Hikaru Hayakawa: American Field Scholarship Youth Trip to China

Hikaru Hayakawa, perhaps joined by other participants, will describe his extraordinary trip to China.

Hikaru Hayakawa is a senior at Columbia High School. During the summer, he participated in a one-month exchange program in China through AFS (American Field Service) Intercultural Programs with six other American high school students from Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City, thirty high school students from Italy, three from Germany and one from Indonesia. AFS allowed them a unique intercultural experience through living with a host family, learning Mandarin in school and living the life of a Chinese teenager. Hikaru started studying Mandarin during school year 2017-2018, and has grown to love Mandarin especially because of his teacher, Niu Xiuqing from Beijing, who is the first to teach Mandarin at Columbia High School through the Teachers of Critical Languages Program (TCLP), a program of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State. Her teaching inspired him to learn more about her culture and language.

Public speaking is nothing new for Hikaru. He has presented at several Model UN Conferences and he founded the AFS Club at Columbia High School. He also initiated and has organized and
moderated panels on international education at CHS during International Education Week.