I know (really I do) that we’re very lucky in San Francisco to have four Mandarin immersion grade school programs, three middle school programs (well, two are continuations in K-8 schools) and two high school programs.

I also know there are a lot of San Francisco area folks who read this blog. So I wanted to put out word that Presidio Knolls, a private Mandarin immersion school in San Francisco, will launch its middle school next year with a sixth grade.

One of the amazing things about San Francisco is that kids can move around between schools, meaning there’s the opportunity to find schools that really work for different kids and still stay within a Mandarin immersion setting.

Kids move between the public elementary school programs Starr King and Jose Ortega all the time. And in middle school we see kids moving from the private Chinese American International School to the public Aptos Middle School program and vice versa.

Now we’ve got one more program in the mix. And note that they’ve got several full scholarships, plus generous tuition assistance are available!

Information below. (And please note that Chinese American International School also has openings in 6th grade and they also have scholarships available for next year, I just don’t have info yet on any middle school info nights they might be holding.)

Presidio Knolls School

October 18th, 6:00-8:00pm

Middle School Information Session (students welcome!)

Presidio Knolls School

250 10th Street, San Francisco

Presidio Knolls School (PKS) is proud to announce the launch of its Middle School in August of 2018, with applications now being accepted for the 6th grade class.

The Program

The Middle School will offer a rigorous and engaging program inspired by a student-centered, inquiry-based pedagogy and informed by best practices in bilingual and Chinese language education. The curriculum will integrate deep learning across content areas, strong Chinese and English language instruction, social-emotional learning, design thinking and intercultural competency. The PKS Middle School program is designed to graduate students who are multilingual, global thinkers with the intellectual and personal integrity, mental flexibility and open-mindedness, and cultural and technological literacy to succeed in high school, college, and the world beyond.

Since 2008, PKS has been a pioneer in developing a progressive approach to Mandarin immersion education. The school offers a joyful and dynamic bilingual learning experience within and beyond the classroom for students and families who value inquiry, discovery, creativity, compassion, and community.

Leadership

The PKS Middle School is being led by educational innovator and author Mike Levy.  Mike was a classroom teacher for fifteen years at Saint Paul’s School in New Hampshire, Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn, and 人大附中 in Beijing.  Most recently, he helped design and open an immersion school in New York City (Avenues: The World School), and served as the Associate Division Head for their Middle and High School.  Mike’s favorite saying on education comes from Grant Wiggins who wrote that “the purpose of school is not to get good at school.”  The PKS program will help students prepare for lives that will require flexibility, empathy, creativity, bilingual and bicultural abilities, and–above all– a willingness to engage with the world.

Mike is working closely with incoming Head of School Chris Livaccari and a talented team of educators. Chris is a distinguished language immersion educator and author, and a seasoned leader and innovator in the fields of bilingual and world languages education, Chinese language learning, and US-China educational exchange. Chris is currently at International School of the Peninsula in Palo Alto, where he has served as both Elementary and Middle School Principal as well as the Chinese Program Director. In addition, Chris is a senior advisor to the Asia Society’s Center for Global Education, where he previously served as Director of Education and Chinese Language Initiatives. During his time working at the Asia Society, Chris created a collaborative national network of more than 100 US schools in 28 states that teach Chinese, and their partner schools in more than 20 provinces in China. The network now includes almost 40,000 students across the United States who are learning Chinese and participating actively in exchanges with their Chinese counterparts. Earlier in his career, Chris was a U.S. Foreign Service officer who held positions in Tokyo and Shanghai. He has traveled extensively in China, Japan, and Korea, taught Chinese and Japanese, and authored many books and articles on multilingualism, teaching Chinese, and Mandarin immersion.

PKS invites you to learn more about its middle school at an October 18th information session, or by appointment.  RSVP to the Director of Admissions at andrea.banks@presidioknolls.org. Several full scholarships, plus generous tuition assistance are available.

CELIN (the Chinese Early Language and Immersion Network) has a nice article up about Mandarin immersion programs in Minnesota, which gives a good overview of what’s happening in that state. It also gives a good perspective on the different types of schools that exist and how they fit their area’s own unique needs and requirements.

MINNESOTA CHINESE IMMERSION PROGRAMS

Serve students in elementary school through high school
www.education.state.mn.us/MDE/dse/stds/world

Program Descriptions

While language programs in Minnesota are locally determined and supported, the Minnesota Department of Education supports the study of world languages by providing technical assistance and visa sponsorship for visiting teachers for various programs across the state, including sponsorship for teachers through the Confucius Institutes and Hangzhou Foreign Language School.

During the 2015–2016 school year, Minnesota schools served 848,742 students. Of the 200,850 students enrolled in language or language and culture classes, 7% were enrolled in Chinese, most of them in immersion programs. Chinese language and immersion programs and teacher exchanges have a long history in Minnesota. They enjoy strong parent and local support and benefit from support provided by the Confucius Institutes at the University of Minnesota and St. Cloud State University, CARLA, and the Minnesota Department of Education

As programs have expanded beyond the elementary school grades, articulation with middle and high school and university Chinese classes allows students to continue building Chinese language skills through content-based Chinese and Chinese language arts courses. The Chinese Flagship at the University of Minnesota offers a College in the Schools program for high schools in the Twin Cities area. Involving partnership among the federal government, education entities, and businesses, the Flagship program offers students pursuing different majors across the university the opportunity to attain a professional level of Chinese.

Here we provide a brief description of each of the Chinese language/immersion programs that are available in five school districts in Minnesota.

Please read more here.

Not only am I a huge proponent of reading as a key component of becoming fluent, but I’m also a huge Jane Austen fan, and Emma is one of my favorites.

