Mandarin Immersion Parents Council
Information for parents of kids in Mandarin immersion education
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You can see the website, with lots of great info for programs,here. -
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Parents group asks Menlo Park district to let it start a Mandarin immersion charter school
Growing up, Carol Cunningham dreaded Sundays.
While her friends enjoyed their downtime, the daughter of immigrant parents was herded off to weekly Mandarin language classes. She resisted having to do the extra homework, tests and projects, and stopped attending the lessons at the beginning of high school. “I remember my mom telling me, ‘You’re going to regret not learning when you have the opportunity,’” she recalled.
It wasn’t until later that Cunningham, who now has two young sons, discovered the truth in her mother’s prediction. Although the Menlo Park resident can recognize characters and speak Mandarin without the trace of an accent, her vocabulary is frustratingly limited and she cannot read or write the language proficiently.
“I see my own kids and how effortless it is for them [to speak Mandarin],” Cunningham said. “I’m not forcing them. We’re not sitting down at the kitchen table and writing characters or practicing strokes or using flashcards. They speak as a native speaker would, and that’s just by me providing them with an immersive environment through conversation, what they listen to in the car and the TV they watch.”
Drawing on her personal experiences, Cunningham began to spearhead an effort about 1½ years ago to introduce a program in the Menlo Park City School District in which the core curriculum would be taught in the Mandarin language.
Please see more.
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How a Public Chinese Immersion School Is Desegregating St. Louis
The Chinese School brings together students from the suburbs and the inner city in one of America’s most racially divided cities.
Lydia Chen, principal of the Chinese School, leads an assembly during the first day of the 2014-15 school year.(Reena Flores/National Journal)
September 9, 2014 National Journal recently visited St. Louis and Ferguson to see how Rust Belt cities are changing after losing more than half their populations. In the coming weeks, Next America will publish a series of stories about the people shaping the St. Louis region’s future.
St. Louis—”Zăo shàng hăo,” says principal Lydia Chen in Mandarin Chinese to about 160 children sitting in neat rows on the playground. “Good morning.”
“Zăo shàng hăo,” reply the first- and second-graders, wearing navy ties and sweater vests, and fidgeting in line next their teachers, who are mostly from Beijing and Taiwan.
It’s the first day of the year at the Chinese School, a St. Louis public charter school that teaches kindergarten through second grade entirely in Mandarin Chinese. Most of the students at this inner-city school come from low-income families. More than half of them are African-American.
The school is one of a handful of charter schools trying to reverse decades of racial segregation in the St. Louis public-school system. And enrollment is growing. This is the Chinese School’s third year open and it just moved into a building of its own, a converted brick hospital just a mile from the Anheuser Busch brewery in downtown St. Louis.
Please read more here.
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The Science of Smart
Click here to hear the radio piece by American Radio Works. Be aware that it’s an hour-long documentary!
August 2014
Researchers have long been searching for better ways to learn. In recent decades, experts working in cognitive science, psychology, and neuroscience have opened new windows into how the brain works, and how we can learn to learn better.
In this program, we look at some of the big ideas coming out of brain science. We meet the researchers who are unlocking the secrets of how the brain acquires and holds on to knowledge. And we introduce listeners to the teachers and students who are trying to apply that knowledge in the real world.
Please see more here.
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CREDIT: LILLIAN MONGEAU/EDSOURCE
Second graders Jayden Lew and Giselle Ortega work on their Spanish grammar at Edison Elementary School in Glendale, where they are enrolled in a dual language immersion program.
Bilingual education could make a comeback
July 29, 2014 | By Lillian Mongeau | 45 Comments
After nearly two decades, bilingual education in California could stage a resurgence if the state Senate approves a bill in August that would put the issue on the ballot in November 2016.
Since the passage of Proposition 227 in 1998, schools have been banned from offering classes taught in a language other than English without express permission from parents, among other requirements. The initiative, which passed with 61 percent of the vote, overhauled a system where the default assignment for English learners was a class taught in their native language.
“We were outspent on advertising 24 to 1 and we still won one of the largest landslides in California political history,” said Ron Unz, the Silicon Valley businessman who sponsored the ballot initiative.
Bilingual education, as it was practiced in California prior to the passage of Prop. 227, provided instruction to non-English speakers in their primary language in some or all academic subjects. Bilingual students also took classes specifically aimed at teaching them English. The goal, as they progressed, was for more and more of each class to be taught in English.
Though many felt as Unz did about bilingual education,
Prop.227 remains controversial among educators. Many point to studies showing that high-quality bilingual education can help English-learner students transition to English-language classes. But even many educators believe the old bilingual system was flawed. English learners make up nearly a quarter of California’s public schoolchildren and, under the old system, they could remain in Spanish or other language classes for years without becoming fluent in English. And quality varied immensely from classroom to classroom, said Elena Fajardo, the administrator of the Language Policy and Leadership Office at the California Department of Education.“Based on my experience, the quality of the instructor, the quality of the instruction, the program design and the adherence to that design is really where the benefits lie,” Fajardo said.
Please read more here.
Mandarin Immersion Parents Council 