Virginia now has its first Mandarin immersion program – meaning 68% of states are now home to at least one program

O.B. Gates Elementary School in Chesterfield County, Virginia, launched its Mandarin immersion program in the fall of last year, making it the first program in the state.

That brings us up to 68% of states having at least one Mandarin immersion program. These are the 16 states that still don’t have one:

Alabama
Arkansas
Connecticut
Iowa
Kentucky
Maine
Mississippi
Montana
Nebraska
New Mexico
North Dakota
Pennsylvania
South Dakota
Tennessee
Vermont
West Virginia

O.B. Gates Elementary is also a pathbreaker in terms of the other language immersion program in the school.

In the 2019-2020 it launched the nation’s first dual language immersion program in American Sign Language. The school has 37 students in the Mandarin immersion strand and 63 in the ASL immersion strand. Of those, two are deaf or hard of hearing, according to the article below.

ASL is such a cool language.

Please read more about the school here.

https://youtu.be/v2DNlAKYheo