By Elizabeth Weise

This is a work-in-progress, based on experiences in San Francisco’s Mandarin immersion program and stories from other schools. I welcome stories, ideas and suggestions on other school experiences, so we can add to this document and make it more useful to everyone.

Any school that has a Mandarin immersion program can probably use a parent support network. That’s how ours, the Mandarin Immersion Parents Council, started in San Francisco. We realized that our teachers, kids and parents needed help and that the school district couldn’t do it all. That’s where parents came in.

We began very simply, just a meeting of parents with kids in Mandarin immersion about how to help with homework. We created a Yahoo email group so we could have a mailing list so people could ask questions. We had a few more meetings covering basic things like how to look up words in a Chinese dictionary (a real skill unto itself, if you don’t speak Chinese) and what summer programs were available for kids in our area. We also started a blog where we could post some of the stuff we came up with.

That was back in 2008. It took us four years, until May of 2012, that we became a non-profit that could raise money to support our programs. We also got a new name: 金山中文教育协会/Jinshan Mandarin Education Council, and a new web site, which you can see at www.jinshaneducation.org.

So my message here is this – parents play a huge role in making a Mandarin immersion program work, and you can start very simply. Don’t let worries about not being big or formal or bilingual enough stop you – your kids, your teachers and the other families need you! So here are some basic suggestions. Nothing fancy but some ideas on how you can get parent support easily organized.

First, create an email list. Yahoo groups makes it really easy and they’re free, but there are many ways to do it. Give it a simple name that will cover all the schools in your school district that are likely to get Mandarin. Remember that you may just have Kindergarten and first grade now, but eventually there will be a Middle School and High School component. So Houston Mandarin immersion works better than Gordon Elementary Mandarin immersion. The list will give a chance for families to share resources, ask homework questions and generally support one and other.

If you’ve got both English and Chinese-speaking families in your program, try to start out bilingual. It will make your group welcoming for everyone. But if you don’t have many Chinese-speaking families, don’t let being primarily English-speaking stop you. Everything can happen in time. Better to start now and build over time. As Voltaire said, Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.

Remember, too, that email lists need someone to watch over them. As we all know, sometimes people post without thinking, or let their frustration or anger spill over into words they would never say to someone’s face. Email lists are powerful, useful, tools, but it also helps to lay some ground rules and have a list coordinator to enforce them. Simple rules you can start with are:

– Play nice. Be polite.

– If someone can’t make themselves play nice, give them a time out.

– Never say anything in email you wouldn’t say face to face.

– Never say anything in email you wouldn’t get up and say at a PTA meeting.

If you’ve got a parent that’s handy wth the internet, start a website for your group. Something simple and easy but a place where current parents, and families considering your program, can come for information. Having an internet presence makes you much more ‘real’ to families outside the school, which will help your program over time. Especially if you’re a strand in a larger school, a separate site can be a place where you can place Mandarin-specific information. Remember to make it program-specific, not school-specific. Over time your program will be in at least three schools – elementary, middle and high school. WordPress.com is one place that offers free websites and it’s easy to figure out, but of course there are many other options.

Second, get parents in the program together for a meeting. It doesn’t have to be fancy or formal, just information. It can be at school in the evening, or at someone’s house on the weekend or even at a local coffee shop after morning drop-off if that works best. Some possible topics that we’ve done over the years:

• Welcome to Mandarin immersion and our program. How MI works in your school district and what you can expect your child to learn. (Get someone from the District or a teacher to present if you can.)
• How to use a Chinese Dictionary/Chinese 101: A basic introduction to how Chinese works (ask a teacher or bilingual parent to present this.)
• Parent-tested suggestions on how to help your kids with homework. Share tips and ideas. Have one of your teachers walk parents through a sample homework packet, so parents can figure out how it’s structured so they know how to help their kids at home.
• Extracurricular and summer programs in Mandarin in your area. These may or may not exist – they’ll come eventually as the community realizes there’s a market. At the beginning it might be something as simple as parents brainstorming a list of local restaurants and businesses where staff speak Mandarin. We found a hair salon where one of the stylists spoke Mandarin and now much of our 4th grade get their hair cut there. She’s learned to only speak Chinese with the kids (though parents get to give input in English.)
• Potential parents roundtable: Publicize this far and wide. This is a chance for families with kids in the MI program answer questions from parents considering signing up for MI. This will help you get a strong turn out for next year. Do it at the beginning of the enrollment season in your school district.
• Taking your kids to China – parent suggestions and tips. If no one in your school has yet gone to China, you can reach out to local Chinese adoption groups. Most lead trips back to China for families who have adopted children from China and can offer advice (many are probably also parents in your school.)

