Mandarin Immersion Parents Council

New Mandarin-Immersion School Attracts Families from Albany and Beyond

At Yu Ming, 90 percent of the instruction is taught in Mandarin. A number of studies have shown that immersion is an effective model for language acquisition with benefits that extend beyond bilingualism, including improvements in subjects such as math an

[Editor’s Note: Sarah Yang is an Albany resident who shared this story with Albany Patch. Her daughter, Alex, attends kindergarten at Yu Ming.] 

School mornings for Albany resident Erin Coyne begin by cajoling her 6-year-old out of bed at 6 a.m. to get her in the shower, dressed, fed and to the San Pablo Avenue bus stop by 7:15 a.m. to catch the 72R to downtown Oakland.

Coyne’s daughter, Myra, is a first-grader at a new public K-8 Mandarin-immersion school in Oakland Chinatown called Yu Ming Charter School, which begins its day at 8:15 and runs until 2:45 p.m.

Had Coyne, a UC Berkeley Ph.D. student in Slavic languages and literatures, chosen to leave Myra in one of Albany’s highly regarded public schools, she could have gotten an extra hour of sleep. Yet Coyne and other Yu Ming families – including five from Albany – say they have chosen to make the trek because no other public school in northern Alameda County provides the opportunity to immerse their children in Chinese throughout the school day.

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