And now the lovely folks at Mandarin Companion have rewritten it in modern day China, using only 200 characters. Level 1. Just tell your kids it’s the same plot as Clueless!

Heck, even my Chinese might be good enough to read it…

Check it out here.

Clever, rich, and single, the beautiful Ān Mò (Emma Woodhouse) is focused on her career as fashion designer in the glamor of 21st-century Shanghai. She sees no need for romance in her life, but when she tries to find a boyfriend for her new friend Fangfang (Harriet), her carefully laid plans being to unravel. As she ignores the warnings of her good friend Shi Wenzheng (Mr. Knightley), her decisions bring consequences that she never expected. With its witty and charming characters, Emma is often seen as Jane Austen’s most flawless work.

This type of what we would term a preschool in the U.S. always amazes me. London, as far as I know, only has one Mandarin immersion K – 8 school. If you don’t speak Chinese at home, having your child learn Mandarin when they’re 3 and 4 is an interesting choice if there’s nowhere they can continue with the language.

Most families I know who have spent time abroad say their kids readily picked up the local language (if they were exposed to it through preschool or babysitters) but lost it within six months of returning to an English-only environment. So what’s the point of spending a lot of money to send your child to a Mandarin immersion preschool if they won’t be able to continue the language? I’m simply curious. It’s not an economic choice I would make.

That said, at least in San Francisco families choose Mandarin immersion preschools with the thought that it will help them get into one of the city’s now four Mandarin immersion grade schools (two public, two private.)

To be brutal about it, having your child learn to speak Mandarin at age 4 and then lose it is not going to make them a “dragon.” (by which I presume they’re thinking “ruler of the world.”) But perhaps I’m just feeling cynical today…

 

China’s influence grows as bilingual Mandarin nursery group plans further expansion in London

 

With China’s economy booming, demand for Mandarin has risen in the UK to the extent that its first bilingual Mandarin-English nursery group has just opened its second setting, with a further two in the planning stages.

Credit: Hatching Dragons

Hatching Dragons opened its first nursery in the Barbican back in 2015. However it proved to be so popular, that it has just opened another nursery in Richmond. It is also planning to open another in Westminster and one near Canary Wharf.

People in Britain are quickly realizing the value of speaking Mandarin, the language of the world’s second biggest economy. Last year, the UK’s first bilingual Mandarin-English independent school opened and the Department for Education also launched a new £10m initiative to expand Mandarin teaching in state schools across the country.

Cenn John, founder of Hatching Dragons said the nursery group’s expansion has proved London parents recognise the importance of preparing children for an increasingly global world and of nurturing greater intercultural understanding.

Please read more here.

Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School in Hadley, Mass. has faced criticism for several years due to one of the fundamental issues many Mandarin immersion schools face – Mandarin immersion isn’t for everyone.

At the same time, public schools must be for everyone. And yet not everyone wants Mandarin immersion, not every parent and, at a certain point, not every student. How does one deal with those conflicting requirements and demands?

All this is true. Also true is that many school district deliberately choose Mandarin immersion to draw in those families who do what it.

So this is in many ways the existential conundrum of Mandarin immersion – it draws peoples into public schools although it isn’t for everyone, but is subject to criticism for not being just that.

In many ways, it’s the conundrum all our public schools face when they offer programs that appeal to some but not all families. How can you have magnet programs which pull families in but don’t draw all families? Are magnets fundamentally inequitable? There are those who say they are, and yet many districts embrace magnet programs as a way to keep families in public schools (and, incidentally, out of charters.) And if we make everything totally and utterly equal, will everyone with the means simply leave for the suburbs, or even private schools?

It’s a question that I don’t think has been answered yet. I’m curious how other programs deal with this. Can a school be everything to everybody? Must it be? And if it’s not, does that mean that Mandarin immersion (and by extension all immersion programs, and all magnet programs) are untenable within the public schools?

I welcome your thoughts and stories.

Beth

Chinese immersion charter school, again seeking expansion, remains dogged by critics

A small Hadley charter school that produces consistently high student test scores and is ranked by the state as a top-tier school remains dogged by criticisms that could thwart its ongoing effort to expand.

The Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School’s new expansion application, announced last month, is the latest salvo in a nearly decade-long drive to build out a full K-12 school to comply with a $1.5 million federal grant awarded in 2008, according to school administrators.

Kathleen Wang, the school’s principal, said it has been unfairly caught up in “small town politics” that detract from its mission.

“Some of the mud-slinging is, quite frankly, extremely disappointing to me, and is wasting yet another generation of students’ education,” she said.

Please read more here.

Other recent stories on  Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School

http://www.heraldnews.com/news/20170810/charter-school-proposals-would-add-nearly-5400-seats

http://www.recorder.com/tensions-over-chinese-charter-school-11763215

http://sampan.org/2017/08/pioneer-valley-chinese-immersion-charter-school-seeks-to-offer-academic-program-to-more-local-families/

http://wwlp.com/2017/08/07/a-hadley-charter-schol-wants-to-increase-its-enrollment/

http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2017/08/chinese_charter_school_again_a.html

http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2017/07/state_rep_solomon_goldstein-ro.html

http://www.gazettenet.com/Brian-Mulvehill-suggests-Pioneer-Valley-Chinese-Immersion-Charter-School-is-hypocritical-in-claim-of-unfair-treatment-by-press-10578695

http://www.gazettenet.com/Chinese-immersion-school-holds-its-first-ever-graduation-10447006

http://www.gazettenet.com/David-McGrath-and-Michael-DiPasquale-defend-Pioneer-Valley-Chinese-Immersion-Charter-School-10375642

This is a fascinating look at the other side of the coin – Chinese families working to get their children comfortable in English, just as Mandarin immersion families here work for Chinese. 

By RICHIE DAVIS
Recorder Staff