Other possible events for your parent group:

• Find a local Chinese bookstore and see if they will hold a book sale at your school, with books appropriate for your students. Tell them whether you use traditional or simplified characters and let them chose books that might work. Parents can also meet to share and swap videos and CDs they got in Mandarin.
• At the end of your first year, find a local Chinese restaurant and hold a banquet to celebrate how far your children and your program has come. Have families underwrite the cost of dinner for the teachers and the principal and let the kids write short speeches saying what they learned. Pat yourselves on the back!

Back at school, we’ve found that it’s easiest if each classroom or each grade has its own email list. Again, this is where you can turn if it’s 7:30 pm and you can’t figure out what the character on page 3 of the homework means, or your child isn’t sure exactly what they’re supposed to do.

In the long-term you might want to consider creating a non-profit, so you can fund raise for items your District can’t provide. That might mean more Chinese books for the school library, dictionaries for the classrooms or a class trip to China at the end of 8th grade. But you don’t have to start off as a non-profit by any means. It can happen when there’s sufficient need and energy on the part of parents. In San Francisco that took four years.

One suggestion that comes from Portland is to always have the vice president of the group be the president-in-waiting so there’s continuity across the years. Otherwise you can spend half a year reinventing the wheel when a new board gets up to speed.

Supporting teachers

Teachers work very hard. They come in early, stay late and spend hours at night and on the weekend working on curriculum and homework. Especially if your program is new they’re having to create every moment of every day your child spends in school out of thin air. So remember that the first year can be rocky for them. Try to be respectful of their time.

Remember that many Mandarin immersion teachers feel much more comfortable speaking Mandarin than they do speaking English (and this is exactly how you want it!) This can be a problem because many busy American parents are used to jotting off a quick email when they have a question or concern for their child’s teacher. But what is a quick email to you can be a huge amount of work for a teacher who feels self-conscious about his or her written English. Imagine if someone told you to answer an email sent to you in Spanish or French or whatever language you studied in high school. It would take you a long time, and a lot of dictionary work, and you’d still be a little worried it wasn’t right, wouldn’t it?

This is why many programs ask that parents either talk face-to-face with their teacher, or go through their room parent, who can talk to the teacher face to face. Email is just too time consuming, especially if there are cultural difficulties. Then parents get mad because their teacher didn’t email back right away and everyone gets off on the wrong foot.

Here are the suggestions various programs have formulated when an issue comes up:

• Always give your teacher the benefit of the doubt.
• Treat him or her like the professional they are.
• Speak to them face to face if at all possible.
• Don’t rely on email if they’re not fully comfortable in English. When in doubt, visit or call.
• If you must rely on email, make it a simple yes or no question if possible.
• If you can’t get to school and calling doesn’t work, ask your room parent to talk to them face to face.
• Don’t go over their heads to the principal unless you’ve really tried all other options.

In all this, remember that your child is getting a remarkable opportunity to learn one of the crucial languages of the 21st century. It’s going to take more work on your part, and your kid’s part, but in the end it will all be worth it. So settle in for the long haul and get ready for a fascinating ride into what for many in your school will be a whole new culture and language. As they say in Mandarin, 加油 – jia you, which means Give it the gas!

Hello all,

As folks who read this blog know, I’m in the process of writing a book—“A Parent’s Guide to Mandarin Immersion.” I’m about three-quarters done with it and have gotten to the point where I’d like feedback from parents.

Right now much of the book is based on extensive academic reading (a little dry, I’ll admit) and interviews with Mandarin immersion school administrators. What’s missing are parents’ stories.

I’m looking for people who would be willing to read a chapter, or two or three, and give me feedback. What made sense? What didn’t? What would be helpful? And I want to hear stories about your own family’s journey with Mandarin immersion that I can include.

I’ve love to hear from families who speak Chinese, families who don’t and people whose families once did. And parents with kids at all levels, from Kindergarten to College and beyond.

