Students in the AP Chinese class were the first in the history of the school to apply to the newly established National Chinese Honor Society (NCHS) that began in early October.

“I have a friend that talks about other language honor societies all the time, and honestly I always wondered why Chinese didn’t have one,” Hope Jin, junior and member of NCHS, said. “When I found out they were creating one, I was pretty excited.”

In order to be apart of the society, students have to have at least a 3.6 GPA and be in either level three or four of Chinese.

“Not many people at our school continue onto Chinese three or four so that greatly limits the pool of people who may be interested or qualifies for such an honor society,” Elsa Zhang, junior and also a member of NCHS, said.

National Chinese Honor Society was first founded in November of 1993. It was meant to recognize students who participated in taking Chinese at their school and who studied Chinese culture.

“National Chinese Honor Society is important because it celebrates the Chinese language and culture,” Zhang said. “It also acknowledges Chinese as a difficult language that few are able to practice well, which in turn acknowledges the hard work of students in Chinese.”

Besides acknowledging these students for learning Chinese, like other national honor societies, the organization promotes students who show leadership, citizenship and community service.  

With the help of Chinese teacher Minning Wu, student body president Sam Sloan and LOTE department chair Maria Moises, the Chinese National Honor Society was started for the 2018-2019 school year. They hope that it will continue for years to come so students can continue to demonstrate key characteristics through Chinese language and culture.

“This is the first honor society that I got inducted into,” Jin said. “I would say this is different from the other honor societies because this is new and has a lot of potential and more freedom. Since we will be the first group of this new honor society we can input more into it.”

On Oct. 10 and 11 students who applied and got into NCHS, attended the induction ceremony. At the ceremony, students were called by name to the front of the classroom, lit a candle from the mother candle and then recited an oath.

Officer applications will be handed out soon because it is a newly developed organization. Applications can be picked up in the Chinese classroom at a later date.