Mandarin Immersion Parents Council

Information for parents of kids in Mandarin immersion education

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  • Moving to Beijing – the nuts and bolts of the matter

    Admit it – at some point in the dark of the night you’ve thought “You know, the REAL way to get my kids to learn Mandarin would just be to move to China. What am I doing here in (San Francisco/Seattle/St. Paul/Denver/your-city-name-here) anyway? China’s the wave of the future. We should just MOVE.”

    Well, San Francisco mom Kayla is doing what most of us only fantasize about – she’s picking up and moving to Beijing. In January. And she’s writing a blow-by-blow account of just how much work it takes on her blog (for which those of us who haven’t quite worked out how we’d do it are most grateful.)

    Her first post is below. You can read the latest here. Start at the beginning and read until now. You might rethink your pie-in-the-sky plans to decamp to Beijing. Or you might buy a ticket tomorrow….

    ====

    MONDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2011

    The Big Decision

    Last week I made the ultimate decision to quit my job and move me and my kid to Beijing.  I have wanted to do it at least since spending the better part of last summer traveling around China.  My daughter, LiLi, is in a public Mandarin Immersion school in San Francisco, CA.  Her Mandarin is excellent and her accent sounds like a native, or so I’m told.  But, I’m also told that learning Mandarin in the US, even at a good school, means that at the beginning of third grade she knows a few hundred characters; if we were in China by now she’d know around 2000.

    We have some friends who moved to Central and South America so their kids could learn Spanish and I’ve long thought that that was a great idea.  I’ve recently reconnected with them, read their blog, and been inspired by their courage and sense of adventure.  I also met a family this past summer in Beijing who decided then that they’d move with their family of three young kids.  The dad, from Ghana, said that Mandarin is going to be so important to our kids’ generation and that the place to learn it was right there, in Beijing.  A couple of weeks later they went home, packed up their house, and moved.  Since then I’ve hooked up with a whole cohort of expat families who have done the same thing for the same reason.

    Since I have been telling friends and other school families about our plans, I’ve been asked how it feels.  It feels:  exciting; overwhelming; exhilarating.  Mostly, it feels “right.”  The last few days I’ve been reflecting on that, and the various considerations and pieces of the life-altering-changes puzzle.  A big piece is  Mandarin Immersion.  What better place to immerse my daughter in the language?  But there are other pieces too.  There are professional considerations, mid-life crisis ones (move to Beijing or buy myself a black Jaguar E-type?), getting unstuck.  Heritage is another big piece.  My father was born in China and left during a Japanese invasion in the 1930s when many Mainlanders fled.  He recalled running through a field as bombs were dropping.  He was the youngest of four kids and remembered my grandmother pulling on his arm to run faster.  He was about my daughter’s age when they left China for Malaysia, later coming to the US for college and medical school. So there’s a huge piece that feels a bit like I’m going home.  It’s odd because though I’ve traveled in China a handful of times, I’ve never lived in China.  Perhaps there is something to the fact that some hotels and the visa ap refer to US born Chinese (even half-Chinese/half-Caucasians like me) as “Overseas Chinese.”

    We will move to Beijing in late January 2012.  I intend to write here some of our experiences and welcome you to join us on this adventure.  : )

    -Kayla

  • Mandarin thriving in Minnesota

     

     

    PHOTO BY BRYNA GODAR

    Siblings Cassidy and Cormac Calcaterra in their uniforms at Yinghua Academy.

    Chinese immersion schools growing in popularity

    BY BRYNA GODAR

    NORTHEAST PARK — At Yinghua Academy, children’s art lines the walls – thumbprint trees, traced hands, self-portraits. It looks like most elementary school hallways, but the kids have signed their artwork twice, once in English and once in Chinese characters.

    Yinghua Academy, 1616 Buchanan St. NE, opened in 2006 as the first Chinese immersion charter public school in the Midwest. Students learn a curriculum ranging from history to math, all in Mandarin Chinese. Teachers instruct students completely in Chinese for kindergarten and first grade. In second grade one English class is added, and by sixth grade the curriculum is taught half in English and half in Chinese. Signs on classroom doors ask visitors to not speak English to the
    teachers in front of students.

    Many students don’t even know their teachers can speak English, said Karen Calcaterra, the grant administrator and a parent of two students at Yinghua. She and her husband believe in the value of bilingualism. They lived in China for a year on sabbatical while Craig Calcaterra, Karen’s husband, worked as a visiting math professor. Karen Calcaterra taught English to the freshmen. They enrolled their kids at Yinghua after returning to St. Paul, aiming to continue their Chinese education.

    “It’s a pretty cool thing, I like it,” said her son Cormac Calcaterra, a fifth-grader at Yinghua. “It teaches you one of the most hardest languages to learn: Chinese.”

    “For us, immersion provides multilingualism, proven cognitive benefits and flexibility, dynamic and engaging teaching methods, and opportunities for deep cultural connections and understandings,” Karen Calcaterra said.

    Please read more here.