The specific chapters I’m looking for feedback on now (more are coming) are these:

-How immersion works in the classroom

-A short history of language immersion.

-A brief introduction to Mandarin (aka Chinese 101)

-How much Mandarin will they learn?

-Reading Chinese: literacy issues.

-For Mandarin-speaking parents: Keeping Mandarin alive

If there’s a particular chapter you’re especially interested in, please email me.

I’m also looking for Mandarin immersion graduates to interview (or parents of Mandarin immersion graduates) to find out what they’ve done with Chinese and how useful they feel it was for them.

Thanks!

Beth

Immersioneducation@gmail.com

[I’ve noticed that of all the things on this blog, two are the most popular–this essay and the list of Mandarin immersion schools. Both get clicked on several times a day. So it seemed time to do an update as the last was two years ago. I’m always eager to hear from parents about what they’re doing at home to make Mandarin a living language. If you’ve got a story, a site or a product that you’d like to share with other readers, please email me. — Beth]

How to get more Mandarin in your child’s life

Families with children in Mandarin immersion programs in the United States face a problem – our children are learning Chinese but we live in an English-speaking environment. Even families who speak Chinese at home face an uphill battle insuring that Chinese is a living, language for their children outside the home. For families that don’t it’s all that much harder.

Even in programs that begin with 80% time in Mandarin, students still spend no more than four hours daily being immersed in Chinese. In programs that are 50% Chinese from the beginning, it’s often fewer than three hours. For all parents, getting more Chinese in your child’s life is something like getting more vegetables in their diet – you’ve got to think strategically about how to slip it in where and when you can. The good news is that it’s not impossible and Mandarin immersion families have been figuring out how to get more Mandarin in their kids’ lives for years now. Here are some of their ideas.

There are a flood of books, CDs, computer games and apps out these days that claim they’ll teach your child Chinese. Mostly they’re just ways for non-Chinese speaking kids to learn a few simple works — words most immersion students learned their first month in school. So don’t waste your money on ‘teach your child Mandarin’ items. That’s why they’re in immersion, they’re learning in Mandarin. Instead, you want to offer them opportunities to have ‘authentic’ language experiences (as language teachers like to term it.) Here are some ideas, gathered from parents at immersion programs across the country.

Seek out Chinese speakers

Playdates

Don’t let your discomfort about interacting with families who speak a different language than you do keep your kids from playing with their kids. Kids want to play with their friends but at times parents go the route of least resistance, which can result in only having play dates with kids whose parents they can easily email and talk to on the phone. Go outside of your comfort zone. Have your son or daughter call to ask for a playdate. By first grade they should have enough Mandarin to do it. Don’t be shy. You’ll make friends, they’ll get to play with their friends and your program will be strengthened because there will be social connections that didn’t exist before!

Look for local businesses with Mandarin-speaking staff. Then when you go in for a haircut or for dinner, ask the staff to only speak to your child in Mandarin. Share with families at your school. In San Francisco there’s a hairdresser who now has multiple students from the Mandarin immersion program who get their hair cut there.  She knows when they come in to only use Mandarin with them.

Parent tip: “We keep an eye out for Chinese businesses and try to figure out what the characters on the signs are.  Sometimes he chats with the shopkeepers and shoppers too because many people can speak basic Mandarin even if they are Cantonese speakers.  Menus in Chinese are also always fun to try to decipher. The kids don’t know most of the characters (menus use lots of flowery language ) but they’ll be able to pick some out.”

Attend Chinese cultural events

There are many cultural events that happen across the country, especially around the Autumn Festival and Chinese New Years. Keep your eyes open and share with other families in your school.

Babysitters

Planning a date night or weekend getaway? Consider hiring a Mandarin speaking babysitter who will help reinforce vocabulary and might even be able to help with homework. Often local community colleges have English as a Second Language programs, you can post notices there looking for babysitters.

Music

Chinese kid’s songs

For younger kids, get CDs of Chinese songs and put them on your car’s CD player. Ask your child’s teacher for recommendations. Ask families with older kids in your school what they listen to.  You can find lots of these CDs at local Chinese stores, ask the clerks which are good for kids.

