Gillette schools contemplate adding Mandarin

By The AP
Sunday, January 29, 2012

GILLETTE — Campbell County High School sophomores Skyler Coorough, Falen Van Pelt and Ben Heaton may be friends but they don’t speak the same language when talking about studying it.

As Campbell County school officials continue to discuss adding Chinese as a foreign language option for students, the trio had different opinions about whether they’d be interested in enrolling in a Mandarin class.

“I’d be so into that,” Coorough said.

“It would be so difficult,” Van Pelt said, noting the language doesn’t use an alphabet. “It has characters for words.”

“I don’t like learning German or Spanish,” Heaton said, in reference to Campbell County School District’s current foreign language offerings. “I want to learn something else.”

In about a month, high schoolers will see the course catalog for the 2012-2013 academic year, and included will be a proposed Mandarin Chinese class.