Mandarin Immersion Parents Council

Houston, where everything is big, even the Mandarin immersion schools

By Elizabeth Weise

To the rest of the country this might seem like an odd statement, but here goes. If you were going to design the best public Mandarin immersion school you possibly could, it would probably look a lot like the one that launched in September of 2012—in Houston, Texas.

Houston? Really.

Yes, Houston. Really. When the Houston Independent School District decided to create a Mandarin immersion school it didn’t do as many districts do:

• Houston didn’t make Mandarin a single strand in a larger school, making it impossible for the school’s culture to focus on Chinese.
• Houston didn’t put just one classroom per grade in, which makes for tiny classes in the upper grades as students move, often requiring a difficult to teach fourth/fifth split grade class.
• Houston didn’t place it as one small strand in a larger low performing school to bring in active parents, launching a school with a host of tensions between the strands over funding and emphasis.
• Houston didn’t make the school K – 5 and then jump to a middle school where the Mandarin students would be a tiny proportion of students in a much larger school.
• Houston didn’t start from scratch, expecting its newly-hired teachers to somehow create a program out of whole cloth as they also taught full-time, burning them out in the process.

Instead, Houston did it Texas-sized.

In August of 2012, the Houston Unified School District opened a 100% Mandarin immersion school, its first. It began with Kindergarten, first and second grade. In its first year there were 250 students and the school will add a grade a year until it reaches eighth grade in 2018-2019. When it is fully built out it will be home to 950 students. This year’s Kindergarten had four classes totaling 88 students, an extremely lucky number in Chinese –and clearly just as lucky for the families who got in on the ground floor as well.

The school has been wildly successful, especially for a new, untried program in a language that’s never been taught in a Houston elementary school before. “It’s been phenomenal.” Being in a whole-school environment rather than one strand in a larger school has allowed him to focus on Chinese “rather than this is the neat little quirk we can offer for 25 to 50 kids,” says principal Bryan Bordelon, 30.

It’s worked. “We currently have more people on the wait list for our entire school than we have total enrolled students.”

In fact pretty much the only thing Houston did that seems even a little off is the ungainly name they saddled the school with. It’s officially the Mandarin Chinese Language Immersion Magnet School. Even its acronym, MCLIMS, doesn’t really roll off the tongue.

As to why Chinese in Texas, Bordelon says that while Texas may seem a more likely home for Spanish immersion, Houston is actually an extremely international city. It has a very large business population that works with Asia, so much so that there is a Chinese consul in the city. With so many international oil and energy companies headquartered there, businesses are clamoring for multilingual workers. The school is already talking to large corporations about support for the program.

Keeping the middle class in public schools

One of the really wonderful outcomes of the way they created the Mandarin immersion school is that it’s been a true magnet for a large number of families who otherwise would have sent their children to private schools or moved to the suburbs. From the numbers, a high percentage of those families were white and Asian, the type of families that all too often leave the public schools. While Houston itself is about 25% non-Hispanic white, white students make up just 11% of the school district. Asians are overrepresented at the school, Houston’s population is 6% Asian as of the 2012 census.

As multiple other schools nationwide have found, Mandarin immersion is a powerful carrot to keep families in the public school system. In fact the school sits across the street from two private schools, an Episcopal high school and the Post Oak School, both of which cost in the $30,000 a year range.

But instead parents are knocking down the door to get into Mandarin immersion. The waiting list is long and getting longer,” said parent James Troutman. “Which is like ‘Hello, Houston? You need another school!”

Far from creating a segregated school that was primarily white and Asian, as many districts fear will happen, the Mandarin school is extremely mixed. The student body is made up of 25% Asian students, 25% African-American students, 25% white students and 25% Hispanic students. “We pull from 63 zip codes. We truly represent the city,” Bordelon said.

What the school doesn’t have is many Mandarin speakers, just 5% of the incoming students speak Mandarin at home. For now the program is one-way.

Active parents

Houston is a zoned school district, meaning students are assigned to schools in their local zone. But the Chinese school is not zoned so families must apply to get in, no one is automatically assigned there. That makes for a “very willing parent body,” says Bordelon. “They made this choice, no one’s zoned to us—everyone has to apply.”