There’s a new CD out called Chinese Children’s Classics v 1.0, available at http://alittlemandarin.com/

Lots of older Chinese kids’ song available at the link below. Songs like “Young Communist Pioneers” and “Heroic Little Sisters.”

http://music.ibiblio.org/pub/multimedia/chinese-music/html/children.html

Radio

Find the local Mandarin language radio stations and set your car radio to them.

Ask families or teachers in your program what stations are good. Pop music is pretty universal.

Online streaming radio stations:

www.mandarinradio.com

www.chinese-outpost.com/learn/mandarin-radio-on-the-web.asp

Songza.com is similar to other Internet radio stations like Pandora and Spotify, it’s a free app you download on your phone.  But it’s got a couple of Chinese pop playlists. Lots of latest and greatest Chinese pop.

C-Pop

There’s a whole world of Mandarin language popular music out there. Just as K-pop (Korean pop music) is huge right now (think “Gangnam Style”) there’s a similar wave in Chinese called C-pop, or sometimes MandoPop.

Some online links to get you started

Mandopop videos and a streaming site

www.last.fm/tag/mandopop

Top 2011 MandoPop groups

http://bit.ly/TqNpTT

Television

Find out if you get any Mandarin language programing on television where you live. Again, ask families who speak Mandarin what shows are good. For example, there’s a Taiwanese kids’ show called 水果冰淇淋 [Fruity Pie in English] that airs in some areas. There are also lots of kung-fu movies, historical dramas and even old-fashioned variety shows.

Cable

Many cable TV companies have various ‘ethnic’ packages available that you might not be aware of. Call your cable company to ask if they have an Asian or Chinese package, it will probably come with Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese and Korean programming.

Movies

Make it a rule that the kids can have the TV or movies on, if they’re in Mandarin. English is for special occasions. [Though beware; in some of the dubbed Disney movies the sound is so muddy that it’s difficult to understand.]

Players for Chinese DVD’s

All commercial players should be able to play Chinese DVD’s. The problem is that players are set to view just Western DVDs.  To get around this you have two options:

1. Unlock your player. You can go to this website, type in your model number, and follow the simple directions www.videohelp.com/dvdhacks

2. If you’d rather not mess with your DVD player, another option is go to your local Chinatown and buy a cheap travel DVD player there, though confirming first that it can play Chinese DVDs.

Note that if you go to China there are lots of very cheap DVDs sold there, but most will only work on a player set for China’s region code.

Netflix:

If you get movies from NetFlix, you can click on Genres and then Foreign Language and then Mandarin Language to see their offerings. However they don’t appear to have children’s movies.

Your local Library:

Check with the librarian to see if they have movies in Chinese. They might be in a different branch, or shelved elsewhere, so ask. And ask for help choosing appropriate ones for your kids. Librarians are always eager to assist you.

Online cartoons:

Bin-bin’s Magical Bubble Adventure. For K and 1 kids mostly, but all in Mandarin.

www.kakekids.com/

Read

Reading is key to broadening vocabulary, deepening understanding and strengthening your child’s grasp of grammar, in all languages. For parents who don’t read Chinese, there are a couple of possibilities:

Books with CDS

Lots of Chinese storybooks come with attached CDs that read the story aloud. Look for them online and in your local bookstores. Some books also come with links to the story read online.

Parent tip:

We have a Chinese tutor who comes over once a week to spend time working with our son in Chinese. She’s a student from Shanghai at the local community college. She has been reading my son books that she helped me buy from ChinaSprout. Last week my husband had the idea of recording her reading one of the books on his iPhone, using the Voice Memo app. The next time we were in the car I brought that book and I handed my son the phone and he listened to her reading it, following along in the book. We’re going to have her record more next week.

Online stories

5QChannel.com

A stellar site out of Taiwan that has apps and stories online, in both simplified and traditional characters. Kids love it and they have nice animation. Definitely worth signing up for. They have a very high fee, $140 per year, which is really aimed at schools. They offer a lower priced alternative, usually $30, for parents in the United States. Email them to ask for more information about their US pricing. jr@5qchannel.com. Highly recommended.

ChildRoad

http://www.childroad.com

This is a digital library of over 1,000 books read aloud in Mandarin, kids can see the story and hear it read to them. There are stories for kids 4-12 including fairy tales, idiom stories and famous novels, all narrated by professional Chinese narrators including TV and radio hosts.

