Mandarin Immersion Parents Council

Information for parents of kids in Mandarin immersion education

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  • San Francisco’s Starr King Elementary prepares for New Year’s parade

     

    BEIJING, Jan. 20 (Xinhuanet) — San Francisco’s Chinese New Year’s parade has been called the largest celebration of Asian culture outside of Asia. This year, as many as a million spectators will watch thousands of people marching in the parade including 100 people who will carry a giant golden dragon. The parade is the culmination of the three-week Spring Festival in San Francisco.

    For these San Francisco fifth graders saying happy New Year in Mandarin is no big deal. They’re in a Mandarin Immersion Class at a school that also offers a bilingual Spanish program and a more conventional English program.

    After school this time of year students from all three programs race to the playground to get ready to march in San Francisco’s famous Chinese New Year Parade. School Principal Greg John says the parade helps bring this diverse community together.

    Greg John said, “We do things to celebrate Latino heritage, we do things to celebrate African American heritage, and this is one of the things we do to unify us around something that’s really big in the Chinese culture.”

    For the drummers, it’s a big day. The straps that let them march with their drums on have arrived. They’re learning a traditional kind of drumming from Northern China, called Xian-Xi.

    Please read more here.

  • Denver Mandarin immersion students prepare for New Year

    Chinese New Year: Ring in the Year of the Dragon with dances, art, food and kung fu

    POSTED: 01/19/2012 04:39:05 PM MST
    UPDATED: 01/19/2012 04:39:10 PM MST

    By The Denver Post

    Kindergartners from the Denver Language School rehearsed a play they will peform at Hamilton Middle School celebrating the Chinese New Year, the Year of the Dragon. The celebration will include traditional Chinese dances and songs performed by the students in their second language, Mandarin. (Andy Cross, The Denver Post)

    The Chinese New Year begins on Monday, but the time to celebrate is now: New Year’s parties will be happening all over the city in the coming days, with a few big ones banging the gong this weekend.

    Tonight, the Denver Language School welcomes the Year of the Dragon with a performance by students in its kindergarten through third-grade classes. The kids have been learning Mandarin through immersion, and will use their skills in presenting lion dances, handkerchief twirling and traditional Chinese songs. Pro groups from the Chinese Cultural Academy and Wah Lum Kung Fu will take the stage, too.6 p.m. today, Hamilton Middle School, 8600 E. Dartmouth Ave. Tickets: $10 for adults, $5 for kids 5-18, free for 4 and younger. Tickets can be purchased at DLS (451 Newport St.) before 3 p.m. today.

    Read more:Chinese New Year: Ring in the Year of the Dragon with dances, art, food and kung fu – The Denver Posthttp://www.denverpost.com/entertainment/ci_19770053#ixzz1k1DZBdN1
    Read The Denver Post’s Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse

  • An adoption story from China

    Pot stickers help bridge gap between China and America

    January 19, 2012|By Huntly Collins, For The Inquirer
    • Mia Qian Miller Collins in Qibao, an ancient Chinese town on the edge of Shanghai. Brought to Philadelphia when six months old, she is spending her junior year of high school studying in a Mandarin immersion program at Beijing's High School No. 2.
    Mia Qian Miller Collins in Qibao, an ancient Chinese town on the edge of Shanghai. Brought…
    • Mia Qian Miller Collins in Qibao, an ancient Chinese town on the edge of Shanghai. Brought to Philadelphia when six months old, she is spending her junior year of high school studying in a Mandarin immersion program at Beijing's High School No. 2.
    • Mia with her adoptive parents, Huntly Collins (left) and Esther Miller, on a visit to the Luxi River area.

    Tears streamed down my face as the bus carrying our family and a dozen other Americans, all adopting parents, pulled out of Nanchang, the capital of southern China’s Jiangxi Province, on a cold and rainy morning in January 1995.

    The 6-month-old baby girl I held in my arms had rosy red cheeks and inquisitive eyes. She had been abandoned when she was days old, left outside an orphanage in Yingtan City, about 100 miles to the southeast. Pinned to her clothing was a note written in crude Mandarin on red paper, a sign of good luck in China. “This girl was born on July 11, 1994,” the note said.

    Please read more here.

  • Mandarin immersion in San Diego

    Chinese, It’s the New Spanish

    By Elizabeth Salaam | Published Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2012

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    Chinese, It’s the New SpanishPhoto by Alan Decker

    Robert Dorsey is not Chinese, but he drives 25 miles from El Cajon to Point Loma every morning so his two daughters can learn to speak, read, and write in Mandarin.

    “In my culture, it’s English, Ebonics, and maybe a little bit of Spanish,” says Dorsey, who is African American. “About ten years ago, my wife was in college, and her professor told her Chinese was the language to learn. I want to give my kids a little bit of an edge in life.”

    His daughters, in first and third grade, attend Barnard Elementary, a Mandarin Chinese full-immersion magnet school. In kindergarten, students spend 80 percent of their day (about four hours) reading, writing, and listening to Mandarin. The other 20 percent, they spend on English Language Arts. In first grade, it’s 70 and 30 percent, and second grade, 50-50. Third through sixth graders attend a 45-minute pull-out Mandarin class each day, but as the program, now in its fourth year, grows, those grades will conduct half of their lessons in Mandarin.

    Please read more here.

