Note that the Mandarin program isn’t closing, but the school where it’s been housed since it first opened in 1996, is being demolished and will be rebuilt. The current Potomac Elementary School building opened in 1927.

In July the school’s programs will move to Radnor Holding Facility in Bethesda for the duration of construction on the new school. The expected date of return to the River Road campus is January 2020.

Reliving Memories Before School Closes in Potomac

Potomac Elementary alumni share their school days.

By Peggy McEwan/The Almanac

Former students of Potomac Elementary School were invited to the school Thursday morning, April 12, to take one last look at the school, meet old friends and relive memories before the building is demolished this summer.

#“It was fantastic, it turned out better than we anticipated, people were showing up with boxes of photos and mementos,” said Greg Barton, principal intern.

#Sisters Suzy Potter Linger, who now lives in Ohio, and Carolyn Potter Summerville, of Bethesda, were among the first to arrive.

#Both had fond memories of the school and mentioned that their father and uncle both attended Potomac Elementary in the 1920s when the school was located at the corner of Norton and Falls roads.

Please read more here.

A side note: This blog depends to a great extent on the reporting done by local newspapers across the nation, which tell the stories of their communities, schools and issues better than any other source. That’s one reason I always link to the stories rather than posting whole – it’s not only the right thing to do, but also insures they get the ad revenue that supports their work.

After the horrific shooting at The Capital Gazette in Maryland last week, let me take this moment to urge you to subscribe, in print if you can, to your local newspaper. Support the journalists who make tiny salaries finding out what’s happening in your town and making sure that nothing is hidden and things don’t happen behind closed doors.

Even if you don’t read it every day, it’s worth it. Our children are likely the last generation that will grow up with printed newspapers – get them into the news-reading habit now. Don’t let them be like the high school student I recently met who, seeing the stack of newspapers in front of me, said “Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever actually held a printed newspaper before. I just read everything on Instagram.”

By REBECCA MULLEN
For the Daily Hampshire Gazette

HADLEY — “I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to say that you are all extraordinary,” faculty speaker Bruce Rubin said in his address to the Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School’s Class of 2018.

Of the 11 graduates, 10 were International Baccalaureate Diploma Candidates, four were National Honor Society members and all will go on to pursue higher education.

The Class of 2018 was the second class to graduate from PVCICS, a K-12 charter school which opened in the fall 2007. Classes are taught in both English and Mandarin. The graduation was held Friday evening in the school’s gymnasium.

Rubin’s speech highlighted the ways the students had pushed the envelope over the course of their education.

“You are not afraid to challenge orthodoxy and authority,” Rubin said to the class. “‘Just because’ is not a response that you are willing to accept.”

Please read more here.

Please read more here.

I know this idea is anathema to some parents,who want to know their kids are working hard at Chinese. But really, there is a ton of research showing that the absolute best way to get literate it to read, a lot. It’s called Extensive Reading and it’s not just in Chinese. There’s a whole Foundation that works on the topic in English, for example.

Here’s an article from the folks at Mandarin Companion about it. They do really nice – and fun! – books that work for kids in Mandarin immersion. Worth getting for your kid once they hit 4th of 5th grade.

===

Reading Pain or Reading Gain? Reading at the Right Level

“So, what should I read to improve my Chinese?” he asked as I looked disapprovingly at his book. Zach* had come to Shanghai as part of an exchange program to study business and Chinese. With no previous Chinese skills, he studied hard and quickly worked through the basics of the language. After a few months, I invited him over for a nice home cooked meal and to see how he was doing. He excitedly showed me his recently purchased copy of Jack Welch’s autobiography… in Chinese. He opened it to show me his progress; I saw how the margins were covered with pinyin and every other word had underlining with a definition scribbled beside it. He had been at it for a week and was pleased that he had struggled through two pages and “learned” a lot of new characters.

Please read more here.

=====

And here’s another one, from a Chinese teacher

How to Learn Fluent Chinese: Start Reading!

