Author: Elizabeth Weise

Vancouver school trustees have resurrected a proposal to launch a Mandarin bilingual program for the city’s students. Proponents hoped the program would be approved for a September startup, but that idea was nixed as the Vancouver School Board struggled to balance its budget that called for more than $17 million in cuts. In late June,…

Finding books for our kids to read in Chinese is a problem, especially for parents who don’t themselves read Chinese. To help get more books into our kids’ hands, Mandarin Immersion Parents Council parents with children in 3rd and 4th grade met last week with  Xiangyan Liu, the Course Materials Editor for NanHai bookstore’s Chinese…

Here are some really wonderful links on Language Immersion Education from the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition: Great back issues of their newsletter on immersion Bibliographies Information for struggling learners Two-way immersion

Lots of families are signing their kids up for a new, Mandarin immersion charter school opening in Princeton, N.J., many from non-Mandarin speaking homes. However local residents oppose the school because it’s a charter. ===== [From Town Topics, Princeton’s Weekly newspaper} New Charter School Will Be Challenged At Plainsboro Meeting Ellen Gilbert The remaining hurdle…

In response to questions parents had been asking about whether immersion students find that their English is neglected, I asked parents what their experiences had been on the San Francisco Advocates For Multilingual Excellence (which is all immersion programs in the San Francisco Unified School District.) An incoming Mandarin immersion parent sent the question to…

Some Uniform thoughts For Starr King & Jose Ortega Elementary Schools (These tips apply to pretty much any school with uniforms in San Francisco, sometimes the bottoms are navy blue, sometimes black, sometimes khaki.) Uniform requirements: Starr King’s uniform is navy blue bottoms and a white, collared shirt on top. Jose Ortega’s uniform is the…