Mandarin Immersion Parents Council

Information for parents of kids in Mandarin immersion education

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  • Bilinguals and Multi-tasking

    From a great article on the ‘tip-of-the-tongue’ phenomenon by Dan Vergano at

    www.usatoday.com/tech/science/columnist/vergano/2009-10-18-tip-tongue_N.htm

    It’s mostly about bilingual sign language speakers, but he’s got a bit of interesting data on bilingual people:

    Pyers and other have shown that people who speak more than one language possess advantages that make a difference, beyond just fluency in another tongue.

    In the current Cognition, for example, a study led by Albert Costa of Spain’s Universitat Pompeu Fabra, finds that “when the task at hand recruits a good deal of monitoring resources, bilinguals outperform monolinguals.”

    In other words, multiple language speakers possess a better attention span for hard tasks. And they seem to be better at switching their focus from one task to the next, a real advantage in our era of multi-tasking emails, cellphones and occupations.

    “The explanation is that they practice controlling their languages, repressing one at the expense of the other, constantly,” Pyers says. “So they are just better at controlling their focus.” Turns out, you just have to practice paying attention, too.

  • Does someone at Wired have kids in Mandarin immersion?

    http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-10/st_best

    In this month’s issue of Wired magazine, number six on the list of  “The 10 Best Things We’ll Say to Our Grandkids” is

    *

    (“English used to be the dominant language. Crazy, huh?”)

    And a couple of years ago in a Wired feature article on the costs of raising a world-dominating child, the only school suggested was the Chinese American International School, so as to have little Johnny be fluent in Mandarin. Of course that was before there were dozens of Mandarin immersion public schools around the nation.

    Not that we’re out after world-dominating children, merely happily bilingual ones. But we’re clearly more and more part of the Zeitgeist, or at least one of them.

  • Dyslexia in Chinese

    Dyslexia varies across language barriers Chinese-speaking children with dyslexia have a disorder that is distinctly different, and perhaps more complicated and severe, than that of English speakers. Those differences can be seen in the brain and in the performance of Chinese children on visual and oral language tasks, reveals a report published online on October 12th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication.

    English dyslexia consists of a “phonological disorder,” meaning that people with the condition have trouble detecting or manipulating the sound structure of oral language, which in turn leads to problems in mapping speech sounds onto letters, explained Wai Ting Siok of the University of Hong Kong. In contrast, the new findings show that developmental dyslexia in Chinese is really two disorders: a visuospatial deficit and a phonological disorder combined.

    Siok and her colleague Li Hai Tan say the difference can be traced to the characteristics of the two languages. “In English, the alphabetic letters that form visual words are pronounceable, so access to the pronunciation of English words is made possible by using letter-to-sound conversion rules,” Siok said.

    “Written Chinese maps graphic forms—i.e., characters—onto meanings; Chinese characters possess a number of intricate strokes packed into a square configuration, and their pronunciations must be memorized by rote.

    This characteristic suggests that a fine-grained visuospatial analysis must be performed by the visual system in order to activate the characters’ phonological and semantic information. Consequently, disordered phonological processing may commonly coexist with abnormal visuospatial processing in Chinese dyslexia.”

    The researchers asked normal and dyslexic Chinese readers to judge the physical size of visual stimuli and found that normal readers performed significantly better than dyslexic readers. Brain scans showed that, compared with normal readers, dyslexics exhibited weaker activation in a portion of the brain known to mediate visuospatial processing.

    Crucially, Siok said, most Chinese dyslexics with the visuospatial problem also exhibited a phonological processing disorder, as demonstrated by their poor performance in a phonology-related rhyme judgment task, suggesting the coexistence of two disorders. “Our study for the first time demonstrates the coexistence of visuospatial and phonological disorders in dyslexics,” which presents a challenge to current theories to explain developmental dyslexia, Tan said. “Our results strongly indicate the need for a unifying theory of sufficient scope to accommodate the full complexity of the observed dysfunctions and interactions of the brain systems underlying reading impairments.”

    ###

    The researchers include Wai Ting Siok, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China; John A. Spinks, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China; Zhen Jin, Beijing Hospital, Beijing, China; and Li Hai Tan, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.

