Mandarin Immersion Parents Council

Mandarin Immersion Parent Council Meeting

Notes for Meeting held 9/14/09 at Jose Ortega Elementary School.

Mandarin Immersion Parents Council president Beth Weise welcomed the 40 or so parents who attended, including five new Kindergarten families from both schools. Also attending were Principals Chris Rosenberg (Starr King) and JoLynn Washington (Jose Ortega)

Weise told them that the MIPC exists to support students, families, teachers and schools in the San Francisco Unified School District’s Mandarin immersion program. With close to 200 students at both Starr King and Jose Ortega for the 2009-2010 school year, the program is growing by 60 students a year. MIPC knows the District, especially in this time of deep budget cuts, can’t provide the support it would like to the programs. So the MIPC works to educate parents, support teachers and generally do whatever is needed to make sure our children have a great learning environment.

Chris Rosenberg, Principal, Starr King Elementary, provided some comments on the learning taking place amongst the district, teachers, and administration regarding helping student acquire Mandarin. Two elementary schools in SFUSD have a Mandarin Immersion Program: Starr King and Jose Ortega. Starr King is the first school in the district with a Mandarin Immersion Program and its inaugural class is now in 3rd grade. Jose Ortega’s inaugural class is now in the 2nd grade. Both schools share a common Mandarin Immersion curriculum. The program started with a list of characters to be learned in each grade. As the schools and district gain experience, the list of characters and use of other techniques such as use of pinyin, the Romanization of Mandarin characters, is reviewed and revised each year to help students acquire Mandarin more effectively.

Rosenberg delivered news on behalf of Daisy Chan (Content Specialist  Multilingual Education/English Learner Support Services)  who oversees the development of the MIP curriculum.

He said there is a small update from the Chinese Curriculum Committee.  The committee will revise the Chinese characters list, “…an ongoing process that will never end,” up through the 2nd grade.  The big revision/consideration involves whether to teach the isolation of each character or the words formed.  The committee needs to determine what is appropriate.

Later, Mr. Rosenberg clarified that the District’s curriculum committee has decided to begin the process of revision now but introduce it next year, so as not to complicate this year’s curriculum, which was already set by the teachers and the previous Mandarin content specialist, Wendy Cheong. Teachers will continue to use the Better Chinese and Shuang-Shuang books.

Pinyin, the official Romanization format of Chinese used in China, will be introduced during week #19 of 2nd grade, the second half of the 2nd grade, with continued acquisition into the 3rd grade. Pinyin helps students and parents  know how to pronounce each character (for example Laoshi, or teacher, is pinyin, as is Zhong guo, for China.)

Q from a SK parent:  Does the revision mean that they are increasing the number of characters or are they changing the characters?

A from Rosenberg:  More characters and some changed characters.  The committee is revising the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade vocabulary lists for the 2010-2011 school year.

Mandarin in the San Francisco Public Schools

Weise listed the schools in SFUSD that currently have Chinese Immersion programs:

– Starr King Elementary (Mandarin immersion, K-5)

– Jose Ortega Elementary (Mandarin immersion, ßK-5)

– West Portal Elementary (Cantonese immersion, K-5)

– Alice Fong Yu Elementary (Cantonese immersion, K-8)

– The Chinese Immersion School at DeAvila (Cantonese immersion, Mandarin begins in 2nd grade. Unclear if CIS will be K-5 or K-8)

– In addition, there are several Chinese Biliteracy Pathway programs in SFUSD for students who speak Cantonese and other Chinese dialects and are learning English

Weise discussed the very real and looming need for a Middle School for Mandarin students beginning in 2013. She gave these numbers:

– Starr King will graduate between 40-44 students beginning in 2012.

– JOES will graduate 12 students beginning in 2013.

– The Chinese Immersion School at DeAvila currently has five classes and will have three Kindergartens a year. It will begin Mandarin instruction in 2nd grade. If the District decides to make it K-5, it will be graduating 60 students a year who will speak Mandarin beginning in 2015.

– West Portal:  graduates one class of 20 per year.

Weise then brought up the topic of the MIP continuing into middle school.  She explained that there are frustrations among the Spanish Immersion community.  The SIP exists in 8 schools without enough spots for middle school placement.

The district is thinking ahead to a MI MS, plus “parents are applying gentle pressure.”  A MI MS committee (of the MIPC) met with Margaret Peterson (Program Administrator, World Language / Multilingual Education, San Francisco Unified School District, Academics and Professional Development at Cabrillo, 21st Century Learning and Accountability).

Peterson said that the district is aware of the desire for a middle school and, yes, will have enough spots (“places”).  A questionnaire/survey is under development.  Weise said that, so far, she is hearing positive things from the district.

There is a possible combination Spanish Immersion and Chinese Immersion middle school.  A middle school schedule will probably include Math, Science and Social Studies in Mandarin and possibly Cantonese. The parents would like 50:50 Chinese/English. It’s unclear if that will happen.

A problem with middle school Immersion programs has been that they’re put in General Education schools where they have little support and the administrators are trying to shoe-horn them in. To have an all-immersion middle schools would lessen the burden of that scheduling.

These MI MS meetings will continue.  Speaking together, Spanish Immersion and Mandarin Immersion will be powerful.  MIP parents have a good relationship with the district.  The district knows we have “no animosity, no attack mode.”  The last meeting ended positively.

