A proposed charter school serving MetroWest will focus on bilingual education in Mandarin Chinese, according to a prospectus submitted to the state for approval last month.

The Hop Brook Regional Public Charter School was among 42 charter school proposals received by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education this summer. It was submitted for approval as a Commonwealth charter school.

According to the prospectus, submitted July 30, the school would be located in Marlborough and enroll a maximum of 324 students in kindergarten through eighth grade. It would serve school districts in Berlin, Boylston, Clinton, Framingham, Hudson and Marlborough.

The school would open next fall.

The group that submitted the prospectus consists of Jeannette Landrie, Mark Rearden and Xin Xin of Shrewsbury; Anne-Marie Laine and Richard Williamson of Boxborough; Sanne Dinkel of Westwood, and Janis Peters of Mansfield.

According to their resumes, Landrie, Dinkel and Peters are faculty members at Curry College. Laine teaches at Milton High School while Xin Xin teaches grades 5 through 8 in the Shrewsbury school system.

read more here.

Note that the World Language Academy is an English/Spanish immersion charter school in Flowery Branch, Ga., northeast of Atlanta. It begins offering Mandarin lessons in 2nd grade. The Hall County school district there is now adding similar Chinese classes in three other elementary schools. While it’s not full immersion, it’s the only Mandarin classes available in elementary school in Georgia that we can find. If you know of a Mandarin immersion school in that state, please email us.

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By Carolyn Crist ccrist@gainesvilletimes.com

Hall County School officials saw the value of teaching Chinese to pre-kindergarten students, and now four elementary schools get to take on the challenge.

After the World Language Academy opened options for young students to learn Mandarin Chinese, the Confucius Institute at Kennesaw State University offered four Chinese teachers to start programs.

The institute will provide volunteer teachers for Riverbend Elementary, Mount Vernon Elementary, Wauka Mountain Elementary and the World Language Academy, and Hall County will pay $16,000 in living expenses for each teacher. The Confucius Institute will fund all other expenses.

“We decided that implementation as early as possible is necessary in public schools,” said Carrie Woodcock, World Language Academy’s dual language director. “At World Language, students are taught in Spanish and English. We don’t teach them Spanish, we teach them in Spanish. For the Mandarin Chinese class, there was an immersion component where the teacher only spoke Chinese.

The students were very proficient by the end of the year.”

The other three elementary schools are the feeder campuses for North Hall Middle School, which boasts a growing Chinese foreign language program.

“It gives the students a jumpstart on trying to decide what foreign language they might want to study,” North Hall Middle School Principal Brad Brown said. “If they are able to get into the classes earlier and learn the basics of the sounds and symbols, the students can take more in-depth courses as they come to us. We even have a class that will allow them to earn high school credit, and I want to eventually expand the foreign language program down to offer more to the sixth and seventh grades.”

Read more here.

And here’s an article from 2008, when Hall County launched its Spanish/English immersion charter school:

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Dual immersion begins at World Language Academy

Chestnut Mountain – Hall County’s first charter school and World Language Academy opened for learning Thursday on Winder Highway at the site of the former Chestnut Mountain Elementary School.

Complete dual language immersion began with Hispanic kindergarten and first grade students beginning to hear and learn English and English speaking students beginning to learn Spanish.

Second through fifth grade students began their foreign language component including Spanish and Mandarin Chinese.

Stephanie Chambers said it’s an advantage for her daughter, Jadyn.

“I think it’s going to give them a leg up when they get older and they know at least two different languages,” she said. “ After they learn that second language it’s easier to learn a third language.”

System spokesman Gordon Higgins said the Academy is an elementary school plus.

“This is a first for us, a charter school and a school of choice and what a school it is with dual immersion, a world language academy,” Higgins said. “It’s where students will have the opportunity to be immersed in foreign language development beginning in kindergarten all the way through fifth grade.

“We’re looking for an initial enrollment of 400 students.”

Read more here.

I’m a little hesitant to post this so close to school starting – parents new to immersion, please don’t fret too much! Your kids will do fine and they’ll learn both languages, really.

