Students at the Aucocisco School and Learning Center in Cape Elizabeth spent their first day of school playing with paint and a few dead fish. 

“Of course [the fish] are fresh,” Head of School Barbara Melnick said. “It’s a lot of fun for the kids, they get to touch the fish and make some cool-looking prints.”

Making “fish-prints” is just one of the ways teachers at the kindergarten through 12^th grade special purpose private school will incorporate Asian art and culture into everyday activities and lessons as part of a year-long curriculum inspired by the National Consortium for Teaching About Asia. Melnick said students will wear clothing, eat food, listen to music and experiment with languages from Japan, India and China as part of the themed school year. Melnick said the Asian-based lessons are something she enjoys as much as her students. 

“I’ve always been fascinated with the design, food and the culture,” she said.

Three years ago Melnick attended her first seminar sponsored by the National Consortium for Teaching About Asia, making her eligible for various grant programs and funds for related teaching materials, and this past summer she and 19 other educators – four from Maine – took their Asian interests to the next level. Through    a program funded entirely by the consortium, Melnick and the other educators selected by the Five College Center for East Asian Studies at Smith College traveled to China where they spent three weeks visiting universities, temples, village schools and participated in the program’s first ever “homestay visit” – one night they weren’t in a hotel or at a university campus. 

Melnick said it was “quite a shock” to be separated from the group of educators soon after arriving in China so they could stay with their individual homestay families. Melnick, a vegetarian, said the family she stayed with managed to tailor their meals to her diet and introduced her to just how good mushrooms, when combined with the right mixture of rice and vegetables, could be. Like most Chinese, who begin taking English lessons as early as the fifth grade, Melnick – who only speaks a few words of Mandarin – said her host family spoke sufficient English for them to communicate.

“They were just really nice people,” Melnick said. “It was an incredibly successful experiment.”

In preparing for the trip, Melnick said the group had been told not to expect good weather during their visit, however they happened to arrived close enough to the opening ceremony for the Olympics that pollution control efforts resulted in a clean and healthy atmosphere. 

“I was told we wouldn’t see blue sky while we were there, but the weather was wonderful,” she said. 

Melnick, who grew up close to New York City, said she was amazed by the size of the Chinese cities the group visited.

“When you say ‘Chinese’ you’re talking 103 billion people,” she said. “Everything’s big,” 

Melnick said a large component of the trip was to meet other educators and the group visited numerous schools and universities to learn about their programs. At every stop the Chinese educators were just as curious about the American education system, she said.

“They want to know everything about American education,” she said. 

While exchanging notes about education was a large part of the trip, Melnick said Chinese educators were not so quick to offer opinions on political matters. 

“It was quite clear there were things you didn’t talk about,” she said. “That’s part of the culture.”

Political discussions weren’t the only thing missing from teachers’ conversations. Melnick said during her entire stay in China, she never met a handicapped student. 

“It was quite frightening,” she said. “I know they’re there but I don’t know where they are.”

Although Melnick said she knows the Chinese school system, often privately funded after a certain grade level, does include programs to educate the deaf, the fact she did not run into any special needs students “felt strange.”

“There are so many people, they’re absolutely huge schools,” she said. “It made me wonder why [handicapped students] were so hidden.”

Students Melnick did meet often shared their hopes to visit the United States, she said. 

“They all want to come here to go to college,” she said. “They all want to see the world.”

Inside school buildings the American visitors were greeted warmly by teachers and students, and on the street Melnick said complete strangers were just as welcoming. 

“You’d be walking down the street and people would literally stop and have their picture taken with us. They’d ask why we were there and what we were doing, that sort of thing,” she said. “They treated us like royalty.”

Even as a visitor, Melnick said it was easy to see that the country was in a state of rapid transition. Many of the temples the group visited, although originally much older, had been rebuilt within the past several years more as tourist attractions than places of worship, she said. 

“One second you’re looking at yaks in the mountains and another there are monks with cell phones,” she said. “There’s a lot going on there.”

What’s the most important lesson Melnick has brought back to the states to pass on to her students?

“People are the same everywhere,” she said. “As strange as people might look, dress or talk, they’re the same underneath.” 

Melnick said she hadn’t done much traveling prior to the trip, but after surviving a 24-hour flight from Bangor to a Chinese international airport, she’s “got the bug.”

“Now I’d go anywhere,” she said.