Just in: ‘Game changer’ to game over for Westside ‘immersion’ school Posted on May 27, 2015 11:10 am by Craig Clough LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines has cancelled the district’s plans for a proposed construction project at a Westside school campus that was to house an expanded foreign language immersion program. Explaining the rationale for his decision in a three-page memo to members…

Boren Scholar with a talent for study abroad makes plans for China May 8, 2015 – 1:08pm When she was in kindergarten, Megan Garland did the usual things 5-year-olds do — she counted, she colored, she learned Chinese. She didn’t know it then, but China would soon fill her horizon, and no mere ocean would…

  [I added in a tidbit at the end: LAUSD has had a 20% decline in enrollment in the past 8 years and is looking to better market itself…] The Los Angeles Unified School District has decided to cut the highly successful Mandarin immersion program at Broadway Elementary from four classes of incoming Kindergartners to two, thus…

With so many biracial kids in Mandarin immersion programs, I thought this might be of interest. My own kids, who are Chinese and Irish-German-English, are pretty fluid and calm about the whole thing, which I in part attribute to their having grown up in classrooms where being biracial is almost the norm. from New York Magazine:…

Asia Society Professional Development and Resources for Chinese Language Teachers As demand for Chinese language programs skyrockets in the U.S. Schools, Asia Society continues to play a leading role in training and developing Chinese language teachers. On January 15–17, the Asia Society’s China Learning Initiatives held the 5th Annual Teachers Institute in Houston in collaboration…

UWS School Director Says Starting Mandarin Early Gives Kids an Edge By Emily Frost | May 10, 2015 8:29pm @efrost1 UPPER WEST SIDE — Elizabeth Willaum, the director of HudsonWay Immersion School, doesn’t speak too much English with the school’s 60 or so students, some of whom are as young as 2 years old. Instead, she spends a lot of time watching…

From the Atlantic America’s Lacking Language Skills Budget cuts, low enrollments, and teacher shortages mean the country is falling behind the rest of the world. AMELIA FRIEDMAN MAY 10, 2015 Educators from across the country gathered in Washington, D.C., this past Thursday to lobby in the interest of world languages. It was Language Advocacy Day, an…