The Mandarin Dual Language program in the Chapel Hill- Carrboro City Schools in North Carolina has gotten a great deal of push-back from other parents and some in the school district. Opponents have argued that it’s elitist and only for some students.

The parents put together what I think is an excellent website outlining the program, what it does, how it works and debunking some of the claims.

Their site is worth checking out, especially if you’re in a district where Mandarin immersion is under fire.

You can see the site here.

As of March, the fight was still going on:

The movement to recall three CHCCS school board members has ended. Here’s why:

After multiple developments in the push for the recall of three Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools school board members, including the resignation of chairperson Margaret Samuels and the creation of a counter-movement called Stop the Recall, the recall movement has come to an end.

CHCCS is one of two school districts in North Carolina out of 115 that allows school board members to be removed from their position. This can happen if someone who’s registered in the district obtains signatures from at least 10 percent of the district’s registered voters in a petition and a majority in a recall election.

The recall effort arose after community members accused three board members, James Barrett, Pat Heinrich and Margaret Samuels, of unethical conduct surrounding their vote to expand Glenwood Elementary School’s Mandarin dual language magnet program.

See more here.

From Fox News 13

SOUTH JORDAN, Utah — After a tour bus crash near Bryce Canyon on Friday left four people dead and dozens injured, Chinese immersion students from around the state are helping out in the healing process.

Anywhere from 500 to 600 students at different schools around Utah are making cards in their classrooms to send to the bus crash victims in the hospital — all of whom are from China.

All of the cards are written in Chinese.

“The victims are far from home. There’s a little bit of a language barrier and so we are just hoping with the large program we have in Utah that there’s something we could do to cheer them up,” said Jayne Young, the Chinese Coordinator with the state’s Chinese Dual Immersion Team.

From The Del Mar Times

Del Mar Schools to consider foreign language program

This is one of a series of videos that the Asia Society’s Center for Global Education Chinese Learning Initiatives does. You can read about the series here.

Here’s the video for teachers “intended to serve as a window into the classroom.”

This is Ms. Li’s second grade class in Waxhaw, North Carolina. The lesson theme is “What do you want to be in the future?”

When you look at this, remember that an English-only classroom would work exactly the same — the teacher would have specific vocabulary and concepts that the teacher wants to teach the students and then the teachers would work on those concepts for them.

And don’t work if you don’t speak Mandarin, there are some subtitles.

She’s running through first what she does (she’s a teacher) and then she shows them different photos of different people and asks them what they do. For example, the school nurse.

You can also ask your kids to tell you what’s going on. This is a second grade class, so most should be able to.

Here’s the full story with an embedded video.

Ontario-Montclair School District says 你好 to Mandarin immersion classes

Classes will be offered for kindergarteners at Montera Elementary School next year

With China now one of the world’s biggest economies, the Ontario-Montclair School District is making moves to prepare its students for a future that anticipates the country’s continued influence across the globe.

“There’s probably going to be three languages that are going to be predominant in the next 20 years, which will be Spanish, English and Mandarin. That’s what it looks like,” said Veronica Bucheli, a director with the district. “How do we give our kids an edge? One way of doing that is to teach them another language.”

This isn’t the district’s first dual-language immersion program: Spanish has been offered at the district’s Central Language Academy since 2007. After Spanish and Mandarin, Arabic might be next; it’s already being taught in an after-school club in one of the district’s middle schools.

“If I had a child that was going into kinder, I would put them into this class,” Montera elementary Principal Rudy Sandoval said. “You talk about an advantage going into the future, that’s an advantage.”

Please read more here.

Fourth-grader Maddie Freeman wants to be an FBI agent when she grows up.

“I like how detectives work crimes, and I see a lot of news stories that say the FBI and CIA are looking for people who speak Chinese and other languages,” Maddie says.

At just 9 years old, she’s well on her way to becoming bilingual thanks to a Mandarin immersion program at her school, Meadow Glen Elementary in Lexington, South Carolina.

“Knowing Chinese can get you a lot of jobs because a lot of places are looking for people who can speak different languages and are bilingual,” she says.

Maddie and the other 240 students in the school’s immersion program spend half of their day learning solely in Mandarin. Even her math lessons are taught in Mandarin. Her mother, Kimberly Freeman, says she and her husband, who spent two years working in China at the start of his career, wanted a multicultural education for their children.

Please read more here.

The state of Hawai’i, remarkably, only has one Mandarin immersion program. It’s at Maryknoll School and launched in the 2017-2018 school year.

Now a gift from a former pupil is allowing that program to expand.

Maryknoll alumnus Douglas Ho presented the Catholic schools with a red Chinese envelope which has in it a check for $225,000. It’s a grant from Ho, who graduated from the K – 12 school in 1960.

The gift, announced on Feb. 8, will allow the school to expand Hawaii’s only school-day Mandarin immersion program through 6th grade six.

You can read more about the program here.

And here’s a nice article about it.

And here’s an NPR piece about the program where you can listen in on a first grade class.