Information for parents of kids in Mandarin immersion education
Published April 29, 2013
Fox News Latino
A Spanish immersion program for pre-schoolers in Brooklyn, NY. (SONI SANGHA)
She found a private school that was different. At Escuela Bilingüe Internacional, half the student body is Latino, the teachers come from Spain and Latin America and the entire school speaks Spanish exclusively.
by Lelan Miller
Many school districts are either implementing or considering the implementation of Chinese immersion schools as evidenced by the number of reports of new schools and programs coming in almost weekly, if not daily. However still many more school districts do not have such programs due to many reasons: inadequate funding, lack of parent and administrator interest, or in some cases just simply the culture and outlook of a particular school district or city.
This article will address ways we can advocate for Chinese immersion schools, or at the very minimum, Chinese language classes throughout all levels of our schools.
In order to create interest in establishing any programs targeted at Chinese language learning, there needs to be a great deal of planning and involvement in creating interest in the language and culture of all Chinese-speaking countries and areas. By including all Chinese-speaking countries and areas, we create an all inclusive atmosphere of respect and learning and decrease the possibility of alienating those who feel singled out due to preference for one writing system over another or for a dialect such as Cantonese, and so forth. The newly established Chinese immersion program at Doss Elementary School of Austin, Texas has a sort of coat of arms so to speak that includes flags of Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Macao, and the PRC. It is also important to create interest in areas within the US and Canada that may have significant Chinese populations so that administrators, parents, and students do not feel compelled to see Chinese language study as a means of driving economic and cultural activity outside the US and Canada.
Igniting interest in the Chinese language and culture will require involvement of a good number of community groups, parents, businesses, and cultural organizations. Some parents volunteer with the schools to give talks and demonstrations of Chinese calligraphy, kungfu, and traditional instruments like the pipa and guzheng. Donating and giving books and materials that share information about Chinese speaking countries and their cultures to school libraries is another way of sparking interest. Some teachers become involved by learning Chinese themselves and incorporating this knowledge throughout the social studies curriculum and even after school programming. Another valuable resource is area community colleges and universities. For example, the University of Texas at San Antonio has a weeklong summer day camp just for middle school students that introduces them to the Chinese language. Middle school students in particular need more focus in our efforts to initiate interest in Chinese language programming because they are very close to choosing a foreign language path in high school.
Contact the foreign language coordinator of your local schools and express interest in Chinese language programming. Some foreign language coordinators are not willing to explore this idea due to many reasons. Reasons may include funding and student interest. However if there are a good number of students expressing interest, then there are options of “starting small” and then growing the program by offering Chinese as a club, after school class or activity, or even contacting a weekend Chinese school for assistance.
School administrators all the way from the superintendent down to the school counselors should be contacted and educated about interest in Chinese language programming. Many school counselors are in need of information regarding the value of Chinese language learning and often steer some student populations into languages that are perceived as “easy” such as American Sign Language or Spanish. The truth of the matter is there is no such thing as an easy foreign language (even ASL proves difficult to learn owing to its unique grammatical features, as many high school students have found out the hard way). Educating and informing school administrators is extremely important in paving the way to Chinese programming and ultimately immersion in our schools.
The key here is community involvement. By involving as many groups and individuals who are committed to the language and culture of Chinese speaking areas, efforts to establish Chinese language programs in the school can be successful.
Lelan Miller, 孟乐岚 is the founder of Mandarin Matters in Our Schools in Texas (MMOST) and master’s candidate in Chinese Language Pedagogy
Along with science and technology, schools nationwide have been pressed to add more world-language instruction to better prepare students for the global marketplace.
The U.S. State Department has helped to fund programs in languages it deems critical to national security, including Mandarin and Arabic, and last fall, the U.S. Department of Education for the first time produced a strategy to improve international education.
Many school districts, including Scottsdale, see world-language programs as a way to draw students. Last month, the district decided to transition Pueblo Elementary School into an all-immersion school, meaning that eventually, all the students in Grades preschool through 5 will spend half the day learning in Spanish.
Principal Art Velarde said the immersion program has proven so popular that it was no longer feasible to offer a non-immersion program.