The families who come are engaged and active in the extreme. The school’s newly-created Parent-Teacher Organization hit the ground running. It held a large fundraiser in the spring and ended the year with $16,000 in the bank, pretty impressive for a first year organization.

Placement

The one complex part of the endeavor has been the placement of the school. It took over the building of an existing but very poorly-enrolled school called Gordon Elementary.  Gordon was an overflow school. When there were too many students from a nearby zone to go to their zoned school, they were sent to Gordon.

Now the English program that was at Gordon is being phased out and for the 2013-2014 school year there are fewer than 50 students from it who will finish out fifth grade there, said Bordelon. While they’re there “we’re working hard to make sure that it isn’t two separate campuses.” Those students are able to take Chinese lessons once a day so they, too, are part of the broader Chinese focus of the school.

Set-up

To create its first Mandarin immersion program Houston chose to join the Flagship–Chinese Acquisition Pipeline consortium. That’s the closest thing there is to “Mandarin immersion in a box.” Anchored by the Utah State Department of Education, home to 26 Mandarin immersion schools, F-CAP includes six state departments of education and individual school districts in 18 other states. It’s a bit like the International Baccalaureate program in that it provides member schools with a roadmap and instructions on how to set up and run a program. F-CAP offers a national model for a K-12 Chinese immersion curriculum, textbooks, support and a yearly teacher and staff training summit in Utah each summer.

Joining the consortium “has been a phenomenal connection for us,” said Bordelon. “We’re not reinventing the wheel, the professional development opportunities for our teachers is amazing.”

Remarkably, Bordelon was able to hire almost all the teachers he needed from within the Houston school system. The sprawling and enormous district includes 273 schools and 11,000 teachers. It turned out that there were a surprising number who spoke Mandarin fluently. Bordelon had to hire six Chinese teachers this year and had 65 applicants. “I had one teacher who’s trilingual. She was born in China, raised in Costa Rica and then spent 17 years teaching in a Spanish bilingual school.”

Moving into high school should be easy. Bordelon said he’s already had multiple Houston high school principals approach him about how they can get ready to attract his graduating eight graders come 2019.

The school was also lucky with its first principal. Bordelon’s father worked for an oil company and he spent much of his childhood overseas, in Indonesia, Qatar and Venezuela. He then studied Mandarin at the University of Texas, when ton to attend a summer immersion program at Middlebury College in Vermont and lived in China for a year.

Getting the program up and running is “one of the things I’m most proud of,” he said. “I can’t lie and say it wasn’t hard work. They announced the school in December of 2011. They started taking applications in January of 2012 and there was literally nothing. I was named to the position in February 2012 and basically told ‘Create a Mandarin immersion school. Go!”

He proved to be so good at his job that HISD is moving him up to a new position, launching a college readiness program across the district. They’re in the process of hiring a new principal but Bordelon doesn’t think that will be a problem “because we’re off to such a strong start.”

How it got started

Houston is also extraordinary in how it got its Mandarin program. In most schools parents are the ones who want Chinese immersion and they spend years trying to convince their school district that it’s a good idea. Often the most committed parents give up when their children have to enter Kindergarten or first grade and become too old to join whatever program eventually gets created. That leaves the core group constantly working to attract new members even as it while the school district ponders the idea.

In Houston things went very differently. The biggest champion has been the school board itself, whereas in many districts it’s the major stumbling block. Board member Harvin Moore had focused on the idea since taking two education-related trips to China. He’s also visited a Mandarin immersion program in San Diego, where Houston Superintendent Terry Grier used to work. “Much of the push to create an immersion school was based on those two individuals,” Bordelon said.

What’s the future hold?

            Clearly Houston’s model only works in a large school district with enough schools that turning one into a full-immersion program leaves enough space in English programs. A small school district with just a handful of elementary schools would be hard pressed to make a case for creating an all-immersion school simply because it would restrict family choices far too much. But in a large district like Houston, which has 276 schools, turning one or more all-immersion creates rather than restricts choices.

The Houston Independent School District also has two Spanish immersion schools as well as multiple Spanish bilingual programs. But beyond those three it contains no other immersion schools. The Mandarin program is on the west side of town and it has proven so popular that there is talk of opening another Chinese immersion school on the west side. But others have suggested opening another immersion school in another language.

