Numerous fifth graders in school districts throughout Utah County either dread or are excited about their American History Wax Museum presentations each year. The students participating in the Chinese Immersion program at Wasatch Elementary in Provo are no different.

But they are unique because not only did they have to do a month’s worth of research on their chosen hero, create a presentation board, write up their presentation speech, memorize it, gather items to represent their hero and dress up rather convincingly like them — they also then had to write out their speech in Chinese as well.

For the first time, as visiting students in third, fourth and sixth grade wandered the gym Tuesday at Wasatch Elementary, they could push an “English” button or a “Chinese” button at any station marked with Chinese writing. According to their choice, they could hear facts in Chinese or English about Einstein, Winfrey, Pocahontas, Stan Lee, Isadora Duncan, Alice Waters and others.

“The hardest part was memorizing it in both languages,” said Brianne Young, who was portraying Duncan.

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Nathan Craig Nuttall was portraying Lee, and he agreed. The students didn’t just write their speeches in English, and then translate them to Chinese. Their Chinese Immersion teacher, Melody Yang, required them to include the same facts in both speeches, but write them using each language’s most effective grammar and phrasing.

“Our English and Chinese are at different levels, so we can’t write out the English word-for-word,” Nathan said.

Learning Chinese seems very daunting, and one would think the Chinese part of the whole project was the most daunting, but for many of the Chinese Immersion students, it wasn’t. Most of them have been taking Mandarin Chinese since they were in first grade. For many of them, the research, the memorizing, and even the public speaking part of the project were the more scary parts.

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“I see a huge progression in these students from before this project to now,” Yang said. “In this project, they have changed. Even the shy students who wouldn’t talk to anyone, are confident. I was so shocked to see them speak about their heroes. They want to tell their story. They feel so proud of themselves, and to see them sparkle, that’s beyond my aspirations.”

Each student seemed to choose a hero that spoke to them on a personal level. Kaylene Neo chose Alice Waters because she hopes to be a chef one day, just like Waters. Alice Chen hopes to be an actress like her hero, Natalie Wood. Grace Jensen admires Margaret Burke-White for being one of the first female photojournalists. Though they only could share a two-paragraph blurb about each historic hero, all of the Wasatch Elementary fifth graders knew much more than that.

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