Shawnee Mission dual language proponents hope idea makes it into next strategic plan
An organized effort to get a dual language program in the Shawnee Mission School District (Kansas) received strong support in a recent public input effort, buoying supporters’ hopes that it might make it onto the district’s long-range strategic plan later this year.
The district is in the early stages of its planning process for a new strategic plan.
At a school board meeting Monday, Leigh Anne Neal, Shawnee Mission’s chief of early childhood learning and sustainability, presented six guiding principles for the strategic plan approved by a 31-member steering committee.
The Chinese American International School, founded in 1981, is the oldest Mandarin immersion school in the country and, as far as I can tell, the world.
It’s long been split between multiple buildings, for preschool, grade school and middle school, to accomodate its growing student population. Until last year the grade school shared a building with the French American International School.
This year, CAIS moved into a new campus on San Francisco’s west side, into the building of the former Mercy High School, a Catholic girls’ school that opened in 1952 and closed in 2020.
CAIS (pronounced “case”) purchased the campus and after two years of renovation, moved in earlier this month.
In addition to having all its students in one place, the school has also added a new strand for incoming middle school students. As its website says, “No Mandarin (Yet?) No problem!”
The Mandarin World Language Pathway allows students to join the school who haven’t studied Chinese. The school’s site says “The Mandarin World Language Pathway program is a much more robust language instruction than students would get in a monolingual school setting.”
This is an attempt to deal with a problem that tends to dog Mandarin immersion programs – it’s impossible to bring in new students after first grade because they can’t catch up to immersion students. This means that class sizes tend to shrink by grades as students move away. Of course, it also means it’s easier to move between Mandarin immersion schools nationally because they’re generally eager to get students in higher grades who have the necessary language background.
The idea of creating a new, middle school path for students without the required language proficiency is one that’s being tried in immersion schools around the country, not just Mandarin but also French and German that I’m aware of.
For example, HudsonWay Immersion School, which has campuses in Manhattan and Stirling, NJ, is now offering an Accelerated Bilingual Cohort in its middle school program.
If you know of schools that have this type of program, please reach out to me and I’ll include them.
There’s also the Stratford School in San Francisco, which is a chain that has some Mandarin immersion at some of its schools, including the one in San Francisco. That brings to five the private Mandarin immersion schools in the city (including the one opening next year) compared with just two public Mandarin immersion schools. As I keep saying, it’s a clear missed opportunity for San Francisco Unified, which will be closing schools this year due to under-enrollment.
From: The San Francisco Standard
Chris Livaccari thought he had seen the rise and fall of Chinese-language instruction in the U.S. over the three decades since he began studying Mandarin. But San Francisco never disappointed him.
Livaccari, principal of Presidio Knolls School in SoMa, a private immersion facility offering Mandarin programs for preschool to eighth grade, said the student body has increased from 300 to 400 over the past five years.
Peter Hessler’s book River Town came out in 2001. About his years in the late 1990s as a Peace Corps volunteer there, it’s a brilliant portrait of China as it emerged from isolation and was beginning an era of rapid change. He later reported from China and has written several books since, all worth reading. Now he’s published one that will be of special interest to parents whose children are in Mandarin immersion, if they’ve ever wondered “What would this all be like in China?” Your answer will come as you read Other Rivers: A Chinese Education, which came out in August. It covers the two years his twin daughters attended a large public school in Sichuan. I’ve always loved Hessler’s work because while he clearly has deep affection for China and the Chinese people, he isn’t shy about talking about its issues as well.
The exerpt linked to below appeared in The Guardian newspaper.
Our twins spent two years at primary school in Chengdu. Their lessons featured alarming cautionary tales and stories of Chinese superiority, but there was fun and irreverence, too
Near the end of third grade, my twin daughters, Ariel and Natasha, officially joined the Young Pioneers of China. This organisation is under the auspices of the Chinese Communist party, and members are between the ages of six and 14. In order to become a Young Pioneer at Chengdu Experimental primary school, the public institution my daughters attended in the south-western Chinese city, there was no application, no interview and no ceremony. Parents were not consulted or informed. The twins simply came home one afternoon wearing Young Pioneer pins on their right breasts. The pins featured a gold star, a red torch and the name of the organisation – Zhongguo Shaoxiandui – in gold Chinese characters. Ariel and Natasha told me and my wife, Leslie, that from now on they would be required to wear the pins on Mondays, when Chengdu Experimental held its weekly flag-raising ceremony, as well as on other special occasions.
Seven educators and one former student on how learning another language can change lives
The Washington Post
My favorite memory as a bilingual teacher
Bilingual education for me has been a validation of my language, culture and identity that I did not receive as a child of public education. I grew up in a time when English was the sole focus of language acquisition. For my students, our school system’s Vietnamese dual-language program opens the door of access for their present and future. Most of the students have been with the program since kindergarten; those now in high school have reached notable achievements that are recognized at the state level and can be put on résumés for work or higher education. A more personal triumph for me is seeing how dual-language education affects students’ present lives. The most impactful memory I carry is the deep gratitude a grandmother once shared at an end-of-year celebration. She thanked me for giving her 7-year-old grandson the ability to communicate with her. It was, she said, the first time that she was able to get to know her grandson.
Tu Dinh is a language learning specialist at the district office of Highline Public Schools in Washington state. He spent five years at White Center Heights Elementary School as the first-grade Vietnamese dual-language teacher and two years as a Vietnamese instructional coach and dual-language facilitator.
I have no doubt this decision is more about politics than anything else, which is far beyond the scope of this blog. But it’s interesting that some of the arguments being made for and against English in China are the same ones we see being made about immersion education here in the United States:
Yu suggested that some companies and most universities in China may require English proficiency because of the positive qualities associated with having a “second language experience”, such as strong memory.
Yu, who was educated in Chengdu, as well as New Orleans and Cambridge, said the concept that learning a second language would interfere with the learner’s native language skills is misguided.
Leading Chinese university becomes first to remove English requirements for students
22 SEP 2023
HONG KONG – A leading university in China has removed an English language test from its degree requirements amid a growing debate about the subject’s practical benefits for many people.
Xi’an Jiaotong University, a public research university in the northwestern province of Shaanxi, has confirmed that it no longer requires students to complete the College English Test, or CET, to enter…
The CET is an annual exam for undergraduate and postgraduate students, who usually must pass two levels – Band 4 to be given a place at a university and Band 6 to graduate.
According to the university’s academic affairs office, the change was “a normal measure made by the school according to current developments”. It added that college-level English courses based on the CET.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, By H.M. Cauley, June 3, 2023
Je Yeong Yu, 52, still has vivid memories of moving to the U.S. with her Korean parents and being tossed into a first-grade classroom of where everyone, except she, spoke English.
“There were no ESL programs then,” said Yu, referring to English as a Second Language classes. “I want there to be a smoother transition for students to learn their heritage language as well as English.”
Yu is working to that goal as principal of the Yi Hwang Academy of Language Excellence in Duluth. The veteran educator learned about the school through a friend who was part of the parent group that launched the academy in a church basement with 120 students in September 2020. In January 2021, Yu took the helm.
But the focus isn’t just on teaching English; it’s also dedicated to strengthening the families’ native tongues.
“We’re the only school I’ve come across with a large population of heritage speakers – students whose parents and grandparents came from Korea or China, and they speak Korean or Mandarin at home,” said Yu. “But parents have said they have pretty much lost their language because they were educated here in the States. They barely communicate with their parents. What are their children going to do?”
Mandarin Immersion Parents Council 