When another immersion school will open, and what language it will teach, remains to be seen. But clearly Houston is a school district that has put itself on the map by creating a robust, wildly popular and high-performing Chinese immersion program with none of the baggage that causes so many programs to struggle. Other large urban school district would do well to learn from their example.

Mandarin in Montgomery County, Maryland

By Elizabeth Weise

The oldest public Mandarin immersion program in the country was founded in 1996 at Potomac Elementary, in the town of Potomac, Maryland. It’s one of seven immersion schools in the Montgomery County Public Schools.

The district has a very long history of immersion. Its French Immersion Magnet Program began in 1974, Spanish in 1977 and Mandarin in 1996. Immersion is popular in the district and it is now home to seven immersion elementary schools out of a total of 133. Two are offered in French, three in Spanish and two in Mandarin. In 2012-2013 a total of 647 students applied for one of 286 available Kindergarten immersion seats, said Michael Herlihy, the lead teacher for Chinese immersion and English for Speakers of Other Languages.

The school district’s programs are a blend of several different immersion models. Some schools offer full immersion, where 100% of the class day is taught in either French or Spanish. Others offer what the district terms ‘partial immersion’ though all are at least 50% of the day in the target language. In most other school districts that 50/50 model is considered full immersion.

French

It all started with Française. French immersion in the district originally began at Four Corners Elementary School in 1974. The program moved twice and ended up at Maryvale Elementary School in Rockville in 1992. That school served students living in the northern part of the county and was so popular that in the 1999-2000 school year a second French immersion program was launched at Sligo Creek Elementary in Silver Spring to serves students in the southern part of the county.

Students receive all their subject matter instruction in French. In Kindergarten through third grade French is the only language used in the classrooms. In fourth grade  students are given instruction in English twice a week for 45 minutes during the second half of the school year. In fifth grade students are given instruction in English for approximately four hours each week. Special subjects, i.e., art, music, and physical education, are also conducted in English in all grades.

This works out to approximately 80% of the school time spent in French in the early grades, approximately 60% in fifth grade and 30% in grades 6 though 8. In middle school students get two French-language blocks taught totally in French, one French Language Arts and one World Studies, at either Silver Spring International Middle School or Gaithersburg Middle School. Successful completion of the sequence allows the student to enter French 4 or French 5 honors classes in 9th grade.

Spanish

The Spanish program at Rock Creek Forest Elementary was founded in 1977 with one class of first, second and third graders. It has grown from that one multi-age class to two classes at each grade level for a total of twelve classes of Spanish immersion from kindergarten through fifth grade. Two other schools were later added.

Rock Creek Forest Elementary offers what the school district terms “full immersion.” In kindergarten through third grade, Spanish is the only language used in the classrooms. It isn’t until fourth grade that students begin to receive English instruction and at that point it’s only twice a week for forty-five minutes during the second semester of the school year. In fifth grade they get English four times a week English for 45 minutes.

Because art, music, physical education and media center/library classes are also taught in English in all grades, students don’t spend 100% of their day in Spanish, however. In Kindergarten through third grade it’s approximately 72%, in fourth grade it’s 67% and in fifth grade 62%. In middle school they get two classes, Spanish Language Arts and World Studies, for a total of 29% of their school time in Spanish.

Upon successful completion of the middle school program, students are usually placed in level 4 Spanish in high school.

The district’s other two Spanish immersion schools offer what the district calls ‘partial immersion’ thought again, it would be considered full immersion in most other schools. At Burnt Mills Elementary and Rolling Terrace Elementary schools, students get all their instruction in Spanish in Kindergarten and first grade. In second through fifth grades math and science are taught in Spanish, about 50% of the day. Reading, English language arts and social studies are taught in Spanish. In fourth and fifth grades students get math and science.

Mandarin

Seventeen years ago there were just two other Mandarin immersion programs in the nation, both private and both in the San Francisco Bay area. That year, 1996, saw the opening of Potomac’s Mandarin program and two other private Mandarin programs. They were the International School of the Peninsula in Palo Alto, Calif. and the International School in Portland, Ore., which began offering Mandarin in 1996 after starting with Spanish in 1990 and Japanese in 1995.

