Information for parents of kids in Mandarin immersion education

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  • Why Black People Are Learning Chinese

    Why Black People Are Learning Chinese

    A growing number recognize that it will be a crucial skill for competing in the global marketplace.

    • By: Abdul Ali | Posted: October 7, 2011 at 12:01 AM
    Why Black People Are Learning Chinese

    Damon Woods (top row, third from left) with colleagues (Courtesy of Damon Woods)

    When Zuri Patterson, a second-grader, entered her new classroom the first day of school, butterflies traveled the length of her stomach right before she made formal introductions to her new classmates.

    “We say Ni Hao [pronounced “nee-how”], which means “hello” in Chinese,” said the 7-year-old attending the Washington Yu Ying Public Charter School, a Mandarin-immersion school in the northeast quadrant of the nation’s capital.

    The second-grader’s mother, Qwanda Patterson, an international traveler, told The Root, “We plan to take her to China on her 10th birthday. When I travel to Europe or Africa, everyone speaks at least two languages. Why can’t we?”

    In today’s economic climate, in which black unemployment is in the double digits, one way to give the next generation of black graduates a competitive edge is to think outside one’s borders — more globally — and learn Mandarin Chinese. Today’s black graduates aren’t competing only with their white American counterparts anymore. The landscape has changed radically in a relatively short span of time. Black graduates must now compete with their cohorts from places like China.

    The past few decades have made Zuri’s first day of school a familiar scene across the nation for many students of color living in urban areas like the District of Columbia, where black students make up about half of the children enrolled in the Washington Yu Ying Public Charter School.

    Earlier this year, Michelle Obama gave a speech at Howard University urging students to take advantage of study-abroad programs as part of President Obama’s “100,000 Strong” Initiative, which seeks to increase and diversify the number of U.S. students studying in China.

    Read more here.

     

  • UCLA Confucius Institute honors three Mandarin immersion schools

    The UCLA Confucius Institute inaugurates opening of three Mandarin immersion programs

    Published October 4, 2011, 1:01 am in News

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    web.news.10.4.confucius.picb
     The UCLA Confucius Institute held a ceremony Monday night to formally inaugurate three new Mandarin immersion programs in schools in Los Angeles and surrounding areas.

    Known as Confucius Classrooms, the programs aid in the institute’s goal to promote Chinese language and culture, said Susan Pertel Jain, executive director of the institute.

    Since its founding in 2007, the Confucius Institute has provided teaching and language centers to eight schools, said Xiaojie Ma, program coordinator for the Confucius Institute.

    Monday’s event was held at the UCLA Faculty Center and attended by Chancellor Gene Block, along with principals and students from the schools in the program.

    In a short public address, Block said the classrooms provide an enriching cultural experience and embodied a commitment to helping students succeed in a changing global economy.

    Read more here.

  • Berlin: First Mandarin immersion school in Germany opens

    My high school German is pretty rusty, but it looks like the first Mandarin immersion school has opened at a public school in Berlin. It appears to be atPlanetarium Elementary School, on  Ella-Kay Street 47, 10405 Berlin.

    The school  goes by the name Der Deutsch-Chinesischen Grundschule.

    The school is being created in two phases. In August they began the first classes for Kindergarten, first and second graders with Chinese as a focus, 4 to 7 hours a week of instruction.

    In the second phase, beginning with the 2012 school year, they will inaugurate bilingual classes.

    You can read their website here.

