Mandarin Immersion Parents Council

Learning Chinese the hard way, as an adult

November 26, 2011
Liberty teacher one of few in district trained to teach Mandarin Chinese
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Liberty High School English and Chinese teacher Denise Tatum visited Beijing in 2010. She has spent four summers studying Chinese in China.

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Liberty High School English and Chinese teacher Denise Tatum visited Beijing in 2010. She has spent four summers studying Chinese in China.
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BY JEFF MOSIER
VIEW STAFF WRITER

Posted: Nov. 1, 2011 | 12:20 a.m.

Denise Tatum spent nine weeks during the summer of 2008 at Middlebury College in Vermont speaking only in Mandarin Chinese. If anyone at the college heard a word of English from her, she would get a warning. The second time, she would forfeit her payment and be kicked out.

“It was a long summer,” said Tatum, who now teaches Chinese and English at Liberty High School, 2700 Liberty Heights Ave. “But it was worth it.”

Keeping in touch with the ones she loved was a challenge, too.

To speak with her kids, Tatum would sneak out of her dorm late at night, hide behind shrubs or trees and whisper to them on the phone.

“It was a very rough period,” Tatum said. “It was so much harder than being in China.”

She would know. Tatum has participated in four Chinese language immersion programs in Chengdu, Changchun and Shanghai, China, since 2006, when she was first introduced to the idea.

Read more here.
Mandarin in Utah

November 26, 2011

Gov. Herbert visits dual language immersion program in Syracuse

By Loretta Park

Standard-Examiner Davis Bureau

Wed, 10/19/2011 – 10:15pm

Images

SYRACUSE — Gov. Gary Herbert learned firsthand Wednesday morning how dual language immersion programs are working in Davis School District.

Herbert and his staff visited three classes at Syracuse Elementary School, where Mandarin Chinese is taught to 170 of the school’s 981 students.

Herbert’s goal is to have the program offered to 30,000 students in 100 schools across the state by 2014.

“We are a global economy,” Herbert said. “The ability to communicate will mean economic success.”

Currently, 57 schools statewide offer the program in either Chinese, French or Spanish.

The school offers Chinese to students in kindergarten through second grade in a typical dual immersion program where students divide their time between English and a second language to learn academics.

Chinese is offered in four schools in Davis district. In Utah, 31 schools offer dual immersion programs in Spanish, 17 in Mandarin Chinese and nine in French.

Read more here.
Montana teachers see what Chinese education has to offer

November 26, 2011

Posted: Friday, November 25, 2011 7:30 pm

By HILARY MATHESON/Daily Inter Lake

Besides seeing such popular sites as the Great Wall, the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square, three administrators on a visit from the Flathead Valley saw another part of China less well known — its schools.

West Valley Superintendent Todd Fiske, Helena Flats Superintendent Ann Minckler and Bigfork K-8 principal Matt Jensen were among 400 U.S. administrators who were part of the College Board Chinese Bridge Delegation. The delegation works with the Confucius Institute, an organization under China’s Ministry of Education that helps U.S. educators network with Chinese educators, observe China’s classrooms and learn about Chinese language and culture.

During their week-long visit Fiske, Minckler and Jensen visited Beijing and Jilin Province.

Fiske has traveled internationally and so has Minckler, but observing a foreign classroom was new.

“I was really excited to get into a foreign school see what classrooms look like, what kinds of activities students engage in and how teachers teach,” Minckler said.

The emphasis of the trip was helping U.S. educators develop Chinese language immersion classes. Chinese schools Fiske and Minckler visited had English immersion classes for students as young as third grade.

Read more here.
Lake Oswego school board wowed by Mandarin immersion in Minnestoa

November 25, 2011

Language immersion: How far do we go?

Pair of school board members wowed by Minnetonka program

BY REBECCA RANDALL

The Lake Oswego Review, Nov 24, 2011 (2 Reader comments)

In a school 1,700 miles away in Minnetonka, Minn., two weeks ago, teachers taught a math lesson for fifth-graders in three different languages – English, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese.

Lake Oswego School Board members Teri Oelrich and Bob Barman witnessed the lesson during their recent trip to Minnetonka and came back raving about how the experience will benefit school board members poised to make a decision on whether to offer language immersion in grades 1 through 5.

Oelrich and Barman traveled on their own dime along with Sarah Howell and Lara James, two Lake Oswego parents who are big proponents of implementing a similar language immersion model here.

Minnetonka has a lot of similarities to Lake Oswego, Ore., and so it made sense to the travelers to learn from that district. Minnetonka is a city of 49,000 with a median household income of $79,720. Its school district is similarly configured with six elementary schools, two middle schools and one high school. When the school district decided to implement language immersion, it considered a magnet model but, like Lake Oswego, its citizens value neighborhood schools. Instead, the district unrolled the new program at each of its schools in 2007.

Read more here.
Orem, Utah Mandarin immersion going strong

November 25, 2011
In second year of Chinese immersion, Orem students excel
Spenser HeapsWei Xin Le teaches a first grade Chinese immersion class at Cascade Elementary in Orem on Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2011. SPENSER HEAPS/Daily Herald

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Alpine School District
OREM — It must be one of the most singularly astonishing sights in any classroom in Utah Valley — first-graders being taught entirely in Chinese, even though they didn’t know a single word of the language until four months ago.

Alpine School District’s hugely successful Chinese language immersion program was the first of its kind here two years ago. Today, it is one of the district’s biggest success stories. The pilot group, now in second grade, has learned to speak Chinese so quickly and so fluently that the district is looking to expand the immersion program into other languages and other schools. An announcement could be made before Christmas.
Read more: http://www.heraldextra.com/news/local/central/orem/in-second-year-of-chinese-immersion-orem-students-are-fluent/article_cb94b573-dbb4-5fe0-b578-64abd04b61c6.html#ixzz1ejfAcGIB
Why Mandarin? Now in German!

November 18, 2011

The folks at the new Mandarin immersion school in Berlin have translated our FAQ into German. Kind of fun….
Summer Institutes for Immersion Teachers

November 16, 2011

From Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition.

If you care about immersion, you should join them. They have a great newsletter. -Beth

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Summer Institutes for Immersion Teachers

CARLA also offers three popular institutes that are designed specifically for immersion educators:

Immersion 101: An Introduction to Immersion Teaching for Character-Based Languages
June 25-29, 2012
Presenters: Tara Fortune and Molly Wieland
This institute provides novice immersion teachers in character-based languages with the tools and information they need to survive and thrive in the immersion classroom. The institute also includes a two-day session for administrators of immersion education programs for character-based languages.

Immersion 101: An Introduction to Immersion Teaching
July 23-27, 2012
Presenters: Tara Fortune and Veteran Immersion Educators
This institute provides novice immersion teachers with the tools and information they need to survive and thrive in the immersion classroom. The institute has been reconfigured to offer two teacher sessions simultaneously and a newly expanded 3-day session for administrators of immersion education programs.

Meeting the Challenges of Immersion Education: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom
July 30-August 3, 2012
Presenter: Roy Lyster
This institute will provide a fresh perspective on integrating language and content in the immersion classroom.

Information
More information is available on the CARLA website at: http://www.carla.umn.edu/institutes.

Registration will open on January 2, 2012.
To request a copy of a print brochure you can email the CARLA office at: carla@umn.edu.