An example of how a principal with a vision and totally transform a school — and create the only Mandarin immersion program in Hawai’i. Which, thankfully, will continue on.

Aloha, President Perry Martin

05/13/2020 BY HAWAII CATHOLIC HERALD

The outgoing Maryknoll president’s vision for the school parallels the founding sisters’ mission and charism

By the Maryknoll Sisters of the Central Pacific Region

We Maryknoll Sisters would like to express our deep gratitude to Perry Martin for his leadership, vision and values as president of Maryknoll School for the past 12 years. He has led the school in a very extraordinary way with a compassionate heart deeply rooted in the teachings of the Catholic Church.

The Maryknoll Sisters had many opportunities planning events with President Martin and his staff. He is very committed to the mission of the Maryknoll Sisters and the charism of our founder, Mother Mary Joseph Rogers. He is a compassionate leader with a sincere devotion to prayer through the rosary. About a year ago when we Maryknoll Sisters accompanied a critically sick sister, it was President Martin himself, who led the rosary.

He has kept the Maryknoll Sisters worldwide congregation connected to the school, intentionally, through many school events and activities. President Martin and other school personnel visited the Maryknoll Sisters motherhouse in New York to enhance students’ learning. We take pride in his vision for the school because it parallels our mission and charism and teaches future generations about the Maryknoll Sisters’ history, purpose and charism. We have seen, firsthand, how Maryknoll students practice a missionary consciousness, able to use those skills at a young age. President Martin is committed to providing leadership through his forward-thinking mindset, positioned and always poised to embrace our mission and integrate it into the life of the school.

Please read more here.

Another article about Principal Martin.

Good news from Delaware. I posted about the difficult decisions they were facing there last week here.

Christina School Board moves to restore teacher jobs, sports and more after referendum win

Natalia Alamdari Delaware News Journal

Following a successful referendum on Tuesday, the Christina School Board took the initial steps Wednesday night to restore program and teaching cuts made in May. 

The board directed district leadership to immediately begin recalling recently laid off teachers, move forward in restoring all academic and extracurricular programs that were cut in May, and determine if any lapsed temporary teaching contracts could be restored. 

On Tuesday night, all four sections of the referendum passed with roughly two-thirds of voter support. 

Had the referendum failed, the district would have faced a nearly $10 million budget deficit. In May, the board made preemptive cuts to 136 teaching positions, all sports, several parts of the music department, student clubs and student programs like Chinese immersion and the gifted program. 

Please read more here.

By Chan Lü

Dr. Lü is a professor at the University of Washington, my alma mater and the place I first studied Chinese. I still haven’t convinced my daughter to apply there, even though she’d be a 5th generation Husky! but I haven’t given up yet….

From: American Federation of Teachers AFT.org

About one-third of children under age 8 in the United States have at least one parent who speaks a language other than English at home.¹ And as of 2016, 9.6 percent of all U.S. public school students were identified as English language learners.² It is obvious that the American student population is becoming increasingly multilingual.
This trend is often widely celebrated in other countries. But as scholars who have focused on an array of issues related to borders and democracy have noted, the United States has a complex history with bilingualism:

In many countries, the ability of children to speak more than one language is seen as important. Such is generally not the case in the United States. As sociolinguist Joshua Fishman and his coauthors have claimed, “Many Americans have long been of the opinion that bilingualism is ‘a good thing’ if it was acquired via travel (preferably to Paris) or via formal education (preferably at Harvard) but that it is a ‘bad thing’ if it was acquired from one’s immigrant parents or grandparents.”³

Fishman made that claim more than five decades ago, but it still rings true—if not quite as loudly—today. For instance, Richard Ruíz and other scholars contend that in the United States, speaking a language other than English continues to be perceived as a problem, which they term a “language-as-problem orientation.”⁴ Perhaps because of this perception, the burgeoning multilingualism of our nation’s children is challenging our current instructional practices and even more so our educational systems. Across the country, we lack the preparation, materials, supports, or infrastructure to handle our children’s linguistic diversity. Given the multiple benefits of speaking more than one language fluently,* we should actually celebrate this diversity—and we can.

Please read more here.

Like many other school districts, the Christina School District in Delaware is facing as much as $10 million in cuts due to the economic downturn. It’s holding a school referendum vote on Tuesday to raise taxes to keep the schools from having to make draconian cuts.

The list of possible cuts is long, and included — as in many districts — a Mandarin immersion program that could be seen as an extra that’s no longer affordable.

