zLexington, KY, USA (Feb. 25)--Confucius Institute at the University of Kentucky (UKCI) held a PD Day focused on Taiji (Tai Chi), a kind of shadow-boxing, for Chinese teachers in Kentucky, in the Student Center of the University of Kentucky on Feb. 20. About a dozen elementary and middle/high school teachers attended the event.

Yufang Zhou, a Chinese teacher at UKCI sent by Hanban, who comes from Shanghai University where she is associate professor of PE, is the expert for this teacher training workshop. She offered a brief presentation to introduce some essential facts about Taiji. Following that, she taught the participants a couple of Taiji exercises. The participants were active in interacting with her, asking her questions regarding the basic movements, the basic types of Taiji (shadow-boxi

This proved to be an effective way of conducting the workshop. As the PD Day session drew to a close, the participants were able to do at least one set of Taiji exercise, although more practice is needed to become adept with it. Ms. Lee, one of the participants, clearly indicated the desire to invite Yufang Zhou, the Taiji teacher at UKCI, to conduct a short Taiji activity session in her school.

This special PD Day session was chaired by China Partner Deputy Director of UKCI, Dr. Yonghua Zhang. On behalf of UKCI, she expressed a warm welcome to all the participants and thanked them for their support for UKCI’s work. In her brief speech, she also explained the two main reasons for UKCI’s offering of this special PD day activity, i.e., a belief that doing Taiji will be helpful to maintaining order in the classroom, which is so important to elementary and middle schools, and the idea of combining Taiji with the teaching of Chinese language—the names of the body parts involved in doing Taiji, the names of the movements, and so on