Thanks for the folks at the Utah Mandarin Immersion Parents Council for posting about this exciting research. You can read their post, with a link to the actual research (which you have to pay for, sadly) here.

I recently ran across the web page for the Forest Hills Mandarin immersion program in Grand Rapids, a town in Western Michigan and wanted to give them a shout out. They launched in 2008 and will have their first class enter high school in the fall of 2017.

I especially like the “road map” they provide which clearly lays out how the program works from Kindergarten through high school, describing how it works in each grade  and where the schools are – and where students can veer off.

This is all too often a mystery in many school districts, with nowhere to go to clearly see the full program and only parent lore to explain it. Kudos to Forest Hills for being so helpful and transparent.

You can see their full web page here.

This is an interesting read. I have white friends in Cupertino who sent their kids to private schools because their local public schools were “too intense” for them. So I’ve certainly see this at work.

On the other hand, I wonder if racism is exactly the right word. Perhaps culturalism? Perhaps something else? Certainly I’ve seen the same debate around intensity play itself out in Mandarin immersion schools between Chinese-Americans who have been in the United States for two or three or more generations and recently-immigrated Chinese families.

I remember one parent, a fourth-generation Chinese-American doctor married to a third-generation Chinese-American engineer, who said to me after a heated meeting about how many characters the kids were learning, “Wow, that’s the first time I’ve ever been called lazy and someone who didn’t care about my kids’ education.”

And then there was the white mom I met on school tours in San Francisco who wouldn’t even look at public schools that didn’t have a high percentage of Asian students, because she was actively seeking the academic intensity they brought with them.

All of which is only to say that families in Mandarin immersion schools need to be very aware of what we ourselves bring to the table, so we don’t unconsciously (or consciously) add prejudice to the mix.

Ghosts of White People Past: Witnessing White Flight From an Asian Ethnoburb

If diversity is so important to liberal whites, why do they keep fleeing ethnically diverse suburbia?

By Anjali Enjeti

For the first time in my life, I am not a racial minority when I move to Johns Creek, Georgia. People from myriad cultures, ethnicities, religions, and nationalities deem this patch of earth home. Persian and Indian markets bookend strip malls. Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, Korean, and Chinese restaurants perch on the corners of major intersections.

One blustery winter morning, I tour a preschool for my then-youngest child. The director, a petite woman with light brown hair, greets me warmly in the foyer, hands me a pamphlet describing the classes, the curriculum, the school’s philosophy. At the end of the tour, she asks if I have any questions. I shake my head, thank her for her time, and open the glass door to the parking lot when she calls out in a cautionary tone: “This area has changed quite a bit in the past few years. It’s really, really different.”

Please read more here.

There are several in Minnesota through CARLA, the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition.

Make sure your administrators know about these. Link is here.

Here’s CARLA’s general website for immersion programs.

 Summer Institutes for Language Teachers

The CARLA summer institutes listed below are primarily targeted at K–12 and post-secondary foreign language and ESL teachers. They are not designed to meet the unique needs of immersion teachers. Please refer to the bottom of each page for specific information about the target audience. Please see the section below for immersion-specific institutes.

July 10–August 13, 2017	Location
Using the Web for Communicative Language Learning    This is a 5-week ONLINE ONLY institute Register Now! Online Only!
July 10–14, 2017	Location
Developing Assessments for the Second Language Classroom Register Now! YMCA 3rd Floor 1801 Univ Ave SE Teaching Heritage Languages and Learners Register Now! Northrop Crosby Room Creativity in the Classroom   Register Now! Nolte 140
July 17–21, 2017	Location
Using Technology in Second Language Teaching Register Now! Jones 35 Online option! Improving Language Learning: Styles- and Strategies-Based Instruction Register Now! Nolte 140 Teaching Language Through the Lens of Social Justice Register Now! YMCA 3rd Floor 1801 Univ Ave SE Using Authentic Materials to Develop 21st Century Literacies—NEW! Register Now! Nicholson 115
July 24–28, 2017	Location
Content-Based Language Instruction and Curriculum Development Register Now! Nolte 140 Culture as the Core in the Second Language Classroom Register Now! YMCA 3rd Floor 1801 Univ Ave SE Growing Learner Language: A Hands-On Approach Register Now! Nicholson 115