The Mission of East Link Academy is to prepare students to be language and cultural links between the West and East to face the challenges in their lifetime by providing a rigorous education in math, science, social studies and language arts in a bilingual English-Chinese environment.
Our school is helping all students develop the World Class Skills of the Profile of the South Carolina Graduate by providing an environment that promotes rigorous academics in a language immersion setting that builds proficiency in both English and Mandarin.
Our vision is to become an enthusiastic and diverse community of learners who are confident in their abilities to listen, speak, read, and write in both Mandarin and English and are grounded in intercultural understanding and respect as they become language and cultural links between the Western and Eastern societies. This will expand the opportunities to communicate with others, to work in an increasingly competitive world economy, and to understand the diversity of cultures.
To achieve this vision, the school strives to:
- Develop students' oral and written proficiency in Mandarin
- Maintain and extend students' proficiency in English
- Develop high levels of academic attainment, meeting or exceeding national and state standards, through rigorous study and instruction aligned with the South Carolina Academic Standards
- Develop students' understanding of other cultures and the ability to interact successfully with others whose language and/or culture differs from their own.
East Link Academy believes that all students can:
- Achieve in all academic subjects, including English Language Arts and mathematics;
- Gain mastery in content areas compared to peers instructed in a traditional school;
- Achieve proficiency in the target language (listening, speaking, reading, and writing);
- Acquire a cultural understanding of China and other countries of the world so they may be a positive participant in a global society; and
- Develop empathy and respect for others in the school and local and global communities.