Mandarin Immersion Parents Council

Information for parents of kids in Mandarin immersion education

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  • The state of Mandarin Immersion: November 2017

    The state of Mandarin Immersion in November 2017 – a midyear update

    Mandarin immersion programs in the United States continue to expand, with at least two new programs scheduled to launch in the fall of 2018 for the 2018-2019 school year.

    As of November 2017 there were at least 246 Mandarin immersion programs in 31 states and the District of Columbia in the United States.

    Here’s an update for the current State of Mandarin Immersion, based on the database of programs I maintain here. I have tried to keep it as up to date and accurate as possible, but if you find errors, please send me an email so I can correct them

    November 2017 Numbers 

    Total schools as of the 2017-2018 school year       246

    Total schools by 2018-2019 school year                    248

     

    New schools for 2017-2018

    Arizona Language Preparatory, Phoenix, Arizona

    Horseshoe Trails Elementary School, Phoenix Arizona

    Desert Canyon Elementary, Scottsdale, Arizona

    El Capitan High School, Lakeside, Calif.

    PUC International Preparatory Academy, Los Angeles, Calif.

    Fred Newhart Middle School, Mission Viejo, Calif.

    West County Mandarin School, Richmond, Calif.

    Mesa Elementary School, West Covina, Calif.

    Linden Hill Elementary, Wilmington, Del.

    Maryknoll School, Honolulu, Hawaii

    South Fork Elementary, Rigby, Idaho

    Wolf Springs Elementary School, Overland Park, Kansas

    Northern Hills High School, Grand Rapids, Michigan

    Crest Elementary School, Eugene, Oregon

    Tillicum Middle School, Bellevue, Washington

     

    New schools coming in 2018-2019

    Postlethwait  Middle School, Camden, Deleware

    East Light Academy, Charleston, South Carolina

     

    School type

    Public  (traditional + charters)           207      83%

    Public (not including charters)           178      71%

    Charter                                                      29        11%

    Private                                                       42        16%

     

    What grades

    K – 5 or 6                               155                 62.2%%

    K – 8                                        43                   17.2%

    Middle school                       35                    14.0%

    K – 12                                      6                      2.4%

    High School                            8                      3.2%

    Middle +High School            1                      0.4%

    TOTAL                                  249

     

    Percent Time in Mandarin 

    (Only Kindergarten or 1st grade, not including trilingual schools)

    50/50                                      130       65.9%

    More than 60%                        8          4.0%

    80 and above                          59        29.9%

    TOTAL                                    198

     

    Strand versus whole school

    (Only includes Elementary schools, K-8 and K-12)

    Strand             168      83.1%

    Whole             34        16.8%

    TOTAL            202

     

    Simplified/Traditional

    Simplified       210      84.6%

    Traditional      38        15.3%

     

    Programs by State:

    Of total, California is 25.4%, Utah is 18.1%

    CA        63

    UT       45

    NY       12

    AZ        12

    MI        10

    MN      10

    NC       9

    OR       9

    CO       8

    GA       8

    IL         8

    WA      8

    MD      7

    WA      7

    SC        7

    DE        6

    TX        4

    NJ        3

    DC        2

    ID         2

    IN        2

    MA      2

    OK       2

    AK        1

    FL        1

    HI         1

    KS        1

    LA        1

    MO      1

    OH       1

    RI         1

    WI       1

    WY      1

     

  • This Taiwanese-American mom wants white people to stop putting their kids in Chinese immersion programs

    Two things to know about this.
    First, this San Francisco mom probably isn’t aware that back in 2006, the San Francisco Unified School District specifically created the Mandarin immersion program at Starr King and Jose Ortega elementary schools to bring in a more diverse student body. The schools had primarily African-American and Hispanic student bodies, the district wanted to make them more representative of the city as a whole by adding white and Asian students. 
    The push for diversity, which in SFUSD means both white and Asian, was baked into those programs and is the only reason they exist. It’s not the parents, it’s the school district, that pushes for white families in these programs.
    But the other thing to remember is that from the sound of it, this mom most likely has a 4-year-old and is looking to enter the SFUSD lottery for a Kindergarten slot. All our grade schools are lottery schools, with only a small bump given for those who live near certain schools.
    Fall is the time you tour schools and fall in love with programs your child is likely never to get into (one popular school has 600 applicants for 24 Kindergarten seats.) Which may be exactly what she’s in the midst of.

    The system is truly a lottery, you fill out a form, list the schools you want in order and then spend the next two months gnawing at your fingernails.

    It’s an incredibly stressful period when you imagine that your child won’t get a space in a school that works for you, and a time when many parents kind of freak out. This essay feels to me like a lot of that anxiety bubbling out. 
    Having gone through the process myself, it’s very much a “there isn’t enough pie to go around, how can I make sure my child gets a slice?” feeling. So I can understand this cri de coeur, even though I think it’s misguided.
    OPINION

    Hey White Parents Who Enroll Their Kids In Chinese School: STOP

    By
    Posted on

    It only takes three generations to lose a language, they say.

    My mother, who came to the U.S. in her late twenties, tried to get my siblings and me to speak Chinese. For a while she attempted it at home, until our refusal to answer in the language wore her down. Then we did the Saturday school thing, where we’d get up at the crack of dawn to drive an hour each way so we could congregate with the other second-generation non-speakers to be shamed by the teachers about our lack of fluency. It just wouldn’t stick; we were too American — a culture that neither values nor teaches its children to be bilingual.