  • Beth and the MIPC in the Miami Herald

    The Miami Herald just published an article about Mandarin immersion…

    School teaches in English, Mandarin

    A new bilingual English/Mandarin school has opened in South Miami, following a national trend of Mandarin immersion programs across the country

    By Jared Goyette

    Beth was quoted and the MIPC got a mention.  Here is an excerpt…

    Elizabeth Weiss, president of the Mandarin Immersion Parents Council in San Francisco, said about 30 schools have popped up around the country as the demand for Mandarin immersion programs has grown. Additionally, the U.S. State Department has made grants available to schools that teach “critical languages,” such as Mandarin.

    “There has been this real boom starting six or seven years ago, and I think what’s pushing it is the realization that teaching children languages when they’re young, it’s like second nature. They just pick it up,” she said. “If you stick a child in a room where the teacher only speaks Mandarin to them, that child is going to speak Mandarin.”

    Weiss said Mandarin immersion programs have been particularly popular with parents who speak a second language, as they know the value of speaking more than one language.

    Click here for the full article.

  • Middle School Update

    By Katie Olson

    Thanks to everyone who attended the Mandarin immersion middle school committee meeting #4 on Sept. 23.

    Present:  Katie Olson, Kellyn Dong, Ken (a new parent from the Chinese Immersion School at DeAvila), Eos de Feminis (SI parent from Marshall leading the SI MS group), Amy Risch (also SI parent from Marshall very involved in the MS group), Judy Hutchinson, Stacey Leyton.

    Spanish Immersion in Middle Schools

    Much of the meeting was devoted to hearing what the Spanish immersion parents could share.  They are working on several fronts with the District to ensure that there will be enough spots for Spanish immersion middle school students to continue in immersion.  They have drafted a letter to Superintendent Garcia and have met with Jeannie Pon (Associate Superintendent in charge of Middle Schools) and with Jen Fong (Secondary Supervisor with English Learner Support).  They have been told that there is a plan to open more Spanish immersion spots, that three middle schools are under consideration (though they have not been told which schools), and that this decision is being made independent of consideration of Mandarin immersion middle school needs.  They have been told that the location will be revealed before the open house for all schools on Nov. 7.  They are concerned about being left out of the process, but they are happy that more slots will be added.

    World Languages Middle School

    The Spanish immersion parents are proposing that the district create a World Languages Middle School with Mandarin immersion, Spanish immersion and Cantonese; they would like to see the percent of instruction in Spanish increase; they would like some better high school options; but all of these later concerns are less important to them than just ensuring that there will be a slot for their kids somewhere in a Spanish immersion middle school that they consider reasonable.  They are beginning the process of surveying the 4/5th grade parents about middle school priorities.  They did feel like there would be a benefit to helping the District see that the Spanish immersion and Mandarin immersion parents have many similar needs and that by planning for a middle school that could house both programs without displacing current students, the District would be meeting the needs of more families and making more progress toward their Multilingual goals.  We talked about both Everett and Horace Mann as possible sites.  Both probably have the capacity to add Mandarin immersion plus Spanish immersion programs.

    Chinese Immersion School at De Avila

    The representative from the Chinese Immersion School at DeAvila said that they are investigating whether their building has the capacity for K-8, but much is up in the air.

    Parent Survey

    We looked at the SI and MI draft surveys.  We liked the concise layout of the Spanish immersion survey, but had some info on the Mandarin immersion survey that we wanted to add.  Stacey Leyton agreed to try to merge the two surveys, and to discuss them with Cate and Josh at Starr King, who do surveying professionally.

    Meeting with District Representatives

    We will meet with Margaret Peterson at Stacey’s house Oct. 13, 6pm.  We thought we would ask her about progress to date, let her know about our collaboration with the Spanish immersion parents and continued interest in a Spanish immersion and Mandarin immersion middle school.  We also thought we would share our draft survey with her to find out whether the District would want to hear the results of our questions, and whether there is other data that she would want us to gather.

  • MIPC Meeting Notes: Sept. 2009

    Mandarin Immersion Parent Council Meeting

    Notes for Meeting held 9/14/09 at Jose Ortega Elementary School.