One of the things I love about having kids in Mandarin immersion is that for us non-Chinese parents, our lives are deeply enriched by being welcomed into a world that we otherwise never would have been a part of, broadening our gaze in wonderful ways. My daughters did poetry recitation contests all through school, certainly not something I’d ever encountered growing up and yet an important part of Chinese culture. This story about YingHua students Melanie Tan and Malana Young gives a taste of that. Congrats to them!

KINGSTON NJ – YingHua International School (YHIS) elementary students Melanie Tan and Malana Young, both received 1^st place for two different events at the 45^th annual Association of Chinese Schools (ACS) conference.  The competition drew students of Chinese heritage from all over the northeast of America, from New England area to as far as Maryland and North Carolina.

Ms. Young proudly brought home the 1^st place prize for middle age student individual speech contest.  Ms. Young, 14 years old from Skillman, New Jersey was born into an English-speaking family with a diverse background.  Ms. Young started learning Chinese when she was four and joined YHIS, a Chinese-Immersion school, in second grade.  YingHua’s education has helped her learn to speak the language like a native.  To ensure her speech, “The secret of the statue”, was fluent with words pronounced clearly and smoothly, she practiced for weeks working closely with teachers at YingHua.

Please read more here.

I realize my only knowledge of Prince Edward Island comes from reading all the Anne of Green Gables books as a child (not a bad way to know a place, really.) I had no idea that it has had a huge influx of Buddhist monks and nuns. Now they’re opening an immersion school. That will give us five religious Mandarin immersion schools in North America, two Catholic – All Souls in Los Angeles and Maryknoll in Honolulu and two non-denominational – Reid Temple Christian Academy in Maryland and Zeeland Christian School in Michigan.  

Beth

New Chinese-English school planned for P.E.I.

Leader of P.E.I. monks, nuns behind new school launching next fall

The latest venture of the P.E.I. monks’ religious leader is a new, private school in which students will learn in both Mandarin and English, planned to open next fall.

Buddhist monks on P.E.I. have built extensive facilities on the Island, while at the same time an influx of Chinese immigrants to P.E.I. in the last few years means Mandarin is the main immigrant language spoken on P.E.I., as it is in the rest of Canada.

“If you’re interested in being a global citizen, it would be a language that would be very beneficial to you,” said Derek McEwen, the CEO of HOPE International Education Foundation, who will also be the school’s principal. McEwen worked as a teacher and principal for years and was director of English curriculum for P.E.I.’s Department of Education.

Please read more here.

For those of us not lucky enough to speak a language other than English, we must turn to immersion programs to have our children grow up bilingual. When I hear my daughters chattering away in Mandarin, I feel a wave of relief that all those nights arguing and crying at the dining room table over stroke-order homework were worth it.

This is a poignant essay about the silliness in this nation that we don’t encourage and enthuse over those who are naturally, effortlessly (at least on the part of the kids, the parents work hard at it!) bilingual or in this luck girl’s case, trilingual. And she appears to be in French immersion as well.

I hope it was only that the woman who confronted this mom was working from the old, now-disproved notion that speaking a language at home that isn’t the dominate language of the country somehow harms children.

It’s worth noting that the underlying studies that caused generations of teachers, doctors and experts to believe so were based on false premises. They come from work done in the United Kingdom in the early part of the last century.

Researchers tested children coming from homes where children spoke Welsh and Irish at home and English at school. They found that those students had less well-rounded vocabularies, and drew the conclusion that speaking another language at home harmed their language development.

What they were actually studying was poverty, though they didn’t think about it. Welsh families who still spoke Welsh and Irish families that still spoke Irish tended to come from poorer, less developed parts of the country (and we won’t even get into the history of that…) So the children came from poorer homes, worse schools and generally had fewer opportunities.

They didn’t think to do a similar study with English aristocrats who hired French- and German-speaking nannies for their children so they would speak those languages, which were tied to upper class culture and science.

For decades afterwards, social scientists believed that growing up bilingual was harmful. They were wrong. But it appears not everyone had gotten the update.

From the Los Angeles Times