Where in the world was Brown County Schools Superintendent Laura Hammack this month? She was visiting three cities in China during a nine-day trip with State Superintendent Jennifer McCormick.

“I received a letter from Dr. McCormick and it was an invitation to join her delegation, which was a diverse group of educators to conduct a STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) visit over in China,” Hammack said last week.

“I was really surprised (to be asked). … Throughout the trip it was made known that Dr. McCormick thought we were doing great things down here. I think that she wanted to have a rural, small school district represented in that delegation.”

Brown County Schools was the only small, rural district represented in that group.

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She returned to the states on Nov. 5.

The group visited three cities: Hangzhou, Ningbo and Shanghai.

“We were in at least two schools every day and worked with a department of education almost every day,” Hammack said.

“We would leave the hotel at 7 a.m. and get back at 9:30 or 10 p.m. every night. These days were packed with content and information. It’s amazing.”

The intent of the visit was for Chinese education departments to learn more about how STEM education is instructed in Indiana, as the Chinese work to modernize their education. The cost of the trip was covered by the Regional Opportunity Initiative.

“They were pretty bold to share that they are recognizing that their very traditional method of instruction, which is teacher at the front of the class and students sit and listen and memorize, is really a strategy of the past,” she said.

In America, students work collaboratively in groups, are encouraged to ask questions and their thinking is challenged.

“The Chinese are struggling because they feel like that is a disrespectful behavior towards a teacher. You’re supposed to sit, listen and not ask questions, where kind of this new methodology of questioning, discussion and interaction is just not comfortable for them yet,” Hammack said.

Most of the secondary schools the group visited were boarding schools.

“We had always heard that students in China go to school on Saturday. If you go to boarding school, you don’t, because you go home on the weekend, but your day is expansive. I think they said most of them start at 7 a.m. and go until about 9 p.m.,” Hammack said

Students are not in class the entire time, but have a structured schedule of club activities, study hour and meals. “It’s very rigorous,” Hammack said.

“We saw the best of the best. They weren’t showing us their shabby schools by any means. … They all had uniforms and were just polished.”

While in China, the delegation worked to re-establish province Zhejian’s department of education as the sister province to the Indiana Department of Education. They also worked to re-establish several memorandums of understanding that established sister school status with schools in Indiana and China.

Hammack said she also started the groundwork to get Brown County a sister school in China, too. She said the hope would be to host people from that school here as an exchange. She imagines the first school to get a sister school would be Brown County Junior High School due to its STEM certification.

Hammack had never visited China before. She had spent her junior year of college abroad in Europe.

“I felt like I was a well-traveled person until I went to China. It was a very different experience,” she said.

One of the differences was food. Each night, the departments of education would hold a banquet in the group’s honor.

“That whole idea of respect, feeding you — this is a very important thing for them,” she said.

“You sit around a big, circular table. There’s a Lazy Susan in the middle. They keep bringing out dishes of one thing and then you just turn the table when you want something. Even if somebody is going at something with their chopsticks, you just kind of try to get it while it’s going around.”

Hammack said there were some cuisine differences. She saw insects and fried octopus legs on sticks in local markets. It wasn’t unusual to be served a whole duck or fish, or to eat fruit as dessert and nothing sweet.

“I expected, like, white rice, but none of that. What we think of Chinese food, none of that. One of the schools, we had lunch in the cafeteria and they were cracking up because they made sweet and sour chicken. … They were like, ‘It’s Chinese food. A-ha-ha,’” she said.

At one of the schools, they served chicken nuggets and cold french fries for their guests.

But no cold drinks could be found.

“You can’t drink the water. The water is not purified, so everything in their culture is boiled because it’s safe. No ice there,” she said.

“It’s just so massive,” Hammack said of China. “I think the scale of the housing for that number of people, it’s so much more than New York City it’s astounding — so many people.”

Hammack also learned that students in China are focusing solely on getting into an American university.

“They have walls of the United States of America with schools listed that are either their dream school or they have had their graduates attend. They are very proud of that. Their laser focus is on what is next. It really resonated with me because we’re so much trying to make sure that all of our graduates have a plan for after graduation,” she said.

“Their profound focus on making sure all of their students do have a plan after school was a real takeaway. They are not messing around. That was huge.”