Mandarin Immersion Parents Council

The MIPC maintains two Yahoo groups: one for San Francisco topics, and one for topics of national interest.  We have started to see more activity on the national group and recently Michele from St. Paul, Minnesota posted a very nice description of her school.   I thought it would be interesting to start a blog series that provides information about different programs around the country.  If you are involved in a Mandarin immersion program and would like us to post about your school, please join our group and email us with a description .

Our first post in the series is about Yinghua Academy in Minneapolis, MN…

Yinghua Academy

By Michele in St. Paul, MN

We love Yinghua Academy and have been there since it started.  My 9-year-old was in the first kindergarten class when the school was located in St. Paul and had a grand total of 77 students!  Now we are up to 330 or so, and are in a former district school in NE Minneapolis.  Yinghua was recently approved to create a middle school program.  Currently we’re K-6. We are working on a “sister school” arrangement with a Chinese school; the older kids will be in touch with kids in the sister school via Skype & other means, and in the 8th grade will visit the school and attend classes there for a week.

Yinghua is 100% Mandarin immersion for grades K and 1.  In second, third and fourth grade, the kids have an hour of English per day.  It’s a bit more for the older students. We will be adding another language (as a subject, not immersion) within the next couple of years. It will likely be either Spanish or Arabic.

We use Singapore math and math is a big deal at the school. My 3rd grade is doing the same math as a 4th grade friend who attends one of the state’s best private schools.

YACA is the parent association — Yinghua Academy Community Association. They are very active in fundraising, including book sales, annual uniform sales, annual carnival, and annual sales of a discount coupon book. BIgger fundraising — grants, capital campaign — is handled by the Yinghua board. YACA also runs some educational events for parents.

YACA also supports the teachers personally in lots of ways, from taking new teachers shopping (most of our teachers come from overseas to teach at Yinghua), to making food for teacher events to supplying classroom coordinators.  Parents also contribute money to give the teachers a CNY gift and and end-of-the-year gift of money. And YACA also runs an annual Red Envelope campaign (fundraising activity) that raises money for special arts programs in the school.  One of the events involves volunteer parents who bring artworks from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts into school rooms. The kids learn about the artists and history so there is lots of context involved.

We were also covered in a recent Time Magazine article and our school has inspired several school districts to begin immersion programs.