For many years, there were three kinds of immersion schools — public, charter and private. Add parochial to that list. There are now at least 19 language immersion Catholic schools in the United States, and a network for them has been created at Boston College’s Roche Center for Catholic Education. The Two-Way Immersion Network for…

On June 22, 2020, President Trump issued a sweeping order that temporarily suspended new work visas and barred tens of thousands of foreign workers from employment in the United States. The order blocked visas for skilled workers entering the United States under H-1B visas. It will be in place at least until the end of…

Just over 40% of California’s students speak a language other than English at home. You can think of that two ways — 41% of the state’s students need to learn English. Or, 59% of the state’s students need to get cracking to learn a second language. As Gregg Roberts, of the American Councils for International…

Austin’s Joslin Elementary School, is one of 12 schools named as a possible closure in the district’s ongoing school changes plan. From the Austin Independent School District: October 21, 2019 Austin ISD’s Joslin Elementary School located in south Austin received a $284,000 School Action Fund Grant from the Texas Education Agency to reimagine the school through…

This is an interesting program. It sets up chats between kids in the United States (and elsewhere) and China, half in Mandarin and half in English. What seems useful about it is that there’s a facilitator, to keep the kids talking. We did some “video pen pal” like tries in our grade school and mostly…

There will be 327 Mandarin immersion schools in the United States in the fall of 2020. That’s 22 more than last year and a remarkable increase from the 235 of just three years ago. The increase comes from school districts building out from grade school in to middle and high school, a small but growing…

Fremont, California is a northern suburb of San Jose with a population of about 240,000, many of whom work in Silicon Valley. The city is 57% Asian. All of which made it a natural for a Mandarin immersion program in its public schools. In 2008 a group of extremely determined parents made that happen. Today…