  • French still more popular than Mandarin in Vancouver, Canada

    Class Notes

    BY NAOIBH O’CONNOR, VANCOUVER COURIER JANUARY 18, 2012
    KINDERGARTEN REGISTRATION

    January means one thing for parents of children starting kindergarten in September-deciding what school to enrol their child in. The deadline is Jan. 31 to be given first consideration over those who apply later. Neighbourhood schools remain popular, but many families opt for specialty programs that can be tough to get into such as French immersion, Montessori, Mandarin immersion or Fine Arts.

    French immersion programs are particularly sought after, according to the Vancouver school district. Parents apply to their neighbourhood French immersion school and if it’s oversubscribed a lottery is held. Those who don’t win seats are placed on a waitlist for a district draw for remaining seats in the system.

    The waitlist for all French immersion programs totaled 342 last year, which dropped to 169 for the district draw likely because families registered in other programs after not qualifying for their local one.

     

    Read more:http://www.vancourier.com/Class+Notes/6012879/story.html#ixzz1jptCZ3KO

  • Families who are arguing for Mandarin immersion in NJ

    This is clearly such a divisive issue in New Jersey. Have Mandarin programs been that elsewhere, or is it simply because this is a charter? There was opposition in Palo Alto to their program, because it wasn’t available to everyone (though not everyone wanted it.) Has anyone seen this level of opposition before?

    Who’s Interested in a Mandarin Charter? Three Families Give Their Reasons

    Amidst vociferous opposition, three proponents of the Hua Mei Charter School tell their stories.

    When the proposed Hua Mei charter school held an informational meeting last summer at the Maplewood Library, seven interested parties showed up. When opponents held a rally on Jan. 6, more than 150 people attended.

    Indeed, dueling petitions for and against the charter show a decided majority expressing opposition.

    But founders of the charter — which will either be approved or rejected by NJ State Acting Commissioner of Education Christopher Cerf on Tuesday — assert that the charter is drawing support and interest from within and without the West Orange, South Orange and Maplewood communities.

    Marcus Leon and his wife came across information about Hua Mei as they considered a move from Brooklyn to the Maplewood-South Orange community.

    Leon is a systems analyst and his wife a graphic designer. They have a 20-month-old daughter named Olivia.

    “We’d like Olivia to have an awareness of other cultures, and learning a language is one of the best ways to develop this,” said Leon. “China is on the way to having the world’s largest economy so kids who can learn Mandarin now should have a leg up in their lifetimes.”

    Leon also said that immersion seemed to be the way to go with Mandarin education. “We really like the immersion model. Hearing a language day in and day out is the best way for anyone, especially kids, to learn another language.”

    Leon said that he and his wife are looking to move out of the city to a family-friendly area where their daughter can attend an immersion program.  “Maplewood and South Orange seem like great places to raise a family. With the addition of a Mandarin immersion school Maplewood/South Orange would be an extremely attractive place for us to move to.”

    Please read more here.

  • One of Chinese American Int’l School founders was a Freedom Rider

    Lt. Col. Harold Hoskins from left with Freedom Riders Carol Ruth Silver and Claude Albert Liggins at a 2011 NAACP gala.
    Courtesy Freedom Riders Foundation

    Freedom Riders to speak in Bend

    Participants in the Civil Rights movement will talk at COCC

    By Breanna Hostbjor / The Bulletin

    Published: January 14. 2012 4:00AM PST

    If you go

    What: A Conversation with 1961 Freedom Riders: Carol Ruth Silver and Claude Albert Liggins talk about their experiences during the rides.
    When: 6 p.m. Jan. 24
    Where: Central Oregon Community College, Wille Hall, 2600 N.W. College Way, Bend
    Cost: Donations accepted
    Contact: 541-383-7257
    Documentary film
    Central Oregon Community College is also presenting several screenings of the PBS documentary “Freedom Riders,” which provides a history of the civil rights activists.
    All screenings are free. Contact: 541-383-7257.
    • 6 p.m. Tuesday at Becky Johnson Center, 412 S.W. Eighth St., Redmond.
    • 5 p.m. Thursday at Central Oregon Community College, Hitchcock Auditorium, 2600 N.W. College Way, Bend.
    • 11:30 a.m. Jan. 24 at Central Oregon Community College, Campus Center, 2600 N.W. College Way, Bend.
    • 4:30 p.m. Jan. 26 at Central Oregon Community College, Madras Campus, 1170 E. Ashwood Road.

    On May 4, 1961, an interracial group formed by the Congress of Racial Equality boarded a bus in Washington, D.C., and headed for New Orleans. The group comprised 12 people divided between two commercial buses. The group’s goal was to ride into the Deep South, challenging Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation in transportation terminals.

    They were called Freedom Riders. They expected conflict, but only in moderation.

    In the weeks that followed their departure, one of the buses was set ablaze in Anniston, Ala., and the passengers nearly burned to death. Riders were repeatedly swarmed and beaten by violent mobs. The government sent federal marshals to protect protesters and supporters (which included Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.) when rioters looked ready to burn the church where they were gathered in Montgomery, Ala.

    The rides continued.

    And after the bus burned in Anniston, volunteer riders began to pour in from across the country to bolster the protesters’ ranks. Among the new arrivals were Carol Ruth Silver and Claude Albert Liggins, who will speak in Bend on Jan. 24 (see “If you go”).

    ‘I have to strike out’

    Silver, now of San Francisco, was in her early 20s and working as a clerk typist in New York when she heard about the events in Anniston. She had a background in civil rights activism and picketing in Chicago, where she had just received her undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago.

    Please read more here.