An American School Immerses Itself in All Things Chinese
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Students drawing examples of Mandarin words for geographical terms is a social studies class at Yinghua Academy.CreditJane Peterson
MINNEAPOLIS — On weekday mornings, a stream of orange buses and private cars from 75 Minnesota postal codes wrap around Yinghua Academy, the first publicly funded Chinese-immersion charter school in the United States, in the middle-class neighborhood of Northeast Minneapolis. Most pupils, from kindergarten to eighth grade, dash to bright-colored classrooms for the 8:45 a.m. bell, eager to begin “morning meeting,” a freewheeling conversation in colloquial Mandarin.
Meanwhile, two grades form five perfect lines in the gym for calisthenics, Chinese style. Dressed neatly in the school’s blue uniforms, the students enthusiastically count each move — “liu, qi, ba, jiu, shi.”
By 9:15, a calm sense of order pervades the school as formal instruction begins for math, reading, social studies, history and science. Instructors teach in Mandarin, often asking questions that prompt a flurry of raised hands. No one seems to speak out of turn. “We bring together both East and West traditions,” explains the academic director, Luyi Lien, who tries to balance Eastern discipline with Western fun.
New downtown L.A. boarding school adds to local cultural and educational options for foreigners and Americans
American University Preparatory School at L.A. Hotel Downtown is brainchild of Chinese billionaire Wei Huang
The elevator doors slide open on the 11th Floor, and Annie Chau, 14, walks down a plush carpeted hallway, a backpack slung over her shoulder.
She pushes open a door to reveal a lushly appointed dining room with a sweeping view of the downtown Los Angeles skyline. A catered lunch has been laid out — gyros, saffron rice and pita bread with more than a dozen fixings. She joins a group of teenagers gathered around an iPad at a polished granite table.
It’s lunchtime at the American University Preparatory School, a new private boarding school that occupies two floors of a luxury downtown hotel off Figueroa and Third streets.
The school is the brainchild of Chinese billionaireWei Huang, who made his fortune in real estate.
California has seen a wave of Chinese investment in the last few years — more than $1.3 billion between 2000 and 2011 alone, according to a report by Rhodium Group, a New York consulting firm that studies global economic trends. Immigrant wealth has built hotels, shopping centers and mansions across the suburbs of the San Gabriel Valley.
Gone are the days of boxy classrooms flooded with fluorescent lights.
New designs on the drawing board for proposed schools in the Houston area — and there are a lot of them thanks toupcoming bond referendums — are innovative and engaging. But plans for the new Chinese Mandarin Language Immersion Magnet School, slated for an 8-acre parcel on West Alabama Street in the Galleria area, look like nothing you’ve seen before.
You can get your kids to translate, but basically he’s saying that his wife is Chinese and her grandmother only speaks Chinese, and now he’s learned. His accent is horrible but his Chinese is actually pretty good.
Click the “post” link below to see the full interview:
FOR years, researchers in bilingualism have been touting striking findings about how bilingualism affects the brain. Two of the most memorable involve “executive control” and delayed dementia. With the first, bilinguals have shown that they are better able to focus on demanding mental tasks despite distractions. In other studies, it has been estimated that bilinguals see the onset of dementia, on average, about five years later than monolinguals do.
This week comes new evidence* for the pile: researchers led by Roberto Filippi of Anglia Ruskin University have found that young bilingual pupils did a better job answering tricky questions with a noisy voice in the background than a monolingual control group did. The study was small (just 40 pupils, only 20 in each group). But its robustness is helped by the diversity of the bilinguals, who spoke Italian, Spanish, Bengali, Polish, Russian and others in addition to English. The experimenters tried to distract the pupils with random unrelated recordings in English (which all the pupils spoke) and Greek (which none of them did). The bilinguals did significantly better at ignoring the Greek distraction. (They did just a bit better with the English one.)
Elementary students in Broadway’s dual-language, Mandarin & English Program receive a rigorous education in language arts, social studies, mathematics, and sciences in adherence with the Common Core State Standards. Students receive instruction across all subject areas in both English and Mandarin for equal parts of the day. Fluency in either English or Mandarin is required for incoming Kindergarten and 1st Grade students. Prior exposure to Mandarin is not required. The Mandarin Immersion Program is currently offered for Grades K-3, expanding by one grade level each year. Broadway’s Mandarin Immersion Program is operated under the direction of Principal, Susan Wang and is located in Los Angels, CA. Learn more: http://www.broadwayelementary.org/mi
Student rendition of Let It Go in Mandarin Chinese.
Community members who want to know how a proposed Mandarin immersion charter school could affect the Menlo Park City School District asked lots of questions but learned there are still a lot of unknowns involved in the answers at a meeting on Thursday (Oct. 9) at Oak Knoll School in Menlo Park.
A group of about 50 people met at Oak Knoll School in Menlo Park to hear district Superintendent Maurice Ghysels, district board President Joan Lambert, and board member Maria Hilton talk about what they know, and don’t know, about the proposal.
A public hearing on the proposal will be held at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 14, at Encinal Elementary School’s Multi-Use Room, 195 Encinal Ave. in Atherton.
Mandarin Immersion Parents Council 