新年快乐! 春节快乐!

Happy year of the Ox. It’s not quite the usual New Year, which includes visiting family, making dumplings, handing out red envelopes or going see a special program at your Mandarin immersion school. But it’s still a happy occasion.

And the glory of Chinese New Year (also known as the Spring Festival) is that it lasts for another eight days, so you’re not behind at all.

You can read about the various usual activities here.

It’s the year of the metal ox, actually, and you can read all about that here.

For most of China, New Year wouldn’t be New Year without watching the star-studded New Year Special that airs tonight. You can read about it and find it online here.

There are various rhymes for remembering all 12 signs of the Chinese zodiac, ask your child if they know any of them. For reasons I don’t understand, a common one online for memorizing them in English is linked to Red Lobster restaurants.

And a trick if you didn’t grow up in with them — you can usually figure out how old anyone is just by asking what year they were born in. If they’re year of the horse, they were either born in 1966, 1978, 1990 or 2002. I had a friend who once offhandedly said something about how old I was and I asked her how she knew. “You told me your zodiac sign, silly!” she answered.

Hello all,

I’ve been writing this blog since 2007 and though COVID shutdowns have slowed it some point, I have no intention of stopping any time soon.

I do, however, have a rare request. My oldest daughter, a proud Mandarin immersion graduate, is now in her second year of college at Wellesley and is looking for a summer internship in either China or Taiwan. Her spoken Mandarin at this point is good but she’d like to spend the summer in a Mandarin-speaking country. (that’s her in the picture above, on her first day at Starr King Elementary school.)

As she puts it in her cover letter, “My goal with this internship is to experience an international business environment, utilize my Mandarin in an immersive situation and prepare myself to work in Asia upon graduation. I am flexible, hard-working and not afraid to take on low-level jobs and do them with excellence.”

However COVID has shut down a lot of programs that might normally be open so she’s been having trouble finding opportunities. China seems a long shot given COVID travel restrictions so she’s focusing on Taiwan. She’s been working to save money so she can get herself to Asia and pay for housing, so this doesn’t have to be a paid internship.

Just this once, I’m asking those who follow my blog for a favor – if you happen to know of a company that might be interested in having a U.S. college student work for them this summer, she’d love to hear about it. It doesn’t have to be a formal program. She’s been studying economics and international relations and did an internship this winter as a research and analysis intern, but doesn’t have coding skills. (on the list for next year!)

If you know of any opportunities, feel free to email me and I can pass them along to her. I’m weise@well.com.

Thanks and next post we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Beth

From: WRAL Digital Solutions

 Participate Learning.

While learning a new language can be challenging at any age, studies have shown the earlier a person learns a new language, the easier it will be. Additionally, research shows bilingual people have an easier time with several key brain functions such as reading comprehension, understanding math concepts and using logic.

Whether you’re studying Spanish, French, Mandarin or Arabic, learning a new language can simultaneously enhance the mind in other areas. The following are proven benefits of learning a new language beyond bilingualism that may inspire you to enroll your child in dual language immersion.

1. Increased academic performance

2. Opens up new opportunities

3. Cultivates cultural awareness

4. Improves mental health

5. Enhanced communication & problem solving skills

Please read more here.

It’s a heck of a website for Phoenix’ Mandarin Parent Organization, which supports the programs at Whispering Wind Academy from Kindergarten to 5th grade.

This year they held their ninth New Year Gala for the Year of the Rat.

I especially like the bumper stickers they sell:

Check out their website here.

A growing town in North Carolina’s famed Research Triangle of universities and research institutions could become home to not one but two Mandarin immersion schools, one public and one charter. It’s an example of the interest in language immersion and also school districts’ realizing that immersion programs keep families in district.

On February 18, 2020, the Wake County school board voted to add three new magnet schools, two Spanish immersion and one Mandarin immersion, to compete for pupils leaving for charter schools and private schools.

According to the district, the new program would include:

1. K-8 language school eliminating transition between 5th and 6th grade year, providing nine years of continuous support to all of students
2. Full Chinese Immersion K-5
   • Serve English native speakers in an environment where Chinese is exclusively used, Chinese content taught in four core classes (literacy, math, science, social studies)
   • Students become bilingual, biliterate and bicultural
   • Students become equally proficient in both Chinese and English
3. Chinese and Spanish offered for non-immersion students as a daily language for K-5 students
4. Chinese immersion continued in Chinese literacy and one core course in 6th-8th grades
5. Chinese and Spanish language offered daily for 6-8 non-immersion students
6. Core and elective classes taught through a global lens

How the move will be affected by the coronavirus is unclear.

More on the program here and here.

At the same time, a group of parents is working to launch the CE Academy: Chinese-English Bilingual Charter School, in August of 2021.

According to the group’s website, “students in grades K- 2 will receive 70% of instruction in Chinese and 30% in English. Teachers will teach each subject, including Chinese language arts, math, science, music, arts, PE and technology, in Chinese, except for English language and social studies (which will be taught in English). For students in grades 3-5, the portion of Chinese-mediated instruction will decrease to 50% so the students will have balanced exposure to the two languages.”

More at the group’s website here.

Sorell Grow Indianapolis Star

March 10, 2020

When the morning school bell rang, students in the halls of the International School of Indiana’s lower school building hurried into their respective classrooms. The elementary classrooms bustled with the sound of students chatting with one another as they get settled in for the day.

Unlike other classrooms across the state, these kids aren’t speaking English.

In one kindergarten class of about 12 students, Claudia Rodriguez leads the kids in counting. Rodriguez is from Monterrey, Mexico, and has worked as the ISI kindergarten Spanish teacher since 2015.

Another class of kindergarteners listened intently to their teacher, Wenjie Lyu — who is originally from Liaoning Province in China — as she speaks to them in Mandarin. And her students responded in the same language.

This atmosphere is a daily occurrence at ISI.

Language immersion schools positively affect intellectual growth and lifelong communication skills — particularly if a child is enrolled from a young age, according to research conducted at institutions such as the University of Minnesota and the University of Maryland. These schools also provide children with the asset of fluency in multiple languages once they enter the job market.

Please read more here.

Once again, it makes me so envious of Utah and its fabulous, and fabulously articulated, immersion program. Here in San Francisco, they’re busy dismantling the immersion program, which no longer exists in high school and won’t exist much longer in middle school. While in Utah they are strengthening and building their program out.

The District offers immersion in Portuguese, Chinese, Spanish and French. (The diagram above doesn’t include French because they have so many programs and so many schools they didn’t all fit on the same page….) And from 10th through 12th grade students do university-level coursework.

Kudos!

Alpine School District’s first set of Chinese immersion students enter high school

Alpine School District’s first set of Chinese dual language immersion students aren’t so little anymore.

The group, who started at Cascade Elementary School in Orem, are now at Orem High School, earning college credit for their work and forming international bonds.

The students’ first year at the high school has involved setting up the process for a sister school in China, along with a trip to the Suzhou Foreign Language School in Suzhou, China, for the 1st International Youth Summit.

“I think it was such a great success,” said Alan Heath, a Chinese teacher at Orem High School.

The trip was the first time a group from the school has gone to China, according to Heath. The school will attempt to do another trip next year.

Heath has taught world languages at the school for four years. This year he’s teaching Advanced Placement Chinese, which gives students an opportunity to earn college credit if they pass a national test at the end of the year, and the bridge class, where students who have passed the AP exam can gain college credits while still in high school. The dual-language students should have received enough college credit by the time they graduate high school to have earned a minor in Chinese.

Please read more here.