(from the North County Times, San Diego County)

By GARY WARTH – gwarth@nctimes.com | Posted: Wednesday, June 2, 2010 6:32 pm

Elementary school students in Fallbrook will study Mandarin Chinese, learn English and Spanish through immersion, and become international scholars as part of the district’s efforts to prepare youngsters for a global market.

“I think a lot of people, when they hear ‘Mandarin,’ they say ‘Why would people need to learn Mandarin? This is an English- and Spanish-speaking community,’” said Stacey Larson-Everson, director of state and federal programs for the Fallbrook Union Elementary School District.

But despite the early naysayers, parents of more than 700 students have enrolled their children in Mandarin Chinese classes for kindergarten through eighth grade beginning this fall, Larson-Everson said. The district has about 5,500 students in nine schools.

Fallbrook will be one of the few districts in the county to offer Mandarin Chinese language classes. Mandarin also is taught at Del Norte High School, which opened this year in 4S Ranch as the newest campus in the Poway Unified School District, and Larson-Everson said she has heard it also is taught at Riverview Elementary School in Lakeside and at another school in Point Loma.

While Mandarin Chinese is rarely taught in public schools, federal and state officials have identified it as one of the languages that more Americans should know in the future as China continues to grow in the global marketplace. Jim Esterbrooks, spokesman for the San Diego County Office of Education, said English, Mandarin and Spanish are spoken by about 80 percent of the world’s population.

In January, the state Board of Education adopted world language content standards for California public schools and identified foreign language skills as essential for 21st-century success.

In May, the county Board of Education also supported world language opportunities with a resolution that said the skills would help both students and the region prosper.

The U.S. Department of Education has identified Mandarin, Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Russian, and languages in the Indic, Iranian, and Turkic language families as “priority languages” that should be taught more.

To encourage districts to offer the languages, the Education Department is offering Foreign Language Assistance Program grants as incentives. Larson-Everson said the Fallbrook distinct is waiting to hear whether it will receive grant money for its program, although it will proceed with the classes in any case.

Larson-Everson said the district will hire two part-time instructional assistants next year to teach Mandarin in the first year. The classes will be taught in all grade levels at all schools, probably in 30-minute blocks taught twice a week, Larson-Everson said.

Read more here.

The STARTALK/Confucius Institute Chinese language immersion sports camp is now accepting applications for its three-week residential program on the UH Mānoa campus.

Thirty motivated middle and high school students, ages 12-17, with no or little experience in Chinese, will be selected to participate. Half will be from Hawai‘i and the rest from the U.S. mainland.

Participants will acquire basic communication skills in Chinese, and use these skills to make friends with each other during the camp, as well as getting to know contemporary China and its culture. For physical activity, they will practice table tennis and martial arts daily, under the tutelage of championship level instructors from the People’s Republic of China.

Alumni of the camp are invited to travel to China in subsequent summers. The camp will begin on July 5 and end on July 23.

In the same program, twenty Chinese language teachers who seek to make language learning fun and effective will be focusing on innovative, meaningful activities for students, including technology driven ones. A teacher-training institute will begin July 1, and continue throughout the camp.

On the last day of the camp and institute, students will stage performances to entertain and demonstrate their skills in Mandarin Chinese and understanding of Chinese culture. These performances will be video-recorded and shared with a national audience.

more here.

(from the Clare County Review)

Farwell BOE told 27 sign up for kindergarten Chinese

The start of Monday night’s Farwell Area Schools Board of Education meeting was delayed so that Board members could attend the band concert that was scheduled at the same time as their usual 6:00 p.m. meeting.  Acting as Chair for the meeting, Treasurer Irene Hanner called the meeting to order at 7:43 p.m.

The information/discussion agenda was relatively small, and the Board took just over an hour before they went into Closed Session to discuss negotiations.

Superintendent Dave Peterson reported, “We just finished up kindergarten round-up last week Friday, and we’re pretty much on track with other years; we’re in the mid-80s for kindergarteners enrolled.”

Of those 80-some, Peterson said that 27 had signed up for the new Chinese Immersion program.  “We will have a lottery,” Peterson said, “It’s the only fair way to do it.  Not all that’s signed up will get this program because you just can’t.”   Kindergarten classes usually have 20 to 25 students in them, and the sign-up period for the Chinese Immersion program extends until May 17^th.  Peterson also noted that a grant that is pending may also be used to expand the Chinese Immersion program to pre-schoolers.

read more here.

The founding families of East Bay Mandarin Immersion seek to create a public K-8 Mandarin immersion program in the East Bay targeted to open Fall 2011.

Our children need skills such as cultural awareness, second language skills, creativity and critical thinking to effectively contribute to our global community.

Come to our free informational meeting to learn more about creating a world-class educational opportunity for our children. Wednesday,

May 26th at 6pm at the South Branch Berkeley Public Library at 1901 Russell St at MLK.

Please RSVP to eastbayimmersion@gmail.com. Look forward to meeting you!

Guest-Teaching Chinese, and Learning America

Matt Nager for The New York Times

Zheng Yue, who has been teaching Chinese in MacArthur High School in Lawton, Okla., working with a student, Raymond Veal.

By SAM DILLON

Published: May 9, 2010

LAWTON, Okla. — Zheng Yue, a young woman from China who is teaching her native language to students in this town on the Oklahoma grasslands, was explaining a vocabulary quiz on a recent morning. Then a student interrupted.

The New York Times

“Sorry, I was zoning out,” said the girl, a junior wearing black eye makeup. “What are we supposed to be doing?”

Ms. Zheng seemed taken aback but patiently repeated the instructions.

“In China,” she said after class, “if you teach the students and they don’t get it, that’s their problem. Here if they don’t get it, you teach it again.”

To read more, please click here.