  • New Jersey PTA opposes Mandarin Immersion K-5 because it has Chinese in high school

    OP-ED: West Orange Council of PTAs Weighs in on Charter School Application

    Council urges residents to sign a petition opposing the approval of the Hua Mei Charter School.

    • 9:23 am

    Dear West Orange Families:

    We need your support to save our district’s funding and not allow the State Department of Education to approve a charter school application that would siphon money away from our school budget.

    The Hua Mei Charter School, designed to be a Mandarin language immersion school for children in grades K – 2 located in Maplewood, will take $688,018 from the West Orange Public Schools its first year of operation, not including the cost of transportation that the district will incur for the children who attend it from West Orange. The amount the district will need to contribute to the charter school’s operation is expected to increase yearly as the school expands to grades K – 5 . Also, the amount the district needs to contribute to the school’s operation was set by the State Department of Education based on their projection that 52 West Orange children will attend the first year.

    Please read more here.

  • Portland, long a leader in Mandarin immersion, adding French

    French immersion charter school gets green light to open in Portland next fall

    Published: Thursday, December 15, 2011, 7:09 PM     Updated: Thursday, December 15, 2011, 7:32 PM
    On a 4-3 vote, the Portland school board tonight approved the launch of a publicly funded French immersion elementary school in the city next fall.

    Seattle and Eugene already have public schools that teach students by immersing them in French, but this will be a first for the Portland area. Portland Public Schools offers elementary students immersion programs in Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin and Japanese.

    Three of seven school board members voted no on the French charter school, making this a rare divided vote for the elected Portland board. Ruth Adkins, Matt Morton and Martin Gonzalez cast the no votes.

    Backers of Le Monde Public Charter School say they think they can operate a financially and instructionally sound school even though they they will not receive the $500,000 in federal start-up grants that have helped launch nearly every other charter school in Oregon.

    Please read more here.

  • Some parents oppose Park City, Utah immersion programs

    Dual-immersion in the neighborhood

    McPolin will hold a meeting at the school on Dec. 15
    Megan Yeiter , The Park Record
    Posted: 12/13/2011 04:42:12 PM MST

    Several parents and community members are concerned about McPolin Elementary School’s dual-immersion program, which is set to be implemented next year. According to Park City School District Director of Curriculum Lori Gardner, the question is: in what capacity will the program be implemented.McPolin Elementary School Principal Bob Edmiston will hold a meeting on Thursday, Dec. 15, at 5:30 p.m. at MPES, for parents interested in learning more about the school’s dual-immersion options. Edmiston will present three models, according to Gardner, who said the school has a few different options to consider because of its unique demographic.

    “Bob will be presenting three options. One is the one-class model, which would involve about 25 first-grade students, half would be native Spanish speakers and half would be non-native Spanish speakers,” Gardner said. “The second would be the 50/50 model, which are the models we have at the other schools. This would involve about 50 to 55 students.”

    Another option would be the Whole School Model, which would begin with first-graders in 2012-2013, and expand a grade level each year. According to McPolin parents Mimi Denton, Ericha Oberg and Jen Kelly, this model raises issues for the people living within the boundaries of McPolin who don’t want their children enrolled in the dual-immersion program.

    Please read more here.

  • Portland Ore., home to a storied Mandarin program, may get French too

    After a lengthy public hearing and discussion Monday, the Portland school board is poised to decide Thursday whether to approve the metro area’s first public French immersion school.

    Backers of the proposed Le Monde Public Charter School want to open a 400-student full immersion French language school in Southwest Portland next fall. They would start with kindergarten and first grade, and all teaching would be in French except a short daily English language lesson for the first-graders, organizers say.

    As a charter school, it would be free to students and open to children from any area school district, with students chosen by lottery if more apply than there are seats available.

    Seattle and Eugene have public schools that offer French immersion, but Portland, with a large and active Francophile community, does not, said Linda Witt, director of the nonprofit Alliance Francaise of Portland, which offers continuing education in French to local adults.

    Please read more here.

  • New Jersey charter Mandarin program inches closer

    Hua Mei Charter School Makes First Cut in Latest Review

    Proposed charter school would draw students from West Orange

    Charter schools are inching ever closer to West Orange. The charter school application for Hua Mei, a Mandarin-immersion school that would draw students from West Orange, is one step closer to being approved, according to NJ Spotlight.

    Hua Mei is one of 17 proposed charter schools in New Jersey that is still in the running, according to Gov. Chris Christie. So far, more than half of the 42 charter school applications have been rejected.

    If approved, Hua Mei would be housed in the St. Joseph’s RC Church on Prospect Avenue in Maplewood and draw students from South Orange-Maplewood and West Orange.

    Superintendent of Schools Dr. Anthony Cavanna said Hua Mei would would drain money from school district.

    “If students from West Orange want to attend the charter school, the district has to pay a 90 percent per pupil expenditure to the charter school and it will add to the budget,” he said at Monday’s board of education meeting.

    Please read more here.