By Elizabeth Weise, MIPC

The Denver Language School has cojones. There’s just no other way to put it. On August 12 they started an entirely new school with 240 students, a little more than half in Spanish immersion and a little less than half in Mandarin immersion.

And no English during the school day.

None. Nada. Mei you.

Wow. Now that’s immersion.

To be fair, executive director Brian Weber explains that they have English language arts available in their afterschool program for parents who want it, or for children whose teachers deem it necessary. But the school doesn’t plan to introduce English classes during the school day until third grade.

DLS was approved as a charter school by the Denver Public School District in June of 2009 and opened its doors on Aug. 12, 2010. Unlike Princeton, NJ, which shot down a Mandarin charter this year “Denver is one of the most open districts in the country” to charters, says Weber.

The school opened with three Spanish immersion Kindergartens and one 1^st/2^nd grade split class, and two Mandarin immersion Kindergartens and a 1^st/2^nd grade split, for a total of four Spanish and three Mandarin classrooms. There are on average 26 students per class.

The school day runs from 8:00 am to 3:00 pm. Classes include math, science, language arts, social studies and art, all taught in either Spanish or Mandarin. Physical education and a theater class are taught in English.

“If there’s a need for English, it’s done in the hallway or some other place,” says Weber.

In the afterschool program, from 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm, just getting underway now, students have time for homework or language support, then enrichment. The cost is $5 a day, unless a student’s teacher feels they need the extra time, in which case it’s free.

The school looked a research about immersion and saw that students typically catch up in English class by 5^th or 6^th grade, and so made the decision to focus on the target languages in the beginning years.

“We’ve been very clear when they sign up for this about what this model entails,” says Weber. After all, the children are exposed to English at home and everywhere else. By offering optional English in the afterschool program “we felt we could maintain the integrity of our program.”

Most immersion schools begin at 90% instruction in the target language and 10% in English, moving to closer to 50/50 by 4^th grade. Some begin at 50/50. Denver’s program will provide its students with what is perhaps the most rigorous public language program available in the United States. UPDATE: Actually, Yinghua Academy in St. Paul, Minn, also does no English in the first two grades.

The program teaches using simplified characters, though recognition of some traditional characters is also taught, says deputy director Jian Lin. For textbooks they’re using Land Bridge for Early Learners from HanBan. Teachers come from both Taiwan and China. In Mandarin the classes also have teaching assistants through the HanBan program out of China.

The school opened as K – 2 in part because state law dictates that Kindergarten classes only get half funding. “It’s very difficult to open K-1, because you don’t’ get the funding,” says Weber.

The school is run by a team that includes Lin, Janine Erickson, who heads the Spanish immersion portion of the school (and was also immediate past president of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) and Weber.

It was begun with financial support from Denver’s Stapleton Foundation, which works on education and social issues. Weber’s position is funded by the foundation, which allowed him to spend the past two years working to create the program.

While opening a two-language, seven classroom, 240-student school might seem daunting, the real issue was dealing with the students it couldn’t accommodate, says Weber. “We had 480 applicants for 225 slots,” he says. Students were chosen by random lottery.  The only other public immersion program nearby is the Global Village Academy in Aurora, 20 minutes away, which is now in its fourth year.

The school’s goal is to serve a student population with at least 40% receiving free and reduced price lunches. This year they’re at between 20 to 25%, Weber says. The school also provides a bus to bring students in from low income neighborhoods.

Originally the plan was to have two Mandarin and two Spanish Kindergartens but “along about December the enrollment was so high for Spanish kids that we had 125 kids for 50 slots, so we added a third Kindergarten class,” says Weber.

The Denver school district is very open to teaching other languages, and District Superintendent Tom Boasberg spent eight years himself teaching in China and is a fluent Mandarin speaker.

The school is currently located in a school district building, which staff estimate will work for four to five years and then “we’ll have to built or renovate,” says Weber. “It’s going to cost around $10 million.”

While they’re already getting calls about exporting their charter model to other schools, that won’t happen for years he says. “What we’re trying to do is really stay focused on our fundamental mission for the next three years of doing this right. I know from experience that trying to expand to charter management too quickly doesn’t work, it takes a while to do it right.”

Being this kind of start up requires a great deal of flexibility on all sides, says Weber. “It’s certainly not a bed of roses. It’s like building a house while you’re trying to live in it. The watchword here is patience and adjustment,” he says.

They’re trying to see what works and change what doesn’t no the fly. “Sometimes that can be frustrating for parents, because as much as they intellectually understand that it’s new, emotionally for their kids they want it to be perfect.”

But, he says, it’s a good lesson for everyone: “Take a deep breath, it’s going to be okay. This is Kindergarten.

You can see their website here.

The first meeting of the MIPC for the 2010-2011 school year went very well indeed. It began with a brisk sale of MIPC character placemats, t-shirts and hoodies created by JOES parent Elizabeth Olson (all available on our website as well.)