The next public schools Mandarin immersion program didn’t come until two years later, in 1998 with the opening of Shuang Wen School (Public School 184) in New York City and Portland, Oregon’s public Woodstock Elementary.

Potomac Elementary School’s Mandarin immersion program was founded at the start of the 1996-1997 school year. College Gardens Elementary began a second Mandarin program in 2005-2006. In the Montgomery county program students spend half their day being taught in Chinese and the other half in English. Math and science curricula are taught in Chinese. English reading, language arts and social studies are taught in English.

All Montgomery County immersion program use the same curriculum for all students, only the language it is offered in varies. “We’re just teaching it in Chinese, but it is the MCPS curriculum,” said Herlihy. “Our teachers teach a split day.  For instance, one teacher will teach Kindergarten Mandarin in the morning and then first grade Mandarin in the afternoon,” said Herlihy.

In addition students receive one hour of direct language instruction in Chinese each week. The program continues at Hoover Middle School with two classes per day, one in Mandarin language arts and one in World Studies. When students get to high school at Winston Churchill High they can enter the regular Chinese language track, including Advanced Placement, Herlihy said.

Potomac and College Gardens both offer just one Mandarin immersion class per grade level, for a total of six classes per school. At Potomac Elementary there are 520 students, with 180 of them in the Mandarin program, which makes up one-third of the student body, Herlihy said.

The demographics at the schools are primarily white and Asian. At Potomac fewer than 5% of students receiving free or reduced price lunch. At College Gardens the figure is 19.2%.

The program uses simplified characters and is meant for students who are not native speakers of Chinese. However because of its proximity to Washington D.C. with its diplomatic corps and various other international agencies, there are many students who arrive having spent time in China. “We usually have some students who came from Beijing because their families were stationed there. We also have a number of heritage speakers in our classes,” said Herlihy.

The program is extremely popular. “It’s usually over-enrolled, there’s a waiting list,” said Herlihy.

Overall students in the Chinese program do “as well if not better than the general education students. “There’s a little lag at the beginning but they catch up and often outstrip them by fourth and fifth grade on standardized tests,” Herlihy said. The students achieve proficiency in Chinese and have near-native accents, visiting Chinese speakers have told teachers.

“The skill set here is really focused on listening and speaking because it’s immersion. When they get to secondary school there is more emphasis on reading and writing,” he said. Students get actual Chinese language arts training one hour a week. While “from Kindergarten on up they do reading and writing in Chinese, that’s not the emphasis” in elementary, he said.

Korean Dual Language Immersion Program

The nice folks at 5Q Channel in Taiwan have once again agreed to give U.S. parents a special rate on their great website.

5Q Channel is a Chinese listening and reading site that features animated stories in Mandarin with both pinyin, traditional and simplified characters.

The stories are fun, the animation is good and because they’re read aloud even younger-grade children can easily follow along.

They also have iPad apps (great for long car rides)

You can sign up for a year’s worth of the site for $35 (via Paypal) here:

http://www.5qchannel.com/order/grouprate2011.htm

 

 

 

 

From their website:

Lu Feng Technology is committed to creating excellent Chinese digital educational products for the growing Chinese language market. We specialize in using computer animation to transform classic Chinese literary works into captivating multimedia for the modern audience. Our team of designers and animators specializes in designing multimedia content in Chinese. Our products are educational in nature, and our aim is to help all readers around the world to read classic tales easily

The 5QChannel Reading Website is an animation website that provides abundant animated classic stories. According to parents and teachers, there is a large need for suitable classics for children to read; we understand the difficulties children have in reading these classics in their original form. By reinterpreting well-known classic stories and creating a new way of learning and studying with multi-media devices, we provide a means for people to watch animation anywhere and anytime. We create digital reading with animations and thus the concept “Watch Animations and Get to Know the Classics” is realized.

To meet the global trend in learning Chinese, we will continue to produce animated versions of classic Chinese literature for the enjoyment of the growing global Chinese readership. We also provide abundant teaching materials and resources for teachers to use in class. The series of 5QChannel Curriculums are not only animations, but also includes a variety of teaching materials. We use vivid animations to inspire students to develop an interest and, at the same time, assist in teaching. By using these materials students can practice the ability of listening, reading and writing, and teachers can also use them to make their own lessons. In the future, we will continue with product development for Chinese learning and to create interesting digital contents with multimedia technology.