Another $10 million in budget reductions. No sports. No program for gifted and talented children. No extracurricular or cocurricular activities. The end of a popular dual-language Chinese immersion program. No more Montessori Academy. No district-wide strings program. No instrumental music in elementary schools. No instructional coaches and curriculum specialists in key subject areas. The elimination of 67 jobs, most of them teachers.

The article below goes into some of the issues Christina faces. They are issues other school districts will have to grapple with this coming year as the budget realities become clear.

Christina School District faces crucial referendum vote

By LARRY NAGENGAST• JUNE 5, 2020

• DELAWARE PUBLIC MEDIA

School referendums are difficult enough to pass under normal conditions.  But during a global pandemic that’s forced schools to remote learning and severely damaged the economy, getting voters to approve one now seems an almost impossible task.

But it’s one the Christina School District faces with voters heading to the polls Tuesday to decide if they will back a tax increase need to stave off drastic cuts.

This week, contributor Larry Nagengast digs into what the referendum is seeking, why it’s needed and what will happen if it come up short.ListenListening…13:59Delaware Public Media’s Tom Byrne and contributor Larry Nagengast discuss what’s at stake in the Christina School District’s latest referendum.

By any rational standard, this is not a good time for a school district to be asking its residents to approve a significant tax increase.

Please read (and listen) more here.

Mary Field is a Mandarin speaker and long-time Mandarin language supporter who just helped launch a French and Mandarin immersion school in San Antonio, Texas with a pre-school and Kindergarten, with plans to expand to first grade next year. All currently in limbo. Here she describes what the winter felt like for their school.

Looking to China for a Glimpse of Our Future

by Mary FieldMay 23, 2020

The Rivard Report

On January 15, there was an email in my inbox from the U.S. Embassy and Consulates in China. This was not unusual. I never unsubscribed from their emails for U.S. citizens in China, even though I moved back to the U.S. in 2014. Most of their notices were about changes to local visa regulations and worldwide travel alerts. This time, the email was about an outbreak of pneumonia in the city of Wuhan. I did not have time to think too much about this email. The following day was a big one. It was our initial state inspection for the first Chinese immersion preschool in San Antonio. 

Modern China is a noisy place. People lean on their car horns when changing lanes, firecrackers announce the opening of a new store, and workers constantly tear down and put up buildings. During the days around Chinese New Year, however, it gets very quiet. The streets empty out and people return to their family homes. The days leading up the Chinese New Year, I watched YouTube videos filmed on the streets of Beijing. Things were very quiet, but it was not clear whether it was because of the holiday or the fear of the coronavirus. People were wearing masks, but seeing folks wearing masks in China has never been unusual.

Please read more here.

I had the pleasure of taking one of Jen Lin-Liu’s cooking classes when I was in Beijing covering the 2008 Olympics. She also wrote a fun book about being an American studying traditional Chinese cooking, Serve the People: A Stir-Fried Journey Through China.

I saw on Facebook this week that she’s offering Zoom cooking classes in English, but when I emailed her she said she could also organize them for kids entirely in Mandarin. If you’re looking for a fun Mandarin activity this summer, this one’s just $25. And you’ll get a great dinner out of it as well.

More here.

Brooklyn School Develops Multilingual Remote Learning Plans

Brooklyn School Featured in the International Press for Developing Multilingual Remote Learning Resources for Families During COVID-19

By Sarah, Neighbor

Mar 24, 2020 4:41 pm ET | Updated Mar 25, 2020 1:33 am ET

Brooklyn School Develops Multilingual Remote Learning Plans

Brooklyn School Featured in the International Press for Developing Multilingual Remote Learning Resources for Families During COVID-19

By Sarah, Neighbor

Mar 24, 2020 4:41 pm ET | Updated Mar 25, 2020 1:33 am ET

Brooklyn School Develops Multilingual Remote Learning Plans

Brooklyn School Featured in the International Press for Developing Multilingual Remote Learning Resources for Families During COVID-19

By Sarah, Neighbor

Mar 24, 2020 4:41 pm ET | Updated Mar 25, 2020 1:33 am ET

A Brooklyn French and Mandarin immersion school was featured in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Christian Science Monitor for its early efforts to transfer its hands-on, multilingual curriculum to an online remote learning platform.

Weeks before closing, Science, Language & Arts International School, located in Downtown Brooklyn, began to prepare for a possible closure by beginning to develop a bank of original, multilingual content and other resources for families, many of whom don’t speak the target language at home.

Please read more here.