If you answered Edmonton, Alberta in Canada, you’re either Canadian, a regular reader of this blog or an immersion junkie.

Edmonton has a population of about 1 million people and its school system has multiple “alternative” programs. In fact, almost every school in the district it home to at least one.

Because Canada is an officially bilingual nation, French immersion is hugely popular. But Mandarin is right up there.

Edmonton boasts a remarkable six Mandarin immersion elementary schools, four junior high schools and three high schools. It’s got about 101,000 students.

Compare that with the Los Angeles Unified School District, which has the most Mandarin immersion schools of any single district in the United States.* It’s got population of 4 million and has six elementary schools, two middle schools and one high school. LAUSD has about 600,000 students.

Edmonton also offers immersion in American Sign Language, Arabic, German, Hebrew and Spanish.

And for Mandarin, it’s got the phenomenal Edmonton Chinese Bilingual Education Association, which is remarkably organized and raises a lot of money to support the program, scholarships and other support. I know of several cities in the States that would like to clone them.

All of which is a long-winded start to an article about how popular the city’s alternative programs are, which you’ll find below. Now if it were only easier to move to Canada…

*I think. New York City might have more, but the New York system is so impenetrable I can’t tell. But they’re neck and neck.

From: The Edmonton Journal

Public school district wants suggestions to improve access to alternative programs

It’s the time of year when some Edmonton parents nervously await news of whether their children were accepted to alternative school programs.

Be it French immersion, a Christian alternative or arts enriched, programs with a specialized focus can be in high demand.

In suburban southwest Edmonton, Edmonton public school trustee Nathan Ip said Wednesday the population of children has grown so fast, little room remains to offer alternative programs at school buildings close to home.

“It is probably one of the most prevalent issues I hear about, other than busing and attendance area boundaries,” Ip said.

With about one-quarter of Edmonton public students enrolled in alternative programs, the district is undertaking citywide consultations on what, how and where it offers programs and asking whether it could do better. More than 100 of the district’s 213 schools host at least one of 34 alternative programs — and that number excludes programs for children with exceptional needs or specialty course offerings.

Please read more here.

The state of Utah has the nation’s most comprehensive Mandarin immersion program, which is statewide and coordinated through the state Office of Education.  Here’s a story about one of it’s more than 28 junior high schools.

From: The Daily Universe

Utah junior high schools integrate language immersion students

Alana Holzer didn’t understand a word her teachers said on the first day of kindergarten. She stared in confusion as her teachers refused to answer her or any other students in her class using any language but Chinese. Now, eight years later and in seventh grade, Alana and her fellow Chinese immersion students are capable of discussing more complicated topics in their second language.

According to a case study by Yuan Cao of the Dominican University of California, the total immersion model was first implemented in 1965 in Canada. The study shows one of the most popular ways to approach immersion programs is what’s known as the 50-50 structure: students receive 50 percent of their daily instruction in their native language and 50 percent in their designated immersion language.

It is this 50-50 structure Alana and students across Utah have experienced since entering the immersion program in elementary school, an immersion model they cannot continue once reaching junior high.

Mueller Park Junior High principal Deanne Kapetanov said immersion students are given the option of taking two electives to continue their Chinese language education: an intense language course and a culture and media course. She said the attrition rate rises once the students reach junior high school, but the majority of the students continue with their immersion education and adjust well.

Please read more here.

And here’s a story about the history of Utah’s ten year experiment in immersion.

Dark side of school immersion programs

From: The Standard-Examiner

For the last eight years, 11 elementary schools of 60 in Davis School District, four in Weber School District, and two in Ogden School District have incorporated dual immersion programs with Spanish, Chinese, or French. To many, it is one of the highlights of the school’s education system, with experts from across the country who come to visit and see how it is done.

However, lurking behind the immersion grandeur are a significant number of frustrated parents. Issues of segregation, non-immersion students being pushed aside, non-immersion classes with too many learning disabilities weighing down teachers, and immersion programs getting treated to extra grant money.

Segregation issues

The biggest concern for Kristie Kearns, a fourth-grade parent at Morgan Elementary in Kaysville, is the division between immersion and non-immersion students. “This is the closest thing to segregation I’ve seen since the ’50s because at a normal school, when you volunteer in class or go on field trips, you get to know other moms and their kids, but at an immersion school, we can only get to know half the school,” said Kearns, who says it also extends to the kids because the immersion students and the rest don’t interact with one another during lunch or recess.