Jose Ortega Elementary hosted our meeting – special thanks to principal JoLynn Washington who stayed until 7:30 so she could lock the doors behind us.

We’ve got four committees forming for this year that need participants –

Books: Help find our kids fun, enticing books in Chinese! This committee will work with publishers, the library, some universities and talk to other Chinese immersion schools to come up with annotated lists of books for each grade. Let’s get our kids reading!

Banquet: We’re planning a spring Chinese banquet to honor our teachers for all they do to help our children learn Mandarin. It will be held at a local restaurant. If you like food, event planning or just have a line on a great banquet restaurant, this is the committee for you.

China: Our first Mandarin immersion students graduate from 5th grade in the spring of 2012. We’re hoping that eventually we can start fund raising in Kindergarten so that all 5th graders (or potentially 8th graders) can take a class trip to China. But for our first couple of years, we’re thinking more that families that want to can create a stand-alone trip with a strong educational component that’s open to all who chose to participate. This is the committee for those who know China, know travel or just want to make sure there’s a great opportunity for our kids to go somewhere where everyone speaks Mandarin.

and finally,

Middle School: Starr King parent Katie Olson, who’s ably and calmly lead the MIPC Middle School committee during this period of massive change in our middle school plans, gave a great overview of where things currently stand. She urged all parents to make their wishes known to the School Board (emails are on both schools’ lists) and to stay tuned for Sept. 13, when District staff will make their revised presentation to the School Board.

Finally, thanks to Kellyn, who coordinated the meeting at JOES, Scott who created the Powerpoint that kept things short and sweet, and Carrie for all the really delicious plums!

This is from a parent at Lincoln High School in San Francisco.
Lincoln has long had Cantonese immersion students from Alice Fong Yu (K-8) and West Portal (K-5) feeding into it. Here are some of what they learned worked and didn’t work. It’s a useful bit of information as the newer (read: most of us) Mandarin immersion schools work our way on up to high school. They’re looking for feedback on what content  class would be for immersion students at high school?  We’d love feedback from programs that are already up to high school. What works and what doesn’t?

Some background:
1. 1997-1999: Lincoln’s Chinese immersion program used integrated science (Cantonese) as the content class for immersion students. It was very successful.

2. 2000: Lincoln used Algebra I as the content class and it didn’t work. The main reason was that not all students’ math level was the same. The teacher had to deal with math problem, as well as language problem.

3. Some parents did not want the core content class (math, science, social studies) to be taught in Chinese. This is an offshoot of Alice Fong Yu’s model: students only get Chinese in their Chinese language classes  after 7th grade. (one Cantonese and one Mandarin). But of course this model won’t work for Mandarin immersion middle school program since students will not learn Cantonese. It will not work for high school, either, although Lincoln is capable of doing that. (Lincolnhas a Chinese language art track for native speakers of Cantonese. Currently many immersion students choose that track, too.)

4. Current proposal at Lincoln: 9th grade: Geometry as the content class. Language class will be based on students’ proficiency level: they may choose the regular Chinese track or immersion track or native speaker track. 10th grade: students take AP Chinese only.

Back to school, plenty of change

Maillard middle school principal Andrew Graham welcomes back students Tuesday morning to the Coquitlam school, which was closed for a year for a $7-million seismic upgrade (see story, page 12). The students joined thousands of others for opening day and will be back in classes today. Among the visitors in School District 43 was B.C. Education Minister Margaret MacDiarmid, who was on hand to welcome the first class of full-day kindergarten students at Walton elementary school.

JENNIFER GAUTHIER/THE TRI-CITY NEWS
Buy The Tri-City News Photos Online

It’s back to school for 30,000 students in School District 43 but more than 1,000 kindergarten kids will simply be meeting their teachers and checking out their classrooms during welcome interviews set to take place this week.

On Tuesday, 20 kindergarten students experienced their first taste of school life under the glare of the media spotlight and got to sit cross-legged on the floor with B.C.’s education minister, Margaret MacDiarmid.

The minister was in the Tri-Cities to highlight the province’s $280-million commitment to implementing full-day kindergarten for all five-year-olds in B.C. as well as a $144.5-million investment in new classroom space for these students.

She visited Coquitlam’s Walton elementary school, which is also the site of B.C.’s first bilingual Mandarin program, and congratulated the district in meeting the demand for the popular language program.

“I think it’s a program that’s appropriate for B.C. We have such close ties [to Asia] with our education and it’s one of the most important languages to have,” MacDiarmid told The Tri-City News.

She said she wouldn’t be surprised if other school boards introduced Mandarin immersion, with the only issue being finding enough Mandarin-speaking teachers familiar with the B.C. kindergarten curriculum.

Although the province is rolling out full-day kindergarten for all students in 2010 and 2011, MacDiarmid said there are no plans to change the current curriculum for the longer day.

Read more here.