Chinese immersion school’s principal wants campus to be model for state

By Flori Meeks | August 20, 2013 | Updated: August 20, 2013 3:08pm

The statement by the district that it “always” planned to merge the immersion into a non immersion language class in 3rd grade seems to be contradicted by the district’s own website:

https://nihaoflap-kingimmersion.wikispaces.com/About+Us

“The Dr. Martin Luther King (King School), Jr. K-8 School in Cambridge, MA provides a challenging and nurturing learning environment, dedicated to putting the educational, emotional, and social needs of children first. The diverse school population represents many different world cultures, and King School’s multicultural, linguistic, ethnic and racial diversity is considered to be an outstanding resource for learning and personal development.

In August 2010, the King School received a grant from the Foreign Language Assistance Program in the amount of $1.5 million that spreads over a 5-year period to implement a Chinese-English dual-language program. The Ni Hao Language Immersion FLAP grant project seeks to improve and transform the existing Chinese FLES Program at the King School gradually over a five year period while continuing to provide daily Chinese FLES instruction to the classrooms. It is the intent of King School to initiate a dual language program in one strand in grades K-2, starting in 2011-12 school year, and Chinese content immersion in grades 3-4 with the purpose of eventually expanding the program after the FLAP ends to Grade 8 in 2018-2019.

To address the requirements of the Department of Education’s General Education Provisions Act (GEPA), the Martin Luther King Jr. School ensures that there will be no barriers to program participation on the basis of gender, race, national origin, color, age or diverse needs. Provisions will be made for students with special needs to receive tutorial assistance, thus, the program will eventually serve all students in the program.”

=====

Chinese immersion charter school proposed for Cambridge students

Cambridge — Complaints from parents about the Chinese Immersion program in Cambridge drove charter school founder Richard Alcorn to propose a regional immersion program based in Newton, he said. He is one of 10 applying for approval from the state to open a new charter school in Massachusetts.

Alcorn, who founded the Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School in Hadley, said Cambridge parents approached him about starting a school. Although Alcorn said a final location has yet to be determined, the proposed Chinese Immersion Charter School of Newton would service students in Cambridge, Newton, Brookline, Weston, Waltham and Watertown.

“Parents with children in the Cambridge Public School’s Chinese Immersion program have expressed frustration with the program and are looking for additional options,” Alcorn said in his application to the Department of Education.
Read more here.

enlarge image

By Heather Clydesdale

In evolutionary terms, it’s called a catastrophism: a sudden event forces species to adapt quickly and dramatically. Since their introduction in 2010, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have been adopted by 45 U.S. states, reshaping the American educational ecosystem. As schools and districts scramble to adjust, it’s not surprising that teachers of Chinese, and avid watchers of their programs, often perceive CCSS as a threat.

Some language classes are endangered as administrators hunt for more time for reading and math, and teachers may suddenly find themselves adapting to new habitats, such as assisting with math and reading intervention. Yet Yan Wang, a teacher at Dixie Magnet Elementary School in Kentucky’s Fayette County Public Schools, insists that CCSS is an opportunity for teachers to root even nascent programs more deeply in their schools, and to demonstrate that they, and their Chinese language program, are important assets in the Common Core endeavor.

Wang, who is also past president of the Kentucky Association of Chinese Language Teachers, says teachers should support the implementation of CCSS and outlines several survival strategies for embedding the standards in Chinese language curriculum and instruction. First, she advocates becoming familiar with the CCSS and monitoring how other teachers use them in their classes. Teachers can encourage colleagues in the same grade to post their long-range plans on bulletin boards in common areas. They can also create an online hub to access the plans of other grades, so that everyone can track articulation of skills and content from year to year. By seeing how others teachers at their school plan to incorporate the CCSS, language teachers can embed the same standards into their own lessons, reinforcing what children are learning in other subject areas

Please read more here.

Tiny Naselle, Washington is getting a Mandarin immersion program. According to the Chinook Observer, about half of the incoming Kindergarten class has opted to sign up for Mandarin. The program is also open to students from out of state, which presumably means those coming from nearby Astoria, Oregon. Having driven the bridge between Washington and Oregon there, it would make for one of the most beautiful school commutes in the nation.

The final day to sign up is August 12th.

You can read more about the program on the school district’s web site here. It will be at the district’s single school building, the Naselle K – 12 School.

For more, see a previous article from the Chinook Observer

Never too early to learn Chinese?

Naselle Kindergarteners could be headed that way