Angela Wilde, another parent of a fourth-grader at Morgan Elementary, has similar sentiments. “That’s the thing I have the hardest thing with. You work so hard to get kids to get along, and then we label them as French kids and are treated better because we throw more money at them and this is where segregation issues come up. Why can’t we make it so everybody can benefit,” asked Wilde.

Please read more here.

This is a preschool program, so not a full immersion program. But if it proves successful and popular, the district might expand it. 

From: Channel 8

COMSTOCK TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WOOD) — Come next fall, the English spoken by 3- and 4-year-olds, many who have barely learned their ABCs, will mix with the sounds of Mandarin in one Kalamazoo-area preschool room.

Comstock Public Schools is launching a first-of-its-kind Chinese immersion school for preschoolers.

“There’s a lot of studies that show that being bilingual or multilingual has tremendous cognitive benefits. We feel the sooner we can offer that to our constituents, the better,” Superintendent Dr. Jeffrey Thoenes said of the early start.

Like in immersion programs for older students, the preschoolers’ daily dialogue would be bilingual: part Mandarin, part English. But unlike the higher grade programs, there will be no writing.

“Three-year-olds, 4-year-olds, it’s too early for them to begin writing the Chinese language, the scripts,” Thoenes said. “And so it will be through music, through play, through traditional Chinese activities.”

Please read more here.

Sept. 28, 2018

From The Juneau Empire

• By Ben Hohenstatt
• Monday, January 7, 2019

By February, Juneau could have a childcare program entirely in Lingít.

Haa Yoo X’atángi Kúdi is Central Council of Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska’s new “language nest,” an immersive program intended to help revitalize the Tlingit language of Lingít.

After four years of development, the program is close to getting off the ground, with the goal of immersing Juneau students between the ages of 3 and 5 in the Tlingit language.

“We’re absolutely excited,” said Tlingit & Haida President Chalyee Éesh Richard Peterson. “Every day as time goes by we lose more fluent first speakers.”

The Endangered Languages Project estimates there are about 200 fluent speakers of Lingít worldwide. The Alaska Native Language Center similarly puts that figure at 175 speakers.

Please read more here.

New Indigenous immersion program launching to teach kindergartners Kwak’wala

A new language immersion program is coming to a Vancouver Island elementary school — and no, it’s not the typical Spanish or Mandarin language programs. It’s Kwak’wala.

School District 72 recently gave the green light for the new pilot project in the Kwak’wala language and culture at Ripple Rock Elementary in Campbell River.

Starting in September, kindergarten students will be immersed in the Indigenous language, which is spoken in parts of coastal B.C. including Vancouver Island.

Please read more here.

Yiddish immersion Kindergarten may come to New York City

From The Forward

Three generations ago, before the Holocaust decimated European Jewry, tens of thousands of students studied at more than a thousand secular Yiddish elementary schools dotted across Eastern Europe.

Today, there is only one secular Yiddish school in the world, and it’s south Australia.

Next year, that could change, and in a dramatic way: Secular Yiddish education might be coming to a New York City public school.

A member of the New York City Council, Mark Levine, is proposing the creation of a dual-language Yiddish-English program in a New York City public school starting in the fall of 2020. The students would spend half of their day learning in English, and half learning in Yiddish.

Read more: https://forward.com/news/national/422512/yiddish-kindergarten-may-be-coming-to-a-new-york-city-public-school/

Please read more here.

How Hawaiian Came Back From the Dead

A legacy of colonialism nearly wiped out the language and its culture. These immersion schools weren’t having it.

HILO, Hawai‘i—When Herring Kekaulike Kalua was a child growing up on Hawai‘i’s Big Island, his parents spoke mostly in their native language, ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i. English had long been the official language of government in the islands, mandated in schools and other public spaces. But Kalua’s family favored the soft vowels of Hawaiian, rejecting the harder consonants of English while they fished, hunted, and grew taro, customs their ancestors had passed down for generations.

Please read more here.

Navajo Nation School Focuses on Language Revitalization