Mandarin Immersion Parents Council

Information for parents of kids in Mandarin immersion education

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  • Capistrano Unified’s new Mandarin program makes $59K in fundraiser

      • By MORGAN McLAUGHLIN / FOR THE REGISTER

    Dice flew and chips piled up as guests in traditional 旗袍 Chinese brocade dresses and shirts whooped it up at the 2nd annual Friends of MIP (Mandarin Immersion Program) Chinese New Year Fundraiser Celebration. The Bowers Museum in Santa Ana turned casino for one night, and supporters of the Capistrano Unified School District’s MIP, a two-year-old program at Marian Bergeson Elementary, netted $59,000 by playing craps and blackjack and bidding on an array of live and silent auction items.

    Patina Group served a three-course dinner, and guests participated in a heads and tails game. The festivities supported an important cause, said Audrey Shaw of Laguna Niguel, vice president of the Friends of MIP advisory board.

    Article Tab: Tables awaited guests at the Friends of the Mandarin Immersion Program 's Chinese New Year gala at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana.
    Tables awaited guests at the Friends of the Mandarin Immersion Program ‘s Chinese New Year gala at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana.
    MORGAN MCLAUGHLIN, FOR THE REGISTER
    By the numbers

    115+ : companies and individuals that donated items for the fundraiser

    175: Guests who attended the event

    $500: amount donated every time someone closes a loan with Emery Financial and mentions MIP

    The Friends of MIP will host an Orange County Spring Rummage Sale on May 4 from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Marian Bergeson Elementary, 25302 Rancho Niguel Road, Laguna Niguel.

    “This is a global economy. Our kids need to be successful,” she said. “The money we raised last year gave us aides for each classroom … this year we want to make it the best program possible.”

    Please read more here.

  • Make Parents Your Allies in Language Immersion

    Nightingale & Weise

    From the Asia Society. Jamila Nightingale is doing great work here in the San Francisco Bay area to support African-American families with children in Mandarin immersion programs. I strongly encourage schools to reach out to Parents of African American Students Studying Chinese (PASSC) to talk about creating groups in your own schools and districts. San Francisco’s very successful Alice Fong Yu Cantonese Immersion school has long had a Black Student Union, for example. Our programs are often incorrectly seen as primarily for Asian and white families, but of course all children should benefit from the great advantage of being bilingual, and especially bilingual in Chinese. To do that, we’ve got to deal with some of the assumptions people have head on. Jamila’s work is helping all of us do that.

    -Beth

    =======

    By Heather Clydesdale

    “Parents, wait here.” In China, it is not uncommon for this message to be posted outside school entrances. By contrast, U.S. schools, in part because of strains caused by shrinking budgets, have flung their doors open for parent volunteers. This, coupled with a culture that lauds exhaustive parent involvement in children’s lives, can leave Chinese teachers can feeling drained and unsure about how to help parents advance students’ education.

    Elizabeth Weise, founding member of the Mandarin Immersion Parents Council, and Jamila Nightingale, founder and director of Parents of African American Students Studying Chinese, frequently speak to audiences of Chinese language teachers and administrators, and share strategies for winning the support of parents and communities.

    Weise, who has two daughters enrolled in language immersion classes and is writing a book aimed at parents, explains that mothers and fathers who have been absorbed by every moment of their children’s lives are jolted when their children enter a Chinese language program. Suddenly, “a curtain has come across six hours of their kid’s day. It is a black box. And if you don’t tell them what is happening, they’ll imagine it.”

    Please read more here.

  • StarTalk Summer Institute for Mandarin immersion teachers

     

    Screen Shot 2013-03-28 at 8.10.21 AM

    More information here

     

  • How can dual immersion education help raise test scores? Do bilingual children learn better?

    Screen Shot 2013-03-26 at 4.01.16 PMProposition 227 all but eliminated bilingual education in California schools in 1998. The law mandated that English be used as the primary language to teach non-English-speaking kids in schools. In recent years, a different form of secondary language acquisition has been gaining traction in Los Angeles public school system. They are called “dual language immersion” programs: classes are taught almost entirely in Spanish, Mandarin or another language, and they are designed to benefit both children who are learning English as a second language as well as those who are native English speakers.

    KPCC’s Early Childhood Development Correspondent Deepa Fernandes has a piece today looking at one such program at Foster Elementary School in Baldwin Park. School officials there, mirroring what many researchers have found, say that kids in their dual language programs outperform those who are taught in just English-only classes.

    If dual language immersion programs are so successful, why aren’t more California schools adopting them? What are some of the challenges and drawbacks? What are the benefits?

    Guests:
    Karen Cadiero-Kaplan, Director of the  English Learner Support Division at the California Department of Education

    Roger Lowenstein, founder and executive director of Los Angeles Leadership Academy, a public charter school in Lincoln Heights that practices dual language immersion

    Karen Nemeth, co-founder of Language Castle. She is a dual language immersion consultant who works with school districts across the the country

    Please read and listen here.

  • Louisiana may get Immersion High School

    Screen Shot 2013-03-25 at 2.29.32 PMLAFAYETTE — It will take some “seed money” to get a proposed immersion high school off the ground in Lafayette, but just how much is still unknown, said members of a committee studying what it would take to open the Lafayette school.

    The committee’s work is outlined in Act 851, authorized by the Legislature in 2012. The legislation created an exploratory committee to examine the feasibility of opening an immersion high school in Lafayette in 2014-15 with French as the primary language and Spanish and Mandarin Chinese as other language options.

    Please read more here.

  • More on bringing Mandarin immersion to Wyoming

    Chinese language ‘camp’ for Casper kids could be beginning of long-term program
    By JACIE BORCHARDT  Casper Star-Tribune
    March 21, 2013 – 12:48 pm EDT

    CASPER, Wyoming — The second-graders circled around squares of paper with different colors a few inches apart on the floor.

    Each clutched a smaller, paper square and leaned forward, waiting for the teacher to name a color and, if it matched his or her own, be the first to touch the corresponding color in the middle.

    The game would be a simple test of speed — if the colors weren’t given in Mandarin Chinese, foreign to the American students eagerly trying to win stickers for being the first to the square.

    Teacher Ning Zhao, originally from China, said the color twice before a few students jumped up and lunged at the papers on the floor.

    “Lan si,” she repeated. The students, holding green pieces of paper, were incorrect.

    Not “lan si,” Zhao said, “lan si¨.”

    A few seconds later, three students realized they held blue (lán sè) papers in their hands and lunged forward.

    Things move fast in the Chinese language immersion program offered this summer through the Natrona County School District. Lessons are planned and taught by native speakers, and class is conducted solely in Chinese — crucial to the structure of the camp, funded through the STARTALK program of the federal Department of Defense.

    Please read more here.

  • National Chinese Language Conference

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    National Chinese Language Conference

    From left: Lucy Lee, Robert Murowchick, Deborah Delisle, Marcos Aguilar

    April 7 – 9 | Boston

    Chinese language and culture experts take the main stage to discuss
    China Across Subject Areas: The Career Connection
    Equity and Access to a Chinese Language Education
    The Future of Education in China and the United States
    Plus
    More than 70 breakout sessions and workshops
    Two-hour workshops on teaching, assessment, technology, and research
    Visits to Boston-area model Chinese language programs
    > Register today