  • 爱读 iRead Chinese Book Club
    Chinese Language Education & Research Center
    爱读iRead Chinese Book Club is a totally FREE program for school to join, all costs will be on us, and schools can earn incentive toward future purchases. iRead provides an extensive range of engaging and interesting Chinese reading materials that will build enthusiasm within your programs. We sort through the thousands of available titles and select the very best to be included in the iRead catalog. Similar but different from the Scholastic program, iRead specializes only in Chinese language materials designed for K-5 students. iRead is designed to offer a broad range of materials for students to build a love for reading and to develop language, vocabulary and comprehension. We are able to offer these excellent titles of a great value starting at low price. School can earn incentives from the purchase toward building its own library.
    Once again thank you to all schools for supporting iRead, and thank you to all the parents placed an order for supporting Chinese Immersion Program. Also thank you to all the students and parents send us a feedback, your satisfaction is our priority. We believe that your constructive suggestions and feedbacks, which enabled us to work better on our next issue.
    In order for iRead to be more user friendly, we will setup a section on our nanhaibooks.comspecialized for iRead that will include all titles on the catalog with full descripition in both English and Chinese, and sample scan pages for all titles. Also we have include an option on our order form for parents and students to allow our experts to choose the books for them, based on students’ age, gender, and grade.
    If you are interested in joining iRead, feel free to contact us at sean@nanhai.com. And here are some information and past issue of iRead.
    Friendly reminder:
    ★For school participated, your gift certificate have been issued, and they are expiring on Sept 30, 2011. If you haven’t receive your gift certificate please contact us immediately.
    ★iRead for Fall 2011 will be shipped out last week of Sept, you will be contacted to update your school information. If you wish to join please contact us immediately.

    About Us
    Thank your customer, tell them how valuable they are to you, but don’t go overboard. Insincerity is easy to spot.

  • More on the new Orange County program

    Capo to Offer County’s First Chinese Language Program

    Decked out in red, about 60 parents and their children from all around O.C. show up to urge support for the immersion program. Finding qualified teachers will be the biggest challenge, district staff say.

     方案批准: “Program approved.”

    A Mandarin Chinese language program will be offered in the next school year at Capistrano Unified.

    The school district’s board of trustees Monday voted 6-0 to forge ahead with the program that will teach students the most-spoken language in the world.

    It will be the first program of its kind in Orange County, with as much as 80 percent of instruction in Mandarin, and trustees said they would like to see it attract students from outside the district.

    “If there was just one skill I could give to my daughters, it would be to speak Mandarin Chinese fluently,” Leland Jay of Seal Beach told the board.

    He and other parent supporters later said they would be willing to drive up to an hour to get to a Mandarin Chinese immersion program. About 60 parents attended the meeting to urge support of the program.

    Read more here.

  • Orange County to get its first Mandarin immersion school

    District to Develop County’s First Public School Mandarin Language Immersion Program

    Trustees Approve Proposal to Offer World’s Most Spoken Language

    Students in the Capistrano Unified School District will be able to learn the most spoken language on the planet, the Board of Trustees decided at its meeting on Monday night.

    District staff will create a Mandarin Chinese immersion program, the first in an Orange County public school system, and one of about 80 nationwide, in time for the 2012-2013 school year.

    “A challenging economic environment is no excuse for not being able to offer new and innovative educational programs requested by our community,” Board Clerk John M. Alpay said. “There is intense demand for this language, and in an era of school choice and competition, our ability to offer this program to our families reaffirms this District’s status as an innovative provider of quality education. Again, Capistrano Unified is demonstrating that it is capable of providing the education necessary for its students to succeed in a global marketplace.”

    While English is the language spoken by academics, businesspeople, aviators, and other global professionals and is the world’s third most popular language, Mandarin is the world’s most spoken language with more than one billion speakers. The program has proven to be welcomed by parents countywide, with 165 families having committed their students to attend the program.

    “The third pillar of the District’s strategic plan is academic achievement and enrichment. Adding this program fits right into the vision for helping student become successful in both college and career,” Trustee Anna Bryson said. “Allowing students this intense language focus will ensure that they are bilingual and biliterate when they graduate, which gives them an advantage over many of their peers who will not have this opportunity.”

    Students who choose to attend the program would begin in kindergarten or first grade with 80 percent of instruction taking place in Mandarin. The program will be phased in with kindergarten, and, if feasible, first grade. The program will be placed at an existing school site, and utilize the same open enrollment policies currently in place for the District’s highly successful Spanish two-way immersion programs.

    For more information on the Mandarin immersion program, please contact Amy Bryant, director of curriculum and instructional support, at (949) 234-9254.

  • The Mandarin Institute’s latest newsletter