SPIRAL International is welcoming approximately 425 Chinese middle and high school students to New England this summer, along with 35 Chinese educators.
A dozen schools in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Connecticut will be hosting Adventure & Learning Camps, thanks to SPIRAL’s partnerships with two Chinese travel and education organizations: Sunshine Consulting and Stilwell International Student Exchange. Ten of these camps will be home-stay camps where the Chinese young people stay with local families, while the other two camps will take place at Colby-Sawyer College in New Hampshire, and those students will stay in college dorms.
Another Chinese partner, Xiang Jiang Secondary School, is sending a group of high school seniors to a STEM camp in Burlington Vermont, organized jointly by SPIRAL and the University of VT. This new camp was inaugurated last summer and was a big hit with the Chinese participants. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics, and it represents the latest trend in education, particularly in terms of bridging the minority and gender gaps found in these domains. The course title is “Designing Solutions for Global Challenges” and will be taught by a UVM professor.