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Mandarin Immersion Parents Council
Information for parents of kids in Mandarin immersion education
recent posts
- Newly-updated Mandarin immersion school list for 2026
- Where Language Meets Opportunity: Inside an Arizona Mandarin Immersion Program
- California schools that need foreign workers for teacher jobs can’t afford new visa fee
- A look at an Australian Mandarin immersion school
- British Columbia’s Mandarin immersion program to be cut
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Language immersion classrooms: Programs are popular, diligence translates to performance
Published: Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012 11:04 p.m. MSTBy Mercedes White, Deseret News
Ms Alisa Wu’s third grade class in Sandy looks like any other classroom in the country. The desks are lined in neat rows. Brightly colored pictures of letters and vocabulary words decorate the walls. The students read aloud a story from a primer. When they finish, they are lead in a music lesson by their teacher.
But this is no ordinary class.
The letters that cover the walls are Chinese characters. The story the class reads, entirely in Mandarin, is about an important Chinese holiday. And the song the eight-year olds are singing is a Chinese translation of a “Party Rock Anthem,” a popular American song. Ms. Wu’s class is not completing a unit on China, nor is their interest in Chinese language and culture a passing phase. They are part of a Mandarin language immersion program at Lone Peak Elementary.
Tanner Isom listens to first-grade teacher Yu-Pei Tan during Chinese immersion class at Lone Peak Elementary School.From the archive- French education in demand in Louisiana – Nov. 16, 2011
- St. George school amid Utah’s dual-language charge – Oct. 21, 2011
- St. George school amid Utah’s dual-language charge – Oct. 19, 2011
- Chinese immersion programs in Utah continue to grow – April 13, 2011
- Utah leading the nation in dual immersion programs – Feb. 24, 2011
Wu’s class is part of a growing trend of language immersion classrooms. In 1981 there were fewer than 30 immersion programs in the country, today there are 448, according to a 2011 report released by the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL), a non-profit organization that advocates for foreign language instruction. States like Minnesota and Utah are leading the way with 52 and 58 schools offering language immersion options. American students are being educated in Spanish, French, Mandarin, Japanese, German, Arabic, and Norwegian.
Please read more here.
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New Mandarin-Immersion School Attracts Families from Albany and Beyond
At Yu Ming, 90 percent of the instruction is taught in Mandarin. A number of studies have shown that immersion is an effective model for language acquisition with benefits that extend beyond bilingualism, including improvements in subjects such as math an
[Editor’s Note: Sarah Yang is an Albany resident who shared this story with Albany Patch. Her daughter, Alex, attends kindergarten at Yu Ming.]
School mornings for Albany resident Erin Coyne begin by cajoling her 6-year-old out of bed at 6 a.m. to get her in the shower, dressed, fed and to the San Pablo Avenue bus stop by 7:15 a.m. to catch the 72R to downtown Oakland.
Coyne’s daughter, Myra, is a first-grader at a new public K-8 Mandarin-immersion school in Oakland Chinatown called Yu Ming Charter School, which begins its day at 8:15 and runs until 2:45 p.m.
Had Coyne, a UC Berkeley Ph.D. student in Slavic languages and literatures, chosen to leave Myra in one of Albany’s highly regarded public schools, she could have gotten an extra hour of sleep. Yet Coyne and other Yu Ming families – including five from Albany – say they have chosen to make the trek because no other public school in northern Alameda County provides the opportunity to immerse their children in Chinese throughout the school day.
Please read more here.
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Magnet schools attract curiosity
Credit: LAUREN CARROLL/JOURNAL
James White, 10, explored the Lego engineering display set up by Brunson Elementary School at the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County school system’s magnet school fair Saturday.
By: TRAVIS FAIN | Winston-Salem Journal
Published: January 08, 2012Hundreds of parents and students came to the Benton Convention Center on Saturday to whet their appetites at the buffet of magnet schools the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County school system offers.
Prospective students got a look at 18 schools, each with a tailored focus to learning. For budding artists, there are arts-focused programs at several schools. For those hoping to be engineers, there are science and technology schools for every grade level.
For the soon-to-be chefs, there’s the culinary arts program at Kennedy High School.
Please read more here.
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Edward M. O’Mara, Village Grande Civic AssociationTo the editor:
Recently, Acting Commissioner Christopher Cerf denied the applications to two boutique Mandarin immersion schools . . . Hanyu International Academy (HIACS) and Hua Mei School.
We are happy for the taxpayers in Livingston, Millburn, Maplewood, and West, South and East Orange. They have been spared the cost of providing a private education to a select few at public expense.
We want to thank the commissioner for finally realizing that in this economic environment, there is no room for taxpayer subsidized private schools masquerading as charter schools.However, we would like the education commissioner to give the same consideration to the taxpayers in West Windsor, Plainsboro, Princeton and South Brunswick by denying another extension and rejecting the charter school proposal by the Princeton International Academy Charter School (PIACS).
The taxpayers in these towns, which cover the 14th, 15th, and 16th NJ legislative districts deserve the same treatment as was given to taxpayers in northern New Jersey. Furthermore, PIACS would be a duplication of the Mandarin language arts already offered in our public schools.
Please read more here. -
Some Schools Buck Trend Of High Costs
By SOPHIA HOLLANDER
Bryan Derballa for The Wall Street JournalWilliamsburg Northside kept tuition low—at $21,850—for its elementary school, which it opened in 2009. The private school also has an infant and toddler center and a preschool.
In an age of private school educations that cost up to $40,000 a year, eight new or expanding Brooklyn schools are attracting attention with a simple appeal: lower tuition.
These schools charge a range of annual prices—from nothing for some low-income students to as much as $23,000 at the most expensive end—that they say draws a more diverse student body. The schools also tend to feature progressive education styles, a commitment to engaging with their local neighborhoods and an international flair.
“From the very beginning we made the conscious choice to keep our tuition low so we could be a real choice to the public schools as well as other private schools,” said Amy Warden, the head of school at Williamsburg Northside, which opened an elementary school in 2009 and charges $21,850.
Please read more here, (news of the Brooklyn school is in the last paragraph)
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The Sensitive Subject of Educational Reform
Posted: 1/16/12 04:18 PM ETFrom the Huffington PostI am a SWISS Trilingual School parent. I am also the director of this small, unfortunately private, full-immersion school in Atlanta, Ga. Currently we are a K-3rd elementary school, and projected to the 12th grade. Most importantly, I am “G’s” mom and her awesomeness has nothing to do with me. I believe that a full-immersion language acquisition education is the future of education, not just in America, but around the world, and I believe that this investment will save our world economy.
Our journey began with my sister and her husband, parents to two girls who, from birth, were exposed to Japanese, French, Chinese, Spanish and English. Live-in au pairs and tutors helped to make this possible. When they married they decided to invest all of their money where they thought it would be most useful: in their children. By 2006 they moved to Atlanta and opened a school. With the impending birth of our daughter, we moved to Atlanta in 2008 so that she could receive this gift. On the day of her birth, she was held by my sister’s Japanese au-pair. From the day of her birth my sister spoke to her entirely in French. When she was 1 year old, her best friend was a 15-year-old Taiwanese exchange student. At 13 months, she said, “I want cake” in Mandarin; our decision had been validated.
Please read more here.
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