This is the annual Chinese literary arts contest in San Francisco. Many students in the Mandarin immersion programs participate, especially in the recitation of poems, translation and Chinese drawing.

Mandarin immersion: 90 percent of curriculum in Chinese

[My own op ed – the man has a point. But I figure it’s easier to learn Chinese as a little kid and then pick up Spanish in high school than the other way around – Beth]

Op-Ed Columnist

Primero Hay Que Aprender Español. Ranhou Zai Xue Zhongwen.

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: December 29, 2010

Damon Winter/The New York Times

Nicholas D. Kristof

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Answer: an American.

Yet these days, we’re seeing Americans engaged in a headlong and ambitious rush to learn Chinese — or, more precisely, to get their kids to learn Chinese. Everywhere I turn, people are asking me the best way for their children to learn Chinese.

Partly that’s because Chinese classes have replaced violin classes as the latest in competitive parenting, and partly because my wife and I speak Chinese and I have tortured our three kids by trying to raise them bilingual. Chinese is still far less common in schools or universities than Spanish or French, but it is surging and has the “cool factor” behind it — so public and private schools alike are hastening to add Chinese to the curriculum.

In New York City alone, about 80 schools offer Chinese, with some programs beginning in kindergarten. And let’s be frank: If your child hasn’t started Mandarin classes by third grade, he or she will never amount to anything.

Just kidding. In fact, I think the rush to Chinese is missing something closer to home: the paramount importance for our children of learning Spanish.

Read more here.

By GEOFFREY A. FOWLER

Weighing the public education options for his two children, El Cerrito doctor Michael Jugo felt the East Bay fell short. He wanted them to have an advantage he didn’t have growing up: learning Chinese at school.

“The writing was on the wall that there wasn’t going to be an option for us without moving or paying private tuition,” says Mr. Jugo, 38 years old, who learned Mandarin after college and speaks it at home with his kids, ages 2 and 5, and wife, who is Chinese-American.

Or so he thought. Instead, Mr. Jugo chose an even more difficult path—creating a Chinese-language public charter school in his own county.

After a year of planning, Mr. Jugo and a group of four other families in November received unanimous approval from Alameda County to launch a Mandarin Chinese immersion charter school, the first of its kind in the state.

The Yu Ming Charter School—the name roughly translates as “Nurturing Tomorrow”—is now hunting for a principal and hopes to begin classes in the fall for about 100 kindergarten and first-grade students, expanding over time to include up to the eighth grade. So far, about 120 families have expressed interest or attended meetings for the school.

Read more here.

From Sampan, New England’s Chinese newsletter.

Diverse supporters of Mandarin immersion school unite

by Staff Writer on December 17, 2010

Lisa Du Breuil and Mary Xiaohui Breuil -a Caucasian mother and her five-year-old Chinese-born daughter – arrived early and grabbed front row seats at a public hearing held at Boston City Hall on December 7.  They signed up to speak in support of the proposed Boston Chinese Immersion Charter School (BCICS) during the hearing.  The Du Breuils were among the some sixty attendees who were dressed in bright-red T-shirts.

It was a full house on the hearing floor.  Held by members of the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Second Education (DESE), the hearing was to solicit public comment on 14 of the 23 proposed charter schools that are in final stages of review.  Dozens of individuals spoke, either in support or in opposition of a particular proposed charter school, took turns to speak before the state panel.  This hearing was one of the eight to provide feedback to DESE.

“When we adopted our daughter Mary Xiaohui, who was 18 months old at the time, we made a solemn promise to the Chinese government to teach her about China and to help her grow up to be proud of being Chinese. We take that promise very seriously. My husband and I are white, so we need help keeping that promise, and there are thousands of other families in the Greater Boston area just like us,” Du Breuil said in her testimony before the DESE officials.

Read more here.

D220 approves Chinese classes

By Carolyn Rusin TribLocal reporter Yesterday at 12:56 p.m.

Barrington School District 220 will offer a Mandarin Chinese immersion program for tots through teens next fall, now that the board of education has voted to accept a $1.5 million federal matching grant for the program for five years.

School board members had been mulling over whether to take on the financial obligation posed by the grant, which was awarded in the summer. They voted 6-1 to accept it at a meeting Tuesday night.

The district  will become the only one in the state to offer Chinese immersion from kindergarten through high school, said Todd Bowen, chairman of the  world language department, who secured the grant from the U.S. Department Education. Chinese already was offered in middle school and high school and now will be extended to the elementary grades.

read more here.

from the Barrington Patch

Board of Education Accepts Chinese Immersion Grant

Barrington 220 School District is the only district in the state of Illinois, and one of 22 in the entire country to be awarded the $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education Foreign Language Assistance program in 2010.

World Languages Department Chairman Todd Bowen said the elementary Chinese immersion program is a unique opportunity for students to develop professional competence in an Asian language. _

The new program will be introduced in January 2011 as a voluntary after school enrichment class for kindergarteners in the district.  Barbara B. Rose Elementary School will be the first to have the full immersion program in place for kindergarten and first-grade classes during the 2011-2012 school year. Chinese language immersion at the elementary level will feed into the existing 6-12 program at the district.

Article here.