    Mandarin Immersion Parents Council president Beth Weise welcomed the 40 or so parents who attended, including five new Kindergarten families from both schools. Also attending were Principals Chris Rosenberg (Starr King) and JoLynn Washington (Jose Ortega)

    Weise told them that the MIPC exists to support students, families, teachers and schools in the San Francisco Unified School District’s Mandarin immersion program. With close to 200 students at both Starr King and Jose Ortega for the 2009-2010 school year, the program is growing by 60 students a year. MIPC knows the District, especially in this time of deep budget cuts, can’t provide the support it would like to the programs. So the MIPC works to educate parents, support teachers and generally do whatever is needed to make sure our children have a great learning environment.

    Chris Rosenberg, Principal, Starr King Elementary, provided some comments on the learning taking place amongst the district, teachers, and administration regarding helping student acquire Mandarin. Two elementary schools in SFUSD have a Mandarin Immersion Program: Starr King and Jose Ortega. Starr King is the first school in the district with a Mandarin Immersion Program and its inaugural class is now in 3rd grade. Jose Ortega’s inaugural class is now in the 2nd grade. Both schools share a common Mandarin Immersion curriculum. The program started with a list of characters to be learned in each grade. As the schools and district gain experience, the list of characters and use of other techniques such as use of pinyin, the Romanization of Mandarin characters, is reviewed and revised each year to help students acquire Mandarin more effectively.

    Rosenberg delivered news on behalf of Daisy Chan (Content Specialist  Multilingual Education/English Learner Support Services)  who oversees the development of the MIP curriculum.

    He said there is a small update from the Chinese Curriculum Committee.  The committee will revise the Chinese characters list, “…an ongoing process that will never end,” up through the 2nd grade.  The big revision/consideration involves whether to teach the isolation of each character or the words formed.  The committee needs to determine what is appropriate.

    Later, Mr. Rosenberg clarified that the District’s curriculum committee has decided to begin the process of revision now but introduce it next year, so as not to complicate this year’s curriculum, which was already set by the teachers and the previous Mandarin content specialist, Wendy Cheong. Teachers will continue to use the Better Chinese and Shuang-Shuang books.

    Pinyin, the official Romanization format of Chinese used in China, will be introduced during week #19 of 2nd grade, the second half of the 2nd grade, with continued acquisition into the 3rd grade. Pinyin helps students and parents  know how to pronounce each character (for example Laoshi, or teacher, is pinyin, as is Zhong guo, for China.)

    Q from a SK parent:  Does the revision mean that they are increasing the number of characters or are they changing the characters?

    A from Rosenberg:  More characters and some changed characters.  The committee is revising the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade vocabulary lists for the 2010-2011 school year.

    Mandarin in the San Francisco Public Schools

    Weise listed the schools in SFUSD that currently have Chinese Immersion programs:

    – Starr King Elementary (Mandarin immersion, K-5)

    – Jose Ortega Elementary (Mandarin immersion, ßK-5)

    – West Portal Elementary (Cantonese immersion, K-5)

    – Alice Fong Yu Elementary (Cantonese immersion, K-8)

    – The Chinese Immersion School at DeAvila (Cantonese immersion, Mandarin begins in 2nd grade. Unclear if CIS will be K-5 or K-8)

    – In addition, there are several Chinese Biliteracy Pathway programs in SFUSD for students who speak Cantonese and other Chinese dialects and are learning English

    Weise discussed the very real and looming need for a Middle School for Mandarin students beginning in 2013. She gave these numbers:

    – Starr King will graduate between 40-44 students beginning in 2012.

    – JOES will graduate 12 students beginning in 2013.

    – The Chinese Immersion School at DeAvila currently has five classes and will have three Kindergartens a year. It will begin Mandarin instruction in 2nd grade. If the District decides to make it K-5, it will be graduating 60 students a year who will speak Mandarin beginning in 2015.

    – West Portal:  graduates one class of 20 per year.

    Weise then brought up the topic of the MIP continuing into middle school.  She explained that there are frustrations among the Spanish Immersion community.  The SIP exists in 8 schools without enough spots for middle school placement.

    The district is thinking ahead to a MI MS, plus “parents are applying gentle pressure.”  A MI MS committee (of the MIPC) met with Margaret Peterson (Program Administrator, World Language / Multilingual Education, San Francisco Unified School District, Academics and Professional Development at Cabrillo, 21st Century Learning and Accountability).

    Peterson said that the district is aware of the desire for a middle school and, yes, will have enough spots (“places”).  A questionnaire/survey is under development.  Weise said that, so far, she is hearing positive things from the district.