More Middle School meetings are planned for this and next month. Information about them will be posted on the MIPC web site.

A survey will be placed on the MIPC (http://miparentscouncil.org) website.  The MIPC also had a Google map of

where the MIP families are located.

Q from a SK parent:  Do you need more Middle School committee members?

A from Beth Weise:  We’re solid.  We don’t want to overwhelm the district now.  But once things get going, then we probably will need more members.  As parents, we know the district doesn’t have lots of money but we have parents with outstanding skills who can help.  She mentioned the production of a FAQ brochure that parents created about the Mandarin Immersion Program.

Next, Weise introduced Elizabeth Goumas, parent from The Chinese Immersion School at DeAvila.

Goumas introduced herself as a new parent of a kindergartner at CIS.  The school has 3 kindergarten classes with 1-2 spots still available, and two 1st grade classes with spots still available.

The school has raised $18,000 and has “parents who are ready to go.”  Several of the CIS parents tried twice but were unsuccessful in getting their children into a Mandarin Immersion program.  She also mentioned that the school features a Stop, Drop, Go school drop-off program to deal with the issue of parents needing to get their kids to a school in an area that’s very short on parking. It’s based on the same program from Alamo E.S..  One of the CIS teachers transferred from Alamo to CIS.

Goumas said that she came to this meeting because she wants to learn how CIS  parents can be ready for what lies ahead in a Chinese Immersion program.

Q from Roshanara Khan , parent of a JOES K:  Would we participate in a lottery for middle school?

A from Goumas: The district said it is thinking of an “immersion track.”  One of the CIS parents is an SFSU professor.  It is this parent’s feeling that there might be a $10 million grant to budget a program to attract more district graduates (specifically Chinese Immersion program graduates?) to SFSU.

A from Weise:  “The question is whether there will be enough spots.”

Goumas said that the district received over 1,000 applications requesting spots in the Mandarin Immersion Program but it is unclear whether these requests were on the top of the 7-choice list, the bottom, or somewhere in between.

Q from an SK K mom:  Cantonese is distinct from Mandarin.  How far apart are these two languages?

A from Weise:  They are different languages but they use the same writing system and grammatical structure.

A from Goumas: CIS graduates will be 30:30:30 (Cantonese:Mandarin:English) trilingual.

Q (from same K parent?):  Is there a middle school sibling preference?

A from Weise:  Yes.

Next, Weise introduced SK parent Marie Ciepiela to talk briefly about the FLAP grant.

Ciepiela:  F.L.A.P. stands for Foreign Language Assistance Program.  Margaret Peterson worked on the grant application and Ciepiela edited the application.  The grant was awarded recently to the district and “…received the highest rating in the country in history.”

The FLAP grant supports “strategic languages” and is funded by the U.S. Department of Defense.  $300,000 will be awarded to the district for two years.  District language programs that will receive funding support include:  Cantonese Immersion, Mandarin Immersion, Korean Immersion, possibly Russian Immersion (currently the district has a Russian F.L.E.S. – Foreign Language Elementary School – program), and the Japanese Bilingual Bicultural FLES programs.

FLAP funds will support the articulation (linking grades using standards and assessments).  The district plans to provide students with certification upon achieving set levels of language acquisition.  These certifications will allow students to avoid language competency tests.

Next, Weise began wrapping up the meeting by announcing future MIPC meeting topics.

She said the next meeting will be an exciting dictionary night.  She said the dictionary that each new MIP family receives is courtesy of a generous $100,000 grant donated by Mayor Gavin Newsom’s office for Mandarin language support.  She also announced that this next meeting will include a “Chinese 101” course.

A future MIPC meeting will also feature a presentation about the MIP curriculum by district Content Specialist Daisy Chan.

Weise also announced that we parents should consider working together on a banquet and that part of the planning will be in finding a restaurant for our large membership.

She then asked what members would like the MIPC to do?

A from one parent:  Requested a list of Mandarin books on the MIPC website.

A from another parent:  Requested information about tutoring help and other Chinese enrichment resources also on the MIPC website.

Comment from a SK parent:  Said that his son is a SK 3rd grader who doesn’t like to speak in Mandarin at home.  This parent, a father, can speak Mandarin but his wife speaks only English.

Comment from ACE member and Chinese art studio owner/instructor/language tutor Lin Wei:  Observes that both SK and JOES students speak Mandarin quite well at their grade levels but their writing skills are lagging behind.

SK K parent:  Suggested another topic for a future MIPC meeting: How to support homework.

SK parent: Asked about the order of students are learning the Chinese characters.  Is it different from the Cantonese Immersion Program.

Weise Answer: We think the vocabulary used is pretty similar, with some slight variations. The District is trying hard to keep Mandarin students ‘articulated’ with the Cantonese students, so that they’ll have the same reading proficiency when they reach Middle School and are in classes together.

Weise’s last announcement was about Mandarin “Flagship” programs (students taking classes related their individual majors that are taught in Mandarin) appearing in universities including San Francisco State University.

Final announcement.  JOES parent Kellyn Dong mentioned two good websites for learning Mandarin.  For students, she recommended betterchinese.com.  For parents/guardians, she recommended chinesepod.com.  She also recommended the Nan Hai bookstore in Millbrae and Pacific Books & Video in San Francisco.  She said these sites could be posted on the MIPC website.

Meeting adjourned:  7:05 pm.