Here’s an interesting opinion piece from the former mayor of San Mateo, Calif. about College Park Elementary, which is home to a Mandarin immersion program with students in Kindergarten through 3rd grade and which will fill to 5th grade in two years, eventually filling the school.

OP-ED: Does North Central neighborhood need a school?

February 25, 2013, 05:00 AM By Sue Lempert

Back in the ‘70s, San Mateo’s North Central neighborhood had two neighborhood schools, Lawrence Elementary and Turnbull Middle School. Both schools were eventually shut but not because of poor performance. Lawrence was located between 3rd and 4th avenues east of the railroad tracks. The neighborhood was becoming increasingly commercial and traffic heavy. The school was deemed vulnerable in an earthquake and in any major flooding from Crystal Springs Dam. Turnbull middle school was one of the best. But it was shut because enrollment was shrinking and the school district, after Proposition 13, couldn’t afford to keep all existing schools open. During these years, the North Central neighborhood was primarily black. In the late ‘60s, the board decided to integrate the schools in a one way busing strategy. North Central students would be bused out of the area to other schools in the district. This was the right thing to do at the time. Students bused out of their home neighborhood might receive a better education and all students would benefit from integrating the schools. When Lawrence closed, the number of students bused to other schools in the district increased. It was often difficult for these students. A group of parents asked for their neighborhood school back. If that wasn’t possible they wanted a significant number of their students going to any one school. Otherwise their children felt isolated. By the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, some educators were beginning to question whether busing minority children to other schools improved their academic performance if a quality education could be provided in their neighborhood.

Please read more here.

More from the Asia Society.

How to Build a School Exchange Program

The Walter Payton Preparatory High School Model

Payton students videoconferencing with peers in Morocco while Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and several Ambassadors to the United States look on. (U.S. Chief of Protocol)

• Walter Payton Students Meet with Chinese President

Traveling internationally is not “foreign” to Walter Payton College Preparatory Academy students. In the past decade, the school faculty worked hard to make sure that in order to live up to the school motto—“We Nurture Leaders”— it includes a global vision of leadership. We’ve asked former school principal Ellen Estrada to share with our readers how her school community did it. -The Editors

by Ellen Estrada

After September 11, 2001, the leadership of Walter Payton Preparatory High School chose to reach out to the world through the use of modern technology and student exchanges. Knowing the implications of an interconnected world for their students, the school decided that the world would become Payton’s classroom.

Payton’s motto, “We Nurture Leaders,” recognizes the critical need for students to understand and connect to the world, and to develop cultural competencies and multiple perspectives on issues and events. In the video-conferencing lab and with email and video projects, students linked to young people around the world to share knowledge, ideas and to form friendships and build relationships.

Traveling internationally became integral to the experience of Payton students and teachers. During the past several years, students have visited sister schools and educational institutions in 21 cities on five continents. This article examines how the exchange programs are set-up and how we find funding for them.

Please read more here.

From those great folks at the Asia Society

How Schools Can Successfully Partner with Local Businesses

From WSOC TV–CHARLOTTE, N.C.

For several hours each day, students at Waddell Language Academy speak and write only in Chinese.

Nearly all their subjects, including math and science, have been taught in Mandarin since they were in kindergarten. They’ll likely graduate high school fluent without the slightest accent.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools began its Chinese immersion program in 2006 with just one kindergarten class of only 21 students. Now, there are nearly 250 students in grades kindergarten through sixth.

“We have an unfortunately long waiting list of students who will not have the opportunity to start this program in kindergarten, because demand exceeds our capacity,” principal Ynez Olshausen said.

Fifth graders Amina Shafeek-Horton and Milan Carter said they enjoy learning Chinese and speak it to each other outside of school.

Waddell is the only school in CMS that offers the Chinese immersion program, which will continue to expand through grade 12.

View the video from WSOC here.

Pearson, one of the nation’s largest textbook publishers, has translated its enVisionMATH program that into Chinese. From the company:

“enVisionMATH is an amazing elementary Math program written specifically to address the Common Core State Standards, and is based on critical foundational research and proven classroom results. We have customized that program to be translated into Chinese for dual immersion schools. As of right now, we have fully translated grades Kindergarten, 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd grade of the K-6 program and translated the table of contents. Grades 4-6 are currently being translated.

This program does include a digital path. The digital path includes the full English enVision Math digital path with the Chinese translated ebook and a folder for teachers which includes all of the translated reteach and practice worksheets for each grade.

The background for this project is that in 2011, Pearson began discussions in Utah to translate its math program, as Utah wanted to use enVisionMATH in their classrooms, says Pearson’s Lindsey Pietrowski. Utah has the largest network of Mandarin immersion elementary schools in the country.

“We proceeded to sell this program to dual immersion schools in the state of Utah and worked with Chinese language specialist, Sandy Talbot, to translate into the simplified Chinese character set,” says Pietrowski. “We did leave certain portions of the program in English that the dual immersion students may need to take home, such as  Common Core Bullets and other parent information.”

If your school is interested in viewing or ordering, they can work with their local Pearson Account Executive. If you don’t have one, please contact

Lindsey Pietrowski 

lindsey.pietrowski@pearson.com

K-12 Marketing Manager

Pearson Learning Solutions

Chicago, IL

www.pearsonlearningsolutions.com

I’m taking the weekend off with the family, but Happy New Year.

新年快乐!

Beth

Manabu Nagaoka, Executive Producer at the Sesame Workshop, emailed today to say that they are premiering Season 2 of Fun Fun Elmo, the Mandarin language show on SinoVision during Chinese New Year.

And even better for those of us in the United States, they’re uploading the First Season, all 13 episodes of it, onto their Sesame Street Youtube channel.

You can check it out here.

“It’s been exciting, and I am proud of these and the fact that we made twenty-six shows. Some documentary films were shot in China too with real kids!” says Nagaoka.

Be sure to check it out. The way they teach characters is really cool.