    There is a possible combination Spanish Immersion and Chinese Immersion middle school.  A middle school schedule will probably include Math, Science and Social Studies in Mandarin and possibly Cantonese. The parents would like 50:50 Chinese/English. It’s unclear if that will happen.

    A problem with middle school Immersion programs has been that they’re put in General Education schools where they have little support and the administrators are trying to shoe-horn them in. To have an all-immersion middle schools would lessen the burden of that scheduling.

    These MI MS meetings will continue.  Speaking together, Spanish Immersion and Mandarin Immersion will be powerful.  MIP parents have a good relationship with the district.  The district knows we have “no animosity, no attack mode.”  The last meeting ended positively.

    More Middle School meetings are planned for this and next month. Information about them will be posted on the MIPC web site.

    A survey will be placed on the MIPC (http://miparentscouncil.org) website.  The MIPC also had a Google map of

    where the MIP families are located.

    Q from a SK parent:  Do you need more Middle School committee members?

    A from Beth Weise:  We’re solid.  We don’t want to overwhelm the district now.  But once things get going, then we probably will need more members.  As parents, we know the district doesn’t have lots of money but we have parents with outstanding skills who can help.  She mentioned the production of a FAQ brochure that parents created about the Mandarin Immersion Program.

    Next, Weise introduced Elizabeth Goumas, parent from The Chinese Immersion School at DeAvila.

    Goumas introduced herself as a new parent of a kindergartner at CIS.  The school has 3 kindergarten classes with 1-2 spots still available, and two 1st grade classes with spots still available.

    The school has raised $18,000 and has “parents who are ready to go.”  Several of the CIS parents tried twice but were unsuccessful in getting their children into a Mandarin Immersion program.  She also mentioned that the school features a Stop, Drop, Go school drop-off program to deal with the issue of parents needing to get their kids to a school in an area that’s very short on parking. It’s based on the same program from Alamo E.S..  One of the CIS teachers transferred from Alamo to CIS.

    Goumas said that she came to this meeting because she wants to learn how CIS  parents can be ready for what lies ahead in a Chinese Immersion program.

    Q from Roshanara Khan , parent of a JOES K:  Would we participate in a lottery for middle school?

    A from Goumas: The district said it is thinking of an “immersion track.”  One of the CIS parents is an SFSU professor.  It is this parent’s feeling that there might be a $10 million grant to budget a program to attract more district graduates (specifically Chinese Immersion program graduates?) to SFSU.

    A from Weise:  “The question is whether there will be enough spots.”

    Goumas said that the district received over 1,000 applications requesting spots in the Mandarin Immersion Program but it is unclear whether these requests were on the top of the 7-choice list, the bottom, or somewhere in between.

    Q from an SK K mom:  Cantonese is distinct from Mandarin.  How far apart are these two languages?

    A from Weise:  They are different languages but they use the same writing system and grammatical structure.

    A from Goumas: CIS graduates will be 30:30:30 (Cantonese:Mandarin:English) trilingual.

    Q (from same K parent?):  Is there a middle school sibling preference?

    A from Weise:  Yes.

    Next, Weise introduced SK parent Marie Ciepiela to talk briefly about the FLAP grant.

    Ciepiela:  F.L.A.P. stands for Foreign Language Assistance Program.  Margaret Peterson worked on the grant application and Ciepiela edited the application.  The grant was awarded recently to the district and “…received the highest rating in the country in history.”

    The FLAP grant supports “strategic languages” and is funded by the U.S. Department of Defense.  $300,000 will be awarded to the district for two years.  District language programs that will receive funding support include:  Cantonese Immersion, Mandarin Immersion, Korean Immersion, possibly Russian Immersion (currently the district has a Russian F.L.E.S. – Foreign Language Elementary School – program), and the Japanese Bilingual Bicultural FLES programs.

    FLAP funds will support the articulation (linking grades using standards and assessments).  The district plans to provide students with certification upon achieving set levels of language acquisition.  These certifications will allow students to avoid language competency tests.

    Next, Weise began wrapping up the meeting by announcing future MIPC meeting topics.

    She said the next meeting will be an exciting dictionary night.  She said the dictionary that each new MIP family receives is courtesy of a generous $100,000 grant donated by Mayor Gavin Newsom’s office for Mandarin language support.  She also announced that this next meeting will include a “Chinese 101” course.

