Last week at Yew Chung International School of Beijing (YCIS Beijing), we held summer camp seminars for parents of our Secondary School students. Hosted by visiting YCIS Silicon Valley International School Summer Camp Admissions Coordinators, Fiona Zheng and Dylan Sun, the sessions detailed the amazing opportunity for our Secondary School students to attend YCIS Silicon Valley’s International Student Summer Camp in the USA. Following the completion of the summer camp seminars, we sat down with Fiona and Dylan to discuss their fantastic summer camp and how the strength of our network of schools makes these special cross-cultural opportunities possible.

Please introduce YCIS Silicon Valley.YCIS Silicon Valley opened in 2002 in Mountain View, California at the heart of Silicon Valley. We accept students from age two, up through eighth grade. As with all YCIS Schools, we focus on helping students from every background become bilingually proficient and culturally flexible, and on ensuring they develop the relevant skills for success in our globalised world.

How does being a member of the YCIS Schools Network benefit your campus?Being part of the YCIS Schools Network enables us to offer and take part in international exchange programmes, which provide students with immersive, cross-cultural learning experiences. That’s why we are here today at YCIS Beijing promoting our summer camp, as it is yet another one of these special programmes.

Please introduce YCIS Silicon Valley’s summer camp.We are offering an International Student Summer Camp for all of the students, aged 10-14, of our sister schools in China. The camp is centred on a STEAM / Marine Science and Creative Thinking Course. It’s a day camp based at the University of California’s Berkeley campus in their Lawrence Hall of Science and children attending from China will be paired with YCIS Silicon Valley students’ families who have volunteered to host them.

What activities are offered?We offer three courses during each session of our summer camp: STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics), Marine Science, and Creative Thinking.Some of the activities included in these courses are working with 3D printing, solar power, solar boats, laser cutting, and robots, visits to beaches, a marine science museum, Google, Tesla, Facebook, Stanford University, plus much more.

How much does this summer camp cost?The camp costs 36,800 RMB. This fee covers camp tuition fees, travel, insurance, room and board. The price does not include flights, American visas, and all other personal expenses for the campers.

When does the camp start and how long does it run?We are offering two sessions this year, and each session is two weeks long. The first session runs from 7-20 July, and the second session will be held from 22 July – 3 August.

How long has YCIS Silicon Valley been offering this summer camp for international students?This is our second year, we launched this international student focused camp in the summer of 2018 and had about 80 students attend with 30-35 joining from YCIS’s Chinese campuses.

What do we intend for students to gain from the summer camp?A central aim of our camp is cultural exchange and building relationships between YCIS campuses. We also target character and academic development.

In addition to the rich variety of academic experiences we are offering students, our Chinese guests will benefit from cultural and language immersion, which will strengthen their confidence as English speakers and global citizens. Also, as part of the YCIS commitment to raising ‘compassionate leaders’ who are prepared to ‘face the challenges of their generation’ and ‘act for a better world', we will engage the students in charitable activities such as beach clean-ups, volunteer work at food banks and visiting the elderly in care homes.

The care home visits are particularly special to us as we target elderly Mandarin speakers for these visits and draw upon the language skills of our visiting Chinese students to provide a real treat for these elderly members of the local community who may not often have the opportunity to enjoy fluid conversations in their mother tongue.

To download an information sheet on the 2019 YCIS Silicon Valley International Student Summer Camp, click here. To contact a camp admissions officer, scan the QR code below.