Developing Literacy in Chinese, Part 2:

Supporting Chinese Literacy in the Home Environment

By Lelan Miller 孟乐岚, founder of Mandarin Matters in Our Schools in Texas (MMOST) and master’s candidate in Chinese Language Pedagogy

This article is the second in a three part series about developing literacy in the Chinese language. While written primarily for non-Chinese parents with children in primary through high school who are in various stages of developing Chinese literacy, this article may benefit administrators, teachers, and other professionals engaged in Chinese language learning in immersion settings.

 

Literacy begins in the home. This is true of any language. The target language of the immersion school may take root in the school environment but needs further nurturing in the home. This can and should be done even if the parents are not fluent in the target language. Immersion school teachers and staff have an important role in introducing and reinforcing literacy in Chinese. The role of the home is to provide an environment conductive to literacy in both the home and target language. The home (and immersion school as well) should have a reading area that is both accessible, attractive, and arranged in a way that invites emergent and advanced learners of the immersion program’s target language.

The reading area should take into consideration the various reading styles of each individual. Some like to read lying on a couch, nestling in a bean bag chair, or sitting at a table. The materials can and should reinforce reading and writing. Those materials can include but are not limited to books, magazines, newspapers, magic doodle slates, paper, blackboards, erasable boards,  writing supplies,  envelopes, crayons, journals, and even post it notes. The materials should be attractively arranged to encourage readers and writers to frequently visit. Pushing everything into a jumbled pile will frustrate and discourage visitors from using materials.

Even if the parents have little or no literacy in Chinese, children of all ages needs to see parents and family members engage in literacy in any language because the home environment should emphasize that reading and writing are important activities in any language. It is very important to children and teens to see others use reading for a variety of purposes outside of schoolwork, from entertainment to maintaining a job or career.

Oral language and music can form strong foundations for reading and writing. Parents, grandparents, and family members can and should orally share stories, read aloud printed stories and letters, and share family histories as well as expose children to oral and auditory experiences such as rhymes and familiar children’s songs. Audio and visual recordings related to beginning reading and writing also have their place in the home. Audio recordings of rhymes and children’s stories in Chinese are available as DVDs and more recently, on the Internet. Two examples are given below to show how to effectively select and use audio recordings to reinforce literacy in Chinese.

Example One. This is a recording of “Go to Bed Soon” 《快点睡觉吧》 from the Chinese with Meggie program in Austin, Texas. The oral and auditory features of this story are well-chosen to enhance literacy in Chinese. Repetition of measure words, numbers, and key verbs and phrases assist in the internalization of the oral language and eventually the written language as well. Note how the narrator slows down and quickens the oral presentation at key points in order to effectively heighten emotions and expectations. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PMk4tdG9bA

Example Two. This is a recording of Our Family’s Long Bench 《我們家的長板凳》   which was mentioned in the blog of the Doss Elementary Chinese Immersion Program of Austin, Texas. This story and recording demonstrates outstanding use of onomatopoeia and abundant auditory cues that connect the listener to the content of the printed story. For example, when the bench is being used as a study desk, the cat’s meowing matches the characters representing a cat’s meow, and at the same time the boy is reciting and studying a famous Tang poem which is embedded in the text.

http://children.moc.gov.tw/garden/animation.php?id=200704A01

 

Parents push for Mandarin immersion program Menlo Park City School District already offers popular Spanish immersion classes

by Renee Batti Almanac Staff With China on a path to becoming the largest economy in the world, the interest in teaching children in the United States the Mandarin language is also growing apace. And given the climate of business innovation that keeps Silicon Valley a key player in the global economy, why shouldn’t local schools offer Mandarin immersion programs to prepare kids for the global marketplace many of them will be competing in? That’s a question local parent Carol Cunningham is raising in the Menlo Park City School District, where she has been leading an effort to add such a program to the district’s offerings. The effort, she told the school board at a recent meeting, is supported by more than 50 families, with about 80 children among them, and that support “is steadily growing.”

 

Please read more here.

http://www.almanacnews.com/news/show_story.php?id=13730