Online Bookstores:

NanHai

This is a good Chinese bookstore with lots of kids books in simplified characters and lots of books with CDs for kids.

www.nanhaibooks.com/

Little Monkey and Mouse

This is an on-line bookstore that’s got a nice blog attached which tells you about new books, CDs and games that might be of interest to parents. The owner works with several Mandarin immersion schools, so she has a good sense of what the kids need and what level they can read at.

http://blog.littlemonkeyandmouse.com/

ChinaSprout

They have a very broad selection, with lots of storybooks, graded readers and an excellent video section.

http://chinasprout.com

Chinese Child Book

They’ve got both books, CDs and DVDs

http://www.childbook.com

Oznoz.com

Lots of U.S. Sesame Street videos dubbed into Mandarin

https://shop.oznoz.com/index.php/language-culture/chinese/dvds.html

Chinese comic books          

As a multi-year project by researchers at San Francisco State University found, it’s a lot easier to get kids to read Chinese comic books (often called manga, from the Japanese) than regular books. And it’s equally effective at increasing vocabulary and Chinese ability. Here are some sites where you can find manga in Chinese. Be aware that topics vary in how age-appropriate they are. Also check to see if the comics are in traditional or simplified characters and buy the kind your school teaches. Be aware that manga are something of a rabbit hole, kids get addicted to the things. But that’s not really a bad thing as long as it’s all in Chinese, eh?

Some reviews are posted at the site below. You can then look for Chinese language versions of these manga.

http://www.thespectrum.net/manga/

Yes Asia

www.yesasia.com/us/en/chinese-comics.html

Monthly storybook/DVDs from Taiwan

There’s a monthly Taiwanese magazine that comes with storybook, workbook, CD, and sometimes DVD or toys, based on a similar product from Japan.  Very popular there, something like Highlights For Children here. The materials are age-specific and go all the way up through elementary school.  One mom said “My kids absolutely love the materials.  My 2.5 year old can “read” the books and listen to the CDs by himself and sing along in Chinese. The only way to get the materials is to call Taiwan and have them shipped.” Unfortunately, the web site is all in Chinese and the magazine only comes in traditional characters. But it might be appropriate for someone in a program that uses traditional, and a teacher could help with ordering.
http://www.benesse.com.tw/

Streaming TV from China and Taiwan

Many of these sites are only in Chinese. But it’s amazing what you can do with Google Translate online. Copy a block of text and translate it to get some sense of where you are. Or ask your kids for help.

If you find something you like, bookmark it! It can be very hard to find them again if you don’t know the name in Chinese (or if you can’t write it in Chinese.) Also, you’ll be able to send the URL around to the other families in your school.

But don’t let your kids wander online by themselves, you need to be there to edit, quickly. It’s easy to click on things in Chinese and end up someplace you didn’t expect, like “Pretty Lady Asian Dating Service” which featured some very R-rated photos. Once you get to know a site is okay you can bookmark it, but you probably don’t want kids to click around themselves too much at first.

www.kylintv.com

KyLinTV is a large Chinese internet TV station aimed at overseas Chinese worldwide. It’s got a great children’s section and it’s got an English page (when you first go to the page, look for the Language pull down box towards the right of the top of the page.)

Parent tip: You can get a cable box from them for your TV, but the PC/iPad internet access is cheaper. I picked the Taiwan TV package because I like the kids’ channel that it comes with – YOYO TV. However, the part that my kids really like is “Kids VOD” (Video On Demand). I added that for $10 more per month and they can watch a huge selection of kids’ shows, such as Pleasant Goat & Big Wolf, which has 470 episodes. It’s expensive, but there’s no contract for the internet subscription, so you could get it for some extra Chinese over the summer and cancel when school starts up again.

www.pptv.com/

The most popular Internet streaming video software in China. You download a player to your computer, iPad or iPhone and then can chose from a large variety of TV shows and movies from China, Taiwan and Korea. You can either find a friend who reads Chinese to talk you through the process or just click on things and see what happens. You’ll get a message saying you need to download the app, which I did. Then it gets fun. For example, when I was writing this I clicked on a few things and ended up with a TV news report about an international computer game play-off which features players from China, Korea and Japan. The report featured footage from the games they were playing, including dwarfs firing spells and exploding trees. Quite fun.

