower School Chinese teacher Edith Zhang and history teachers Wenjia Cai and Jake Dingman, were recognized by CLASS Membership Chair Na Li for their outstanding commitment to creating a nurturing, cross-cultural Chinese Studies program within the Sidwell community.
This recent award from CLASS is not the first to be received by the Sidwell Chinese program. In 2023, 40 years after the Sidwell Chinese program was founded, the Chinese Language Teachers Association recognized Sidwell’s program for its devotion to Chinese language, culture and history.
Currently, Sidwell’s Chinese program begins in fourth grade with an introduction to the basics of spoken and written simplified Chinese. Using teaching techniques that emphasize the importance of storytelling through reading and writing, students focus on recognizing the four different tones, reading basic texts and speaking with tonal accuracy. In fifth grade, students have the opportunity to continue their language studies in Middle School classes that will prepare them for a transition into the Upper School. In addition to language classes, the Sidwell Upper School also offers a History of East Asia course taught by Cai, which gives students an opportunity to learn more about Chinese history.
To qualify for the award, Chinese teachers collaborated to complete a roughly 60-page application. The application covered a wide array of topics, including a description of the curriculum from fourth to twelfth grade and overviews of community partnerships the Sidwell Chinese program has established, such as China Folkhouse, an organization that works to reconstruct a traditional Chinese house in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.
According to Tang, one of her favorite sections to work on was entitled “Experiential and Interdisciplinary Learning.” Here, she was able to highlight the immersive Chinese programs offered outside of the classroom, including the fourth grade endangered species project, the Middle School Minimester “Taste of China” trip, the eighth grade tea project, the year-long ninth grade Daoism studies project, the tenth grade field trip to the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art, the combined Chinese V and East Asian History project creating a bilingual web resource and the Chinese Seminar collaboration with Emperor Qinshihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum. Tang said that these experiences allow students to understand Chinese culture and art beyond a rigorous academic environment.
According to the Sidwell Curriculum Guide, the Chinese program not only allows students to study the language and culture, but also provides interesting opportunities to engage with China through the annual John Fisher Zeidman ’79 Memorial Lecture and school-organized trips to China. The Zeidman Memorial Lecture brings experts on Chinese culture to the Sidwell community. This program has also historically sponsored student exchanges with two sister schools in China, allowing students to gain exposure to Chinese culture and daily life. These student exchanges have not occurred since the COVID-19 pandemic, though the Beijing sister school sent visitors to Sidwell Friends School in 2025, and the Shanghai sister school is scheduled to visit in February.
