Forest Hills Schools, WMU, agreement allows students to earn Chinese minor
Forest Hills Public Schools and Western Michigan University Extended University Programs have entered into an agreement that allows students to earn a full Chinese language minor along with their diploma. The “Collegiate Pathways” program launched in 2017-18 at Forest Hills Northern High School. WMU instructors will teach the classes on site. In 2008, Forest Hills launched a Mandarin Chinese Immersion Program. File photo of Forest Hills Mandarin immersion teacher Qianxi Jiang giving first-year program students a lesson at Meadow Brook Elementary.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI – Forest Hills Public Schools and Western Michigan University Extended University Programs entered into an agreement Thursday, March 2, that allows students to earn a full Chinese language minor along with their diploma.
Officials say the “Collegiate Pathways” program launching the 2017-18 school year is the first of its kind. The dual-enrollment program will be at Forest Hills Northern High School.
“This partnership with Forest Hills provides a model we hope will be used to deliver similar programs for other districts,” said Dawn Gaymer, associate provost for WMU’s Extended University Programs.
Though as long-time China correspondent for NPR Anthony Kuhn notes in this story, he’s being studying and working in China for almost two decades.
It’s worth clicking to see the clip of him asking his question in Chinese – and then reading about how the mere fact that a foreigner is fluent made him an online sensation.
Help wanted: people who can speak more than one language.
Even as the Trump administration seeks to limit immigration, employers are increasingly looking to woo immigrants as consumers — and employees.
Banks and cellphone providers are hiring employees who can communicate with potential customers in their native tongues. Software firms are seeking out translators and customer service representatives who can help them build their business around the world. And health care providers looking to serve the immigrants in their communities, as well as patients traveling to the United States for medical care, are beefing up their staffs with people who can understand, and convey, their concerns.
Is 2014 a group of parents attempted to create the United Kingdom’s first Mandarin immersion program. To be called the Marco Polo school, it was to launch in 2014 as a “free school,” the English equivalent of a charter school in the United States. The authority that oversees such schools eventually decided it wasn’t inclusive enough, scrapping the project to the distress of parents.
Now a private school has taken on the same project and is set to open in the fall of 2017 in the the west London district of Kensington.
Called Kensington Wade, the school will offer a 50/50 model from preschool through middle school, or age 13. It will cost about $12,500 per year.
[note that the Independent’s headline is a little misleading. There is already a Mandarin immersion school in Europe, but it’s in Hungary so the Magyar-Kínai Két Tanítási Nyelvu ́ ́ Általános Iskola is a bilingual Chinese-Hungarian school, not a bilingual Chinese-English school.]
Europe’s first ever bilingual Chinese-English school to open in London
Founders of new Kensington Wade prep school and nursery say learning Chinese ‘prepares children for the new century’
Mandarin Chinese is the most widely spoken language in the world, and is seen as important for young people in the UK to master in order for the country to remain globally competitive in the future PA
The first school in Europe to teach all its students in both English and Chinese is to open in London next year.
Founders of Kensington Wade, a dual language independent prep school, say children as young as one will be taught in Chinese, and all those who attend the school will leave fluent.
Nathan Yeung, a computer scientist and web developer, has update his most excellent program for finding where on a map the closest Mandarin immersion programs are.
You can now go to MandarinTreehouse.com and type in a ZIP code and get a nice map showing you all the Mandarin immersion programs within a radius of between 5 and 20 miles.
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