Information for parents of kids in Mandarin immersion education
If you happen to know of a teacher or Mandarin speaker who is interested in getting a bilingual authorization credential in either Mandarin or Cantonese, SFSU has launched a new program.
EED 711_Chinese language for bilingual teachers
Standalone Chinese Bilingual Authorization Program
Standalone Chinese Bilingual Authorization Program Application Guidelines
Millions of parents across the United States find themselves effectively homeschooling their children during the shelter in place orders necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
That’s doubly hard for parents whose native language isn’t English, of course, and much has been written on that.
But for parents with children in Mandarin immersion who don’t themselves speak Mandarin, it’s also a real confounder.
It’s even an issue for parents who do speak Mandarin but who grew up in the United States and don’t actually read and write Chinese, especially as written Mandarin becomes more complex in the higher grades.
I would like to run a series of looks at how this is going for families at home. What is your program doing? How do you keep up your child’s Mandarin? Can you? And how well can immersion work when students are no longer truly immersed?
Feel free to email me at weise at well dot com if you’d like to take part. Hopefully we can learn from one and other, or at least stop feeling so guilty that we’re not doing enough….
You’re for a vaccine-filled future!
Beth
From The Lexington Ledger
April 6, 2020
West Columbia, SC – Wearing a panda onesie, and playing upbeat music from a speaker, East Point Academy P.E.Coach, Elease Anderson, surprises students from a safe distance on their birthdays.
One such student was 10-year old Lilly Wilson, “I was so surprised to see Coach Anderson!…When she started dancing I could not stop laughing! I loved it so much!”.
Lilly’s mom, Katie, was grateful for the visit as she was struggling to make the day special. “Turning 10 is a pretty big deal…COVID-19 took the ability to have a birthday party with friends, but Coach Anderson to the rescue!..she is an amazing person with a heart of gold for these children.”
Kayela Greene was also feeling helpless amidst her daughter’s birthday disappointment.
At 5 years old, it was difficult for Lilo to understand why everything was canceled. “She was very upset…Coach Anderson came to sing to Lilo from the street in front of our house. Lilo was so excited; her visit absolutely made her day” Greene recounted.
Please read more here.
As we’re all sheltering in place and trying to tele-school our kids, here’s a story from a few months ago about what Mandarin immersion looks like in Singapore.
While students who come from Mandarin-speaking families study Mandarin in school as a class, but the kind of immersion we have in the U.S. isn’t a part of the public school system there. Here’s a preschool that costs about $21,000 US a year.
Also, “kiasu” is a Singaporean word that means “the fear of missing out” but often gets applied to parents anxious that their kids have the most chance and options by pushing them into lots of extracurricular activities or studies.
From: Business Insider
Kiasu parents, at the ready: an exclusive preschool in Singapore is promising to teach your precious tots soft skills like grit, adaptability and empathy to survive the digital age.
Trehaus preschool, which accepts children between 2 months and 6 years old, will start its first intake of students in September, it said on Wednesday (Sept 11).
It costs S$2,568 per month for a full-day programme and S$2,354 for a half-day programme.
Please read more here.
It’s hard enough for parents who are suddenly in charge of their kid’s education at home. Even harder when that education is in a language they don’t necessarily speak.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Millions of parents started new jobs last month — as substitute teachers.
When schools shut down in mid-March to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus, parents were thrust into homeschooling and teachers became online instructors overnight.
School leaders scrambled to figure out how to educate students entirely outside of classrooms.
“As a school you want to be a community anchor, and it’s hard to do that when everybody’s spread out,” said Meghan Hill, executive director of the St. Louis Language Immersion School. “But it’s bringing people together in a different way.”
A major obstacle for some is technology.
Districts including St. Louis Public Schools have surveyed families about their technology needs and started passing out tablets and laptops to students. About 14% of children nationwide lack internet access at home, according to the U.S. Department of Education. In St. Louis, 22% of families lack internet service. Some districts have outfitted school buses with Wi-Fi hot spots and sent them into neighborhoods, or told families they can use schools’ Wi-Fi connections from their parking lots.
The same teaching strategies that work in the brick-and-mortar classroom can work online, said Keeta Holmes, director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at University of Missouri-St. Louis. Create a safe space where students feel comfortable and like they aren’t a guest. Let them show off their family pets or favorite toys, she said.
Please read more here.
From Patch, Nov. 1, 2019
HOBOKEN, NJ — An international school in Hoboken where 80 percent of the daily lessons are taught in a foreign language recently gave a big shout-out to diversity, peace and justice at an on-campus event.
On Oct. 24, Tessa International School celebrated United Nations Day, which acknowledges the U.N. charter initially signed by 50 countries in October 1945.
Each year, Tessa School celebrates with student performances in Spanish and French and other activities related to various countries of the world. Students and teachers dress in traditional clothes, representing more than 20 countries. This year’s event also included a performance of Irish folk music and international music by Shan and Dan.
Please read more here.
Argh. Yet another headline that misses the distinction between dual-language immersion and bilingual programs. Thankfully the article itself is much more nuanced than the headline [And note that it’s from 2017, but it seems to suddenly have popped back up in Facebook so I’m seeing discussion of it on several immersion lists.]
Bilingual programs are created to teach English Langauge Learner students English, while maintaining and supporting the students’ home language, usually Spanish in most districts, though sometimes Mandarin. Students who are already fluent in English do not attend bilingual programs as a rule.
Dual-language immersion programs are meant to teach two groups of students (hence the “dual” in “dual language.) One group are native speakers of the “target language” (say Mandarin or Spanish) while the other group doesn’t speak that language. They’re usually native English speakers.
In dual-language immersion programs, both groups of students learn both languages.
Ideally, half the students speak the target language and half the students speak English, so they learn from each other and reinforce the languages in each other.
In a one-way immersion program, all the students come in speaking English and together they learn a new language. This is how French immersion works in Canada, for example. As I wrote about extensively in my book, A Parent’s Guide to Mandarin Immersion, this is often the method used in Mandarin immersion programs, in part because most communities don’t have enough Mandarin-speaking kids to make up half the class.
For those that do, many districts reserve spaces for each cohort. In San Francisco, the district tries to have one-third native Mandarin speakers, one-third bilingual (kids who speak both Mandarin and English) and one-third English speakers.
Overall the article below is good, so perhaps the title’s just meant to be click-bait. And it’s talking about Spanish immersion for the most part. It’s pretty tough to find a district in the United States where there aren’t at least some native Spanish speaking students, so for Spanish it can happen that English-speaking students might take seats that could have gone to Spanish-speaking students.
But that’s a problem the district should be able to deal with rather than letting balanced classrooms, which are ideal, skew towards English-speakers. If there are enough students from both language groups applying, balanced classroom are not hard to create. And again, it’s almost never an issue in Mandarin immersion.
Districts that don’t have enough students to create a balanced dual-immersion classroom have to consider the makeup they want and what they’re trying to accomplish. If a district doesn’t have many target language-speaking students, what is its goal for an immersion school? That’s a valid question. If the school isn’t aiding English Language Learners, does it do other things the district wants, such as keeping families in the district or attracting families who might have moved or gone to private schools?
Gentrification does change neighborhoods and cities. But it’s up to school districts to decide what their goals are and work for them through placement. As the writer points out, the easiest way around the problem is to simply create more dual-language immersion schools. Not artificially limit access to popular programs, which all too often is what I see being suggested.
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The Atlantic, Dec. 28, 2017
Mandarin Immersion Parents Council 