Cary Chinese School (CCS) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit educational organization that aims to promote Chinese language literacy and enrich cultural diversity within our community.

Cary Chinese School offers two types of Chinese language programs:
★ Chinese as a Heritage Language (CHL): For students who can speak fluent Chinese (Mandarin) natively, with two different curriculums to choose from: ZhongWen and MaLiPing.
★ Chinese as a Second Language (CSL): For children and adults who want to learn Chinese as a Second Language.

In addition to language programs, CCS offers a variety of activity classes of cultural enrichment and sports for kids and adults:
★ Folk Dance
★ Arts and Crafts
★ Chinese Brush Painting
★ Chinese Calligraphy
★ SAT English
★ SAT Math and Creative Math
★ Math Olympiad
★ Chess
★ Go
★ Badmington
★ Tennis
★ Table Tennis
★ Youth Band
★ CCS Radio Show (Duke University's WXDU)
★ Dragon Boat Club (Adults Only)
★ Zumba
★ TaiChi
★ AP Chinese (Credit Accepted by Most Universities)

Each year, CCS hosts four school-wide family events:
★ Halloween Parade
★ Academic Contests
★ Chinese New Year’s Gala
★ Sports Day and Summer Picnic

CCS is run by a group of dedicated volunteers and supported by families and businesses within the local community.
If you are interested in supporting CCS as a business sponsor or a volunteer, please contact pta@carycs.org.

CLASS HOURS:
Saturdays 9:00am-1:00pm:
★ 9:00am-10:50am Language
★ 11:00am-11:50am Activity I
★ 12:00pm-12:50pm Activity II

CLASS LOCATION:
Panther Creek High School
6770 McCrimmon Parkway
Cary, NC 27519
(Use the west student entrance near I-540 overpass)

​WEBSITE: www.carycs.org
EMAIL: principal@carycs.org
MAILING ADDRESS:
Cary Chinese School
P.O. Box 1542,
Cary, NC 27512-1542

凯瑞中文学校 (CCS) 是一所 501(c)3 非盈利教育机构,致力于弘扬中华文化,培养双语人才。学校提供汉语语言教育,文体课外活动,以及社区便民服务.

凯瑞中文学校提供两种不同的汉语语言教育:
★ 传承汉语 (CHL): 适用于汉语为母语或在家里有语言交流环境的学生,有两套教程可以选择:暨南中文或马力平中文.
★ 汉语为第二语言 (CSL): 适用于母语为非汉语的学生(包括成人),将汉语当作第二语言来学习。

凯瑞中文学校除了提供汉语语言教育之外,还有各种文体活动课供学生(包括成人)选择:
★ 民族舞蹈
★ 绘画和手工
★ 国画
★ 书法
★ SAT 英文
★ SAT 数学和趣味数学
★ 奥林匹克数学
★ 国际象棋
★ 围棋
★ 羽毛球
★ 网球
★ 乒乓球
★ 少年乐队
★ CCS 广播节目 (杜克大学的 WXDU电台)
★ 龙舟队 (成人组)
★ 尊巴舞蹈健身
★ 太极拳
★ AP 中文(有大学学分)

每年,凯瑞中文学校举办四场全校的活动:
★ 万圣节游行
★ 中文和绘画比赛
★ 春节联合会
★ 运动游园野餐会

凯瑞中文学校的日常运作离不开家长义工们的努力和付出,以及本地社区机构与商家的支持和赞助。欢迎更多热心家长参与到义工工作中来,欢迎商家赞助和支持学校。
如果您有兴趣加入义工团队,或者成为学校的赞助商,请联系pta@carycs.org.

Vision

What is your vision for Cary Chinese School?
We consider our school a NEW TYPE of Chinese School. We do share common objectives with our sister schools, such as promoting Chinese language literacy and cultural exchange enrich cultural diversity in our community. On the other hand, there are some CCS-specific characteristics that we would like to share with you:

• We believe earlier is better.

In terms of language, earlier is always better. Long term, children who have gone through an early childhood immersion experience in languages show greater cognitive flexibility, greater facility in concept formation, greater creativity and problem-solving skills in verbal and math problems, and, obviously, a greater facility of vocabulary. Research indicates that young children are highly receptive to language acquisition, and second-language learning comes most easily early on in a child's life.
To have our children conceive Chinese language systematically at a younger age, we offer classes to kids as young as 4 years old. We have written our own textbooks for those little ones: small 8x5 books, to ensure easy access for small hands. Each book contains a small illustrated rhythm or story, a little bit of math, in-class and take-home exercises, and a summary list for parents to follow, etc. Kids will be excited by receiving those cute little books every week. Each week's class is broken down into three 30-minute teaching sections, one 10-minute break, and one 20-minute snack break.

• We believe teaching methodology can make a big difference.

There is nothing wrong if you think no matter which textbook is being used, whatever methodology is behind it, with the right teacher, certain learning goals can eventually be reached. But would you agree a good textbook with a more appropriate teaching strategy will make everything easier?
Most traditional textbooks and teaching methods adopted in US Chinese schools, advocate learning Chinese characters through Pinyin and require memorizing a lot of writing characters. Unfortunately, most of those words do not show up anywhere else, and there is an insufficiency of appropriate reading material to reinforce what students have learned. Very often, students tend to read the Pinyin rather than the character even though they already know the character by heart. As a result, they gradually lose their reading ability; they memorize the required characters each week, but forget them months later. With the lack of fresh reading material, their effort reaps little reward.
Using the Ma Liping methodology, we see solutions to those problems: students learn characters first, through fun rhythm, story, and they learn to WRITE some of them, but just RECOGNIZE the rest. With extensive supplemental reading material, composed of 95-98% of the characters that they have learned, it's like rolling a snowball; their vocabulary builds up fast, so they are capable of reading materials at the right age and knowledge level. Their reading ability is not compromised by their knowledge of Pinyin, and their interest is boosted by the fun and accomplishment brought by reading those interesting stories that mostly cannot be found in English! Moreover, Maliping's CD-ROM homework (besides its light paper-pencil homework) is a huge plus to attract students to their Chinese studies, too.
* The Ma liping textbook does not target students with non-mandarin background.

• We believe each child is different, and that there is no such thing as one size fits all.

While different Chinese schools have differing teaching philosophies, we're pleased to offer a learning option that we feel nicely complements what our sister schools are doing.

• We believe learning should be fun.

Learning activities should motivate students' interest; they should be fun. We have put a lot of emphasis on and efforts into achieving this goal. Please let us know if you have any suggestions and ideas; we hope we can work together to continually improve our teaching and to make a positive impact on our students.

• We believe it is equally important to introduce both the Chinese language and culture to non-Chinese students.

A better understanding of the Chinese culture will facilitate learning the language. Moreover, through interactions with their Chinese classmates, non-Chinese students have an opportunity to practice what they learn in the classroom. Finally, by introducing non-Chinese students into our school, we hope to enrich the overall learning environment.

• We have a very strict legal and financial system, with a lean administrative team.

As our main focus is on teaching, we wish to remain as efficient as we possibly can while ensuring that the school is properly run under strict policies. 

Who are the founders of Cary Chinese School?
The Cary Chinese School was founded by Ms. Yi Sun and Ms. Janet Wang in 2003.