    A future MIPC meeting will also feature a presentation about the MIP curriculum by district Content Specialist Daisy Chan.

    Weise also announced that we parents should consider working together on a banquet and that part of the planning will be in finding a restaurant for our large membership.

    She then asked what members would like the MIPC to do?

    A from one parent:  Requested a list of Mandarin books on the MIPC website.

    A from another parent:  Requested information about tutoring help and other Chinese enrichment resources also on the MIPC website.

    Comment from a SK parent:  Said that his son is a SK 3rd grader who doesn’t like to speak in Mandarin at home.  This parent, a father, can speak Mandarin but his wife speaks only English.

    Comment from ACE member and Chinese art studio owner/instructor/language tutor Lin Wei:  Observes that both SK and JOES students speak Mandarin quite well at their grade levels but their writing skills are lagging behind.

    SK K parent:  Suggested another topic for a future MIPC meeting: How to support homework.

    SK parent: Asked about the order of students are learning the Chinese characters.  Is it different from the Cantonese Immersion Program.

    Weise Answer: We think the vocabulary used is pretty similar, with some slight variations. The District is trying hard to keep Mandarin students ‘articulated’ with the Cantonese students, so that they’ll have the same reading proficiency when they reach Middle School and are in classes together.

    Weise’s last announcement was about Mandarin “Flagship” programs (students taking classes related their individual majors that are taught in Mandarin) appearing in universities including San Francisco State University.

    Final announcement.  JOES parent Kellyn Dong mentioned two good websites for learning Mandarin.  For students, she recommended betterchinese.com.  For parents/guardians, she recommended chinesepod.com.  She also recommended the Nan Hai bookstore in Millbrae and Pacific Books & Video in San Francisco.  She said these sites could be posted on the MIPC website.

    Meeting adjourned:  7:05 pm.

  • Middle School Update

    By Katie Olson

    These are the notes from the middle school committee meeting #3, which was held on September 7, 2009.

    Spanish Immersion Middle School

    Mary and I were at the Spanish immersion meeting on 9/7 in which they discussed their concerns.   In brief, they suspect that they will graduate at least 50 more 5th graders than they will have spots for in SI MS, unless the district opens a new school.  They was a woman at the meeting, Jen Fong, who is a Fairmount parent and a District employee, possibly tasked with finding a new SI MS site.  (Though she said she still wasn’t sure if that would be her responsibility, and though Margaret Peterson mentioned meeting with Jen Fong in the course of our meeting, they are in separate departments — Jen under Karling and Margaret under Jan Gustafson (if I’m getting all of this right).)  Jen Fong also brought up the fact that the a new “Site Selection Committee” (not sure I have that name right, but the group that picks the sites for new programs) is being formed.  Jen thought she might end up on the committee, in which case she would have a lot to say about site selection.  Finally, she brought up the idea of a MI/SI joint MS — and the SI parents seemed very enthusiastic about that.  So, it seems that the SI and MI parents have reason to collaborate on the MS issue.  They, however, need a school by next fall, and we have a few more years.  Specific sites were briefly discussed, with a mention of both Horace Mann and Everett as possible sites.  The SI group is also in the process of developing a survey of SI parents in the broader community to get feedback on what they want in a MS.  They also discussed writing some letters addressed to some of the higher ups in the District and on the school board outlining their capacity problems.

    Our Next Meeting

    We, the Mandarin immersion middle school group, have a meeting scheduled for Sept. 23.  We have a plan to invite someone from DeAvila and from the SI group.  We need to figure out what to include on the agenda.  Possibilities include:  Hearing from the SI and DeAvila folks about their concerns/wishes.  Looking at our parent questionnaire and the SI parent questionnaire — maybe one form could be generated for both groups to respond to?  Discussing our concerns about not falsely raising expectations among parents.  Figuring out who in the district we should talk to in addition to Margaret.  And finally, preparing for our next meeting with Margaret.

    Margaret’s assistant, Ling, e-mailed me with a date for a meeting with Margaret.  Our next one will be Oct. 13, 6pm.  Any volunteers to host?  Our family will just be returning from a trip to the East Coast that day, so it would be tough for me to do it….

    Please let me know (1) thoughts on agenda for 9/23 (2) can you host for 10/13 (3) and Mary/Beth — will you invite the SI/DeAvila folks to the 9/23 meeting?