But for parents with children in upper grades who have questions, this sounds like an excellent book. And it’s from a great source, The Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition at the University of Minnesota.

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Struggling Learners and Language Immersion Education

CARLA has just published the long-awaited handbook entitled “Struggling Learners and Language Immersion Education: Research-based, Practitioner-informed Responses to Educators’ Top Questions.” The handbook is geared toward immersion parents, K-8 teachers, educational specialists, administrators and policy makers who work with dual language and immersion students. Growing out of work led by Dr. Tara Fortune, immersion projects coordinator at CARLA, the book fills a vital need for information on a topic that is fast becoming a widespread challenge as immersion programs become increasingly popular across the country.

The Challenge of the Struggling Immersion Learner

When a student in an immersion program is struggling academically or socially, it can be difficult to ascertain whether the problem lies primarily with the unique learning environment of immersion or the student’s language and learning abilities. Difficulties in school relative to the average performance of classroom peers lead educators and parents to question whether the child could ultimately be successful in an immersion program or would be best served in another instructional context.  Though the questions about struggling learners in immersion education are very specific to individual students and contexts, some commonly asked questions are:

• Are the child’s reading struggles due to learning to read in a second language or might there be some other language-based disorder at play?
• Since early intervention is key, how long should teachers and parents engage in “watchful waiting” with a struggling learner before requesting additional learning support?
• Are children who have already been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder or autism able to be successful in the immersion classroom?

In order to examine these issues more closely, a summer institute centered on meeting the challenge of language and learning disorders in the immersion context was offered for two consecutive summers in 2003 and 2004 under the leadership of Tara Fortune. More than seventy professionals with experience in language immersion education came together in these institutes to examine research, exchange ideas, and listen to specialists, including researchers, special education teachers, school psychologists, and speech-language pathologists. Based on their collective experience and work done during the institutes, they created a working document examining ten of their top questions.

Answering Immersion Practitioners’ Top Questions

Building on this initial collaboration, Tara Fortune and Mandy Menke, a Ph.D. candidate in Hispanic Linguistics at the University of Minnesota, expanded and refined the practitioner contributions from the summer institutes and invited feedback from a wide range of experts in the field. The authors also solicited “real stories” from veteran immersion educators to provide a window into the complexities of each of the key issues addressed in the book.

The handbook is divided into two main sections: Program Suitability and Learner Disability and Best Practice at the Classroom- and Program-Level. Each chapter in the book focuses on a key question or set of questions, and includes:

• Real Stories—case narratives that recount lived experiences with struggling learners from a range of educational specialists, administrators and teachers
• Background information and research summaries that provide important information about the existing knowledge base on this topic
• Discussion of issues as they relate to language minority and language majority learners
• Guiding principles to inform program policies and practices
• Reference materials and useful web resources to assist educators in meeting the needs of a wide variety of language and learning challenges

The handbook will be available June 1 through the University of Minnesota Bookstore.

More information
About the project: http://www.carla.umn.edu/immersion/learners
To order the book: http://www.carla.umn.edu/resources/working-papers/

Published: Tuesday, July 27, 2010, 10:04 AM     Updated: Tuesday, July 27, 2010, 10:43 AM

Martin Griff / The Times of Trenton

PLAINSBORO – Stalled in its plans to open a Mandarin Chinese-English language school, Princeton International Academy Charter School may have competition for its intended spot at St. Joseph’s Seminary on Mapleton Road.

The American Boychoir School and the French American School of Princeton both have expressed interest in holding classes at the aging Catholic retreat center, which is being downsized as a result of church cutbacks, said officials close to the negotiations.

Members of the PIACS school charter group had hoped to open in September but ran out of time to meet qualifications specified by the state Department of Education. The group will have to wait another year and in the meantime other school groups might take up the desired space at St. Joseph’s, a 44-acre campus with neo-gothic buildings, playing fields and a gymnasium.

“Our lease (with the seminary) was null and void as of July 15,” said Parker Block, one of the charter school’s founders and its spokesman.

Read more here.