When all the big changes came to Heber City, Utah, few people experienced them as keenly as  Eric Campbell, the principal of a local elementary school, father of four boys and pillar of his local church. Campbell and his wife Melissa had been one of the thousands of new families who’d settled here over the last couple of decades, transforming this picturesque former farming community into a suburb. The population rate had long been creeping up in Heber City.

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From Lake Forest-Lake Bluff Patch

Dueling Petitions Take on Mandarin Immersion in D67

One asks that Mandarin immersion be reconsidered for incoming kindergarteners, the other that the board remove the magnet option for Cherokee School.

The fate of the District 67 Mandarin immersion program and the possibility of a magnet program for world language immersion has led to two dueling online petitions for Lake Forest parents.

One, titled, “Demand District 67 to Reconsider Kindergarten Mandarin Immersion for 2014-15” had 592 supporters as of Tuesday evening. It’s asking the school board to reconsider its decision to eliminate the Mandarin immersion option for incoming kindergarteners.

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By Lelan Miller 孟乐岚

One of the many challenges of being a Chinese immersion teacher is finding opportunities to observe others teaching immersion Chinese. Observations are an integral and important part of student teaching in any field and especially more so in the relatively new field of Chinese immersion teaching. Many teaching strategies and methods to teach Chinese in immersion education are different from those used in non-immersion settings; therefore it is extremely important for the immersion educator to see successful examples of language lessons for that particular instructional setting.

Observing experienced and trained model teachers of immersion Chinese should not be limited only to the student teaching phase. Neither should observation opportunities be limited solely to the site administrators.  Opportunities to observe should be provided and encouraged many times throughout the teacher’s career, whether the observing teacher is a novice or an experienced educator. Immersion school program administrators should also avail themselves of opportunities to observe lessons along with their program teachers so as to enhance discussions and teacher development upon return to the home campus.

Because immersion programs are scattered throughout the US, observations in live settings in real time are not always possible due to the cost and time constraints involved in traveling to a model immersion site. Thereupon this task often falls to the administrator of the immersion program to do the traveling and observing of pedagogical methods in the site to be visited.

Videotaped demonstration lessons are an appropriate means of delivering lessons to the observer. They can be observed anytime and anywhere thereby reducing the amount of instructional time lost due to the requirement of traveling to a distant site.

The Utah Dual Language Immersion has several teaching demonstrations on video available on their website under the Startalk 2013 tab at http://utahchineseimmersion.org/startalk/startalk-2013/

There is a particularly good demonstration lesson within the Utah Dual Language Immersion site at http://www.bizvision.com/webcast/prod/43357?group_stream_idx=2904

Whether to continue the program as is, create a world language program at all three kindergarten to fourth-grade elementary schools, or designate one as a magnet immersion language school is a decision that will be made in the next two months. The decision will take affect in the 2015-16 academic year.

District administrators currently are meeting with teachers and parents at each elementary school before spring break, the reconvened Language Acquisition and School Integration Committee and the Association of Parents and Teachers to assess how they feel about the options on the table. The administrative team, lead by Superintendent Mike Simeck, met with current Mandarin Immersion parents last week.

Parents in that nearly three-hour session made it clear they love the program and want it to stay as is, even bringing back immersion for incoming kindergarteners. The Board voted unanimously in February to discontinue Mandarin Immersion for the incoming kindergarten class in the 2014-15 academic year, citing declining kindergarten enrollment and a division the program, though admittedly popular and successful, has made among Mandarin and non-Mandarin students at Cherokee School, where the district immersion program is offered.

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A Big Advocate of French in New York’s Schools: France

From left, Liam Kelly, Anju Andren and Hudson Wong, students in a dual-language program at Public School 58 in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.CreditKirsten Luce for The New York Times

In the fugue of tongues on New York’s streets, French has never been a dominant voice. And as surging numbers of Asian and Latino immigrants continue to tip the balance of foreign languages toward Chinese and Spanish, the idea of learning French, to some, may seem kind of quaint, even anachronistic.

Yet in the city’s public school system, the French dual-language program, in which half the classes are in French and the other half in English, is booming. Eight public schools offer a French/English curriculum for about 1,000 students, making it the third-largest dual-language program, after Spanish and Chinese. And demand continues to grow, with two more schools scheduled to join this year and at least seven groups of parents in different areas of the city lobbying their schools to participate.

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At the Thomas Edison Language Institute in Sacramento, kindergarteners and pre-kindergartners sang a lighthearted song in Spanish last week featuring words that begin with the letter “n.”

At Susan B. Anthony Elementary, 20 miles to the south, first-grade children sat on a carpet of rainbow-colored squares and watched teacher Makaelie Her explain in Hmong how to solve 3 + 9 + 7.

It has been 16 years since California voters approved Proposition 227, the English-focused education initiative that dismantled most bilingual education in California public schools. As ethnic populations have since increased in California, however, school districts, parents and community groups have launched dual-immersion programs that have gained popularity among both English learners and native English speakers.

In dual immersion, English and one other language are used each day in every facet of instruction. Classes typically have a mix of native English speakers and non-English speakers, and they are expected to benefit from one another.

Schools have launched new programs in recent years in Sacramento City and San Juan Unified school districts, offering immersion in Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese or Hmong. Elder Creek Elementary in Sacramento teaches students Cantonese and Mandarin as well as English. 

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