Mandarin Immersion Parents Council

Information for parents of kids in Mandarin immersion education

recent posts

about

  • Immersion so popular in Scottsdale “it is no longer feasible to offer non-immersion”

    Spanish-immersion class at Pueblo Elementary in Scottsdale

    State Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal visits teacher Angela Saldarriaga’s Spanish-immersion class at Pueblo Elementary in Scottsdale on Friday, April 19, 2013.

    Michael Schennum/The Republic
    By Mary Beth Faller
    The Republic | azcentral.comThu Apr 25, 2013 8:17 AM

    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 gets its first public Mandarin immersion program

     

     

     

     

     

    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.

    Photo by Johnny Jackson Kindergarten teacher Kim Moss helps her student Addyson Ahern, 5, with an in-class science project at Dutchtown Elementary School.

    Dutchtown to open Chinese dual-immersion program

    State awards $15,000 start-up grant

    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.

  • A Mandarin immersion boarding school in China

    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

    ===

    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. 

  • When your family is integration

    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

    When the melting pot boils over

    For parents and educators striving to create diverse schools, what happens when good intentions run into sobering realities?

    Alisa Rivera with her husband and their son, Nathan.

    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.

  • $300 Million Scholarship for Study in China

    $300 Million Scholarship for Study in China Signals a New Focus

    By 

    Published: April 20, 2013
    • HONG KONG — The private-equity tycoon Stephen A. Schwarzman, backed by an array of mostly Western blue-chip companies with interests in China, is creating a $300 million scholarship for study in China that he hopes will rival the Rhodes scholarship in prestige and influence.
    Todd Heisler/The New York Times

    The financier Stephen A. Schwarzman is creating a scholarship program at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

    A rendering of the new college at Tsinghua University that will be named after Mr. Schwarzman.

    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.

  • Utah’s immersion surge

     

    Michael Friberg for The New York Times

    Lily Buneo, teaching Portuguese at Lakeview Elementary in Provo, Utah.

    <nyt_byline>

    By 
    Published: April 19, 2013
    • FACEBOOK
    • TWITTER
    • GOOGLE+
    • SAVE
    • E-MAIL
    • SHARE
    • PRINT
    • REPRINTS
    <nyt_text><nyt_correction_top>

    PROVO, Utah — In this deeply Mormon state, the school day is being translated into Chinese. Strains of Taiwanese pop songs float through the hallways. School cafeterias serve dumplings. Third graders pass notes in Mandarin. And when visitors enter a classroom, the students shout, “Ni hao!”

    Michael Friberg for The New York Times

    Chinese art at Wasatch Elementary School, where 360 students take Mandarin classes. Officials say a bilingual work force could lure international companies.

    “If I close my eyes, I see a room full of Chinese children,” said Colleen Densley, the principal of Wasatch Elementary School here in central Utah, recalling the words of one amazed teacher. “If I open my eyes I see my American students.”

    Please read more here.

  • Austin, Texas gets its first Mandarin immersion school

    Doss.

    April 14, 2013

    Texas Opens Second Chinese Immersion Elementary School in Austin this Fall of 2013

    By Lelan Miller

    Austin Independent School District in the state capital of Texas is opening its first ever Chinese immersion elementary school this fall of 2013. Doss Elementary School will be the first Austin elementary school and the second school in the state of Texas to offer Chinese immersion. The first Chinese immersion elementary school in the state of Texas opened in Houston in the fall of 2012.

    Doss Elementary School will launch the immersion program this fall in kindergarten, first and second grade with a total of 60 students already selected in a lottery last month. The Doss Chinese immersion program will use the 50/50 model for immersion instruction in which half the school day will be taught in English and the other half in Chinese. Math and science instruction will be given in Chinese while social studies will be taught in English.

    Austin school administrators have prepared for the opening of the immersion school by visiting similar schools in the U.S. including the programs in Houston and Minnesota and have been attending conferences that focus in Chinese immersion program models and teaching methods.

    In order to prepare the incoming classes for the new Mandarin immersion program, the principal and staff began an online blog that provides school updates, Chinese learning materials, and community resources including Chinese language summer programs being offered in the Austin community. The blog can be accessed through the Doss PTA website under One World Learning School @ Doss at  http://owls.dosspta.org/

    Doss began Chinese instruction in the fall of the 2012-2013 school year through the Content Based Foreign Language in Elementary School (FLES) Model.  All kindergarten and first grade students participated in FLES lessons which support the state required educational objectives. During the 2012-2013 school year, kindergarten and first grade students at Doss received two thirty minute Chinese language lessons per week from Connie Soong who was welcomed into the Doss teaching staff in the fall of 2012.

    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