Tv.sohu.com

Another Internet streaming site from China that requires a downloaded player, but which offers tons of shows, including a fair number of popular U.S. TV shows dubbed into Mandarin. Big Bang Theory in Chinese, anyone?

Tudou.com

Popular streaming site. All in Chinese but poke around and see what you find.

Cartoons:

Parent Tip: My kids enjoy watching Mandarin videos, such as Pororo, Thumb Bear, Martin Morningand Big Head Son. To preview these series online, go to http://www.tudou.com/ and search for:

“大头儿子小头爸爸”  (Big Head Son)

“马丁的早晨”  (Martin Morning)

“小企鹅 pororo” (Pororo the Korean penguin)

“拇指熊” (Thumb Bear)

Other sites where you can find cartoons:

http://space.tv.cctv.com/podcast/xxh2

Sun flowers language studio stories

www.youtube.com/user/chinesesunflowers#p/u

Chinese YouTube

www.tudou.com/index.html

http://cartoon.tudou.com/

Show to watch: FruityPie

This is the Taiwanese equivalent of Captain Kangaroo with some Mr. Rogers thrown in. The main character is Granny Fruity Pie, (played by a man in drag.) You can Google水果冰淇淋 and find lots of episodes posted. Kid up to 3^rd grade like this one.

http://web.pts.org.tw/~web02/ptsenglish/p-fruit.html#Menu=ChildMenu2

YouTube

You can also have endless fun wandering YouTube searching on Mandarin. It’s a nice chance for the kids to be the experts, they can tell you about what you’re hearing or seeing, or if they can’t you can have lots of fun guessing together.  For example, here’s American claw hammer banjo player Abigail Washburn singing the classic folksong Little Birdie in Chinese with kids in China.

            www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA1lVEWl1Tw&feature=relmfu

Or here are some kids in Hong Kong singing about how they hate veggies

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8VZGcVGcrM

And here’s one about how everyone’s learning Chinese these days

iPhones and iPads

5QChannel.com

Great story apps for iPads. The perfect car-ride solution. You can toggle back and forth between traditional and simplified characters. The stories are nicely animated and very popular among elementary school kids in immersion programs.

DragonDian

Chinese dictionary that allows you to practice Chinese characters by drawing them on the screen.

Skritter

A character-practice app, where you draw on the screen.

http://www.skritter.com/

Animal Fun: Chinese for Kids

Animal and fish names in Chinese and English, games, flashcards.

Rye Studio

They have several apps, some which are comic books, some of which are stories read aloud.

Doodle Chinese

Games for learning characters and more.

ZhongWeb  中网

http://extras.zhongweb.org/

A nice website by someone in Boston who reviews iPad and iPhone apps for learning Chinese.

This list comes from things people have told me or emailed me of late, which I’ve turned into this format because I realized I burst out laughing when one mom told me the “fuxi for my kaoshi” line because I knew exactly what she meant. These are clearly all from non-Chinese speaking parents, and mostly folks with no connection to Chinese culture before their kids started in Mandarin immersion. But that’s the majority of people in these programs nationally, so it’s a pretty big cohort.

Would love to hear others to add to the list. Email me or comment below…

=====

You know you’re a Mandarin immersion parent* when….

Your third grader is starting to lose it over homework so you offer to race him looking up the characters in a story he doesn’t know in the dictionary by stroke order. You beat him.

You know what Yellowbridge.com is and how to use it.

You have strong preferences in moon cakes types, and can answer the question “one egg yolk, two or none?”

Your kid says “I have to fuxi for my kaoshi, but after that I’m done with my gongke” and you understand her.

When you reach into your purse for Kleenex you come out with a handful of flashcards.

All the CDs in your car are in Chinese.

You know who the biggest K-pop stars are and have their songs, with Chinese subtitles, bookmarked on your computer.

You own more Chinese dictionaries than English dictionaries.

You can explain to a Kindergarten parent what a measure word is, and get it right.

You can pick out your child’s handwriting on the bulletin board outside his classroom, even though the papers are all in Chinese.

You forget that in most schools teachers speak to parents in English when there are kids around.

*A non-Chinese speaking MI parent. I’d love to see a list for Chinese-speakers, if anyone’s got one.