“I only had 12 students in the conventional strand for kindergarten next year, and eight of those were there because they hoped to gain admission to the immersion program the next year,” Velarde said.
Other immersion programs are in the Cave Creek and Deer Valley unified school districts, where they’ve also proved to be big draws. In Cave Creek, overall kindergarten enrollment fell by about 20 percent for this school year when the district began charging tuition for the afternoon session, but the Spanish-immersion kindergarten at Desert Willow Elementary School had a waiting list.
Please read more here.
Georgia currently has three Mandarin immersion programs: Atlanta Trilingual Academy and Omni International School are private and GLOBE Academy is a charter. All are in Atlanta. The new school, Dutchtown Elementary School in Hampton is about 30 miles south of Atlanta.
Photo by Johnny Jackson Kindergarten teacher Kim Moss helps her student Addyson Ahern, 5, with an in-class science project at Dutchtown Elementary School.
HAMPTON — School officials will begin Monday taking roll for the state’s only Chinese dual language immersion program at Dutchtown Elementary School.
#Principal Dr. Winnie Johnson said the program kicks off in the fall but registration begins next week.
#She said parents can sign their rising kindergartners up at http://www.henry.k12.ga.us/de, starting April 29 at 8 a.m. until May 10 at 4 p.m. She said there are only 40 slots and those slots will be filled on a first come, first served basis.
#“This is not an activity-based program,” she said. “It is not a supplemental program. The teacher is teaching the Common Core Georgia Performance Standards (curriculum) in Mandarin Chinese.”
#The program is being facilitated through the Georgia Department of Education’s World Languages and Global Initiatives Unit, which helped the school secure a $15,000 start-up grant for materials and staff training.
Please read more here.
I realize this meeting is in San Francisco, but some families might want to be aware that there even exists such a thing as a Mandarin immersion boarding school. There are days when a boarding school far, far away sounds like a lovely idea…
Beth
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Looking for a Mandarin program in China?
Thinking of sending your child to China for a true immersion experience?
Don’t miss this special opportunity to learn about one of China’s leading bi-lingual schools…
Located in Shanghai, YK Pao School offers an elementary through secondary world-class education combining the most advanced international educational practices for students from China and overseas. www.ykpaoschool.cn
Co-founder, Philip Sohmen is coming to the Bay Area. He will present YK Pao’s summer Mandarin immersion programs and introduce its secondary boarding school.
Date: Wednesday May 8th
Time: 8:30-10:00 am
Location: Chinese American International School
150 Oak Street, San Francisco, CA 94102
Kindly RSVP yking@MandarinInstitute.org to assure enough seating.
For information contact info@MandarinInstitute.org or Cynthia Barbera at (415) 235-7804
Please forward this invitation to all who may be interested.
Those of us whose children are in schools where a Mandarin immersion program was placed to bring in middle class families know these issues well. It can work, but it’s hard work.
Beth
By Carol Lloyd
“It was like a Jerry Springer show,” recalls Michelle Lutz of the school meeting when a mother began shouting about “equity issues” with the principal cheering her on. By then the school had become a tinderbox of vitriol and hurt feelings where the middle-class parents joining a community of mostly low-income African-American and Latino families had catalyzed what experts call a “diversity crisis.”
Schools have always been places where emotions run high, but never more so than when they travel the deeper arteries of equity, class, and culture. As the anxiety about educating your child ratchets up, poisoned by budget cuts and child-eat-child college competition, many middle-class parents enter public schools with a dogged determination to improve them. They want to do good, while also doing right by their children. Yet when such efforts — however well-meaning — carry the taint of entitlement, it doesn’t take much for the ordinary elementary school to become an ideological battleground waged around bake sales and play structures.
Please read more here.
The financier Stephen A. Schwarzman is creating a scholarship program at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
The program, whose endowment represents one of the largest single gifts to education in the world and one of the largest philanthropic gifts ever in China, was announced by Mr. Schwarzman in Beijing on Sunday.
The Schwarzman Scholars program will pay all expenses for 200 students each year from around the world for a one-year master’s program atTsinghua University in Beijing.
Please read more here.
Mandarin Immersion Parents Council 