    Read more here.

  • Georgia school with Mandarin immersion doing well

    Fulton schools hope to profit from teaching Mandarin

    By Will Robinson

     

    Posted: 12:00 a.m. Tuesday, February 28, 2017

    Oakley Elementary School does not just teach students Mandarin, it teaches them in Mandarin. A hundred students spend half the day learning math and science in Mandarin and the other half learning reading, writing and social studies in English.

    Mandarin classes, taught by Yipeng Wang, are the best part of the day for Kailey Gillespie, 6.

    “My favorite thing is counting,” said Gillespie, who can count in Mandarin into the hundreds.

    Wang uses various technologies in his classroom, including iPads, a smart board and even augmented reality software (think Pokemon Go) to help his students. Technology enables students to create word associations without using English. For example in one classroom activity, students pointed an iPad camera at the Mandarin word for “square,” and a square appeared on screen, creating the link in their minds between the Mandarin word and the shape without an English word acting as a middleman.

    “When you give (students) technology, it makes learning more fun,” Wang said. “A lot of students are thinking they’re playing a game, which is what we want them to believe.”

    Please read more here.

  • Mandarin immersion brings families to Lansing, Mich. public schools

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    From The Lansing State Journal

    ,

    LANSING – Putting aside the remnants of their breakfasts, the students inside Room 128 of Lansing’s Post Oak Academy formed a circle around their teacher, Yu Qiu.

    If the group of fourth-graders was feeling the Monday blues, they weren’t showing it. Several sprang from their chairs, eager to join in on the morning name game.

    Qiu scanned the students gathered around her and slowly crept toward Morgan McKissack.

    Before Qiu could get there, Morgan shouted the name of another student in the circle. Qiu turned and trained on her new target.

    Wensen Pei fumbled his words. Qiu tagged him. The youngster replaced his teacher in the center of the circle.

    Getting her students to use the Mandarin pronunciation of their peers’ names was the goal. It’s the first step to getting them to converse in the language they use for half the school day but seldom speak at home.

    Please read more here.

  • Kansas’ only Mandarin immersion program off to a strong start in a new building

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    BY KATY BERGEN

    kbergen@kcstar.com

    OCTOBER 26, 2017 11:39 AM

    On a recent morning in Overland Park, Kan., at a school next to a horse pasture in the middle of the country, a kindergartener raised his hand and asked to go to the bathroom — in Mandarin Chinese.

    Students sang a Chinese song about family as teacher Claire Pan, a native of Taiwan, pointed to corresponding characters. Later, when Pan gave instructions for a craft project, a young girl spoke quietly to her classmates at a table.

    “That means whisper,” she says.

    Please read more here.

  • A nice piece from a 6th-grade teacher about her classroom

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    STUDENT-CENTERED, PROJECT-BASED MANDARIN LEARNING

    Jamie C.H. Gao

    Jamie C.H. Gao

    Mandarin Lead Teacher for Middle School and PBL Lead at Yuming Charter School

    FROM THE “BEST” CHINESE BOOKS TO STUDENT-CENTERED, PROJECT-BASED MANDARIN LEARNING IN MY CLASSROOM

    by Jamie Chiahui Gao

    “How can I encourage my children to read more Chinese books? What are the best Chinese books for my children to read?” Both parents and Chinese teachers are eager to find answers to these questions. As a seasoned Mandarin teacher with experience teaching from the East Coast to the West Coast, from teaching preschool to college students, these are questions I continue to encounter daily. My replies vary over the years, owing to my growth and development as a teacher.

    I am continually pondering and experimenting with authentic methods to motivate students in my Mandarin classroom. How can I disassociate Mandarin learning from rote memorization and busy work, such as the mindless filling in of worksheets? Most importantly, how can I make Mandarin learning connected with students’ current lives, in real-world settings, to provoke meaningful investigation?

    From years of teaching and developing Mandarin curriculum under both World Language and Immersion models, I have found student-centered, project-based language learning to be effective among students with age as young as two and half-year-old. On top of the many benefits of Project-Based Learning (PBL), I have my ultimate goal in mind while in the classroom – to implement language learning.

    Please see more here.

  • Reading is even more fundamental in Chinese…

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    You all know I’m a huge proponent of reading for pleasure as a way to build vocabulary, gain a better grasp of academic language and just generally become a more educated human being. And that goes for Chinese, too.

    Some researchers who look at reading for pleasure (and please, note the pleasure part of this. If it ain’t fun, it ain’t happening!) recently published a book on this. I highly recommend it. And it comes in simplified and traditional Chinese as well. If there isn’t enough reading going on in your child’s classroom, get a copy in the appropriate characters and give it to your child’s teacher…

    Dr. Christy Lao from San Francisco State University, Dr. Stephen Krashen and Dr. Sy-Ying Lee from National Taiwan University of Science and Technology have just published a book titled Comprehensible and Compelling – The Causes and Effects of Free Voluntary Reading. The traditional Chinese character version titled “自主阅读” is published by Commonwealth亲子天下出版社 in Taiwan, the simplified Chinese character version will be published by XinJiang Juvenile Publishing